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Alibaba Group Holding is asking app users to open their wallets for its artificial intelligence office assistant, as the Chinese technology giant tests whether businesses and consumers are ready to pay for its digital assistant. The e-commerce giant’s Qwen app now offers three membership tiers for the assistant, with annual plans ranging from 200 yuan (US$29.60) to 1,499 yuan for its flagship vers...
Alibaba Group Holding is asking app users to open their wallets for its artificial intelligence office assistant QwenWork, as the Chinese technology giant tests whether businesses and consumers are ready to pay for its digital assistant. The e-commerce giant’s Qwen app now offers three membership tiers for QwenWork, with annual plans ranging from 200 yuan (US$29.6) to 1,499 yuan for its flagship v...
Hong Kong authorities have launched a search in waters west of the city for a man believed to have fallen overboard from a sightseeing vessel travelling between Shekou and the Hong Kong–Macau–Zhuhai Bridge. The operator of the cruise, which had departed from Shekou in neighbouring Shenzhen for a sightseeing trip of the mega bridge, reported the incident at around 3pm on Tuesday after crew members ...
Hong Kong has opened a new trade office in Malaysia, with a minister saying the move is part of a strategic push to deepen regional ties and will help position the city as a bridge between the country and the Greater Bay Area. Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Algernon Yau Ying-wah said on Tuesday that the opening of the Economic and Trade Office (ETO) in Kuala Lumpur will strengthen...
Hong Kong has opened a new trade office in Malaysia, with a minister saying the move is part of a strategic push to deepen regional ties and will help position the city as a bridge between the country and the Greater Bay Area. Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Algernon Yau Ying-wah said on Tuesday that the opening of the Economic and Trade Office (ETO) in Kuala Lumpur will strengthen...
Hong Kong has opened a new trade office in Malaysia, with a minister saying the move is part of a strategic push to deepen regional ties and will help position the city as a bridge between the country and the Greater Bay Area. Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Algernon Yau Ying-wah said on Tuesday that the opening of the Economic and Trade Office (ETO) in Kuala Lumpur will strengthen...
A casual remark from his wife inspired a man in southwestern China to transform a barren valley into a breathtaking sea of hollyhocks spanning 80 hectares. Zhou Xiaolin and his wife, Yin Jie, now live amid the vibrant blooms in Chengdu, Sichuan province, where they personally tend to their sprawling garden. Their love story drew national attention after they featured on a China Central Television ...
Beijing has confirmed that a 23-year-old paratrooper died in a training accident in northwestern China, a revelation that follows recent reports of several accidents and deaths in its military. State media said on Sunday that Xia Shiyuan, of Huaiyuan county in Anhui province, was involved in an incident shortly after leaving an airborne aircraft during a scheduled training exercise in Golmud, Qing...
A new defence pact between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey has raised questions in New Delhi over whether Islamabad could use the agreement to build wider security ties with Muslim-majority countries in India’s neighbourhood, analysts have said. The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed on Friday, states that an armed attack on any one of the three countries would be treated as an attack on all ...
Hong Kong developer Wharf (Holdings) is increasingly relying on Hong Kong’s luxury-home market to offset weakness in mainland China, while paring investments and building up cash as it navigates an uncertain outlook. Revenue from Wharf’s Hong Kong development properties nearly tripled to HK$1.35 billion (US$172 million) from HK$475 million in the first half, with operating profit rising more than ...
Chinese police have dismantled more than 1,000 gangs and detained about 8,200 suspects, just 10 days after the country’s top security official announced a year-long campaign against organised crime. The Ministry of Public Security said on Monday that the crackdown focused on crimes that had evolved into “more covert” forms and spread rapidly online. “New types of crimes such as online predatory le...
A Syrian court sentenced ousted leader Bashar al-Assad to death on Tuesday after a trial in absentia, convicting him of crimes including killings, torture, and arbitrary arrest during the country’s nearly 14-year war. It was the first conviction against Assad, who was ousted in a rebel offensive in December 2024 that ended decades of his family’s iron-fisted rule over Syria and the brutal war ...
China has detained several Japanese nationals, including top executives of companies with offices in China, for allegedly violating export restrictions on dual-use goods, Japanese newspaper The Mainichi said, citing multiple sources. Dual-use items comprise goods, software and technologies with both civilian and military applications, including critical minerals essential for manufacturing drones ...
Amid widespread store closures by foreign fast-fashion players in China, US apparel brand Gap is defying industry headwinds. It plans to open 50 new stores in mainland China this year and return to Hong Kong by year’s end, following a localisation overhaul that has attracted more Chinese consumers. This expansion comes at a time when the world’s second-largest consumer market faces sluggish overal...
The cremations of the victims of the Debsirin school shooting in the Thai province of Nonthaburi had barely begun when another body was added to the country’s rising toll from gun violence. On Monday morning, a former MP for Nonthaburi fired four rounds at a local official inside a car – then calmly strode away, the pistol tucked back into his belt. Police Colonel Thongchai Yenprasert was shot ove...
A South Korean actress has apologised for the controversy surrounding her great-grandfather’s pro-Japanese ties during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule, a day after calling the accusations “groundless”. “After further checking, we have confirmed that records of great-grandfather Ahn Sang-ho being listed as a councillor of the Daejong Chinmokhoe in 1916 actually existed,” Ha Young’s agency Bistrus Ent...
Power supply and air-conditioning disruptions during Hong Kong’s ongoing heatwave have affected estate residents, office workers and even a funeral parlour, as an expert warned that the higher energy demand caused by the weather could trigger outages in older districts. The city has grappled with an intense heatwave in recent days, with scorching temperatures driven by a southwesterly airstream. T...
Power supply and air-conditioning disruptions across parts of Hong Kong have left residents sweltering in the extreme heat, with outages occurring at a housing estate, an office building and even a funeral home. In Yuen Long, about 2,400 households in Shui Pin Wai Estate and the surrounding area were left without power after an underground cable developed a fault at around 4am on Tuesday. Writing ...
A 72-year-old man who went missing three days ago has been found dead on a mountain trail in Hong Kong’s Sha Tin district. The family of Tam Hing-man reported him missing on Saturday after losing contact with him, according to police. Tam had left his home on Pik Tin Street in Tai Wai that morning and failed to return. Police, firefighters, the Government Flying Service and Civil Aid Service subse...
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim accused opposition lawmakers of staging “political drama” on Tuesday after they walked out of a special parliamentary session on a long-awaited royal inquiry into the country’s Muslim pilgrimage savings fund. The confrontation came less than two weeks after Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition lost power in Negeri Sembilan. During campaigning, the prime mi...
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sidestepped calls to apologise on Tuesday after a clip emerged of him engaging in crude banter about a gift from his Japanese counterpart. Albanese had already faced a backlash and apologised over comments made during an interview last month with the Bush Deep podcast in which he said he would “shag” singer Kylie Minogue. But separate comments during that...
Zhu Senlin, a former Guangdong governor widely regarded as a key enforcer of the province’s economic transformation in China’s critical period of opening up in the 1990s, died on Monday aged 95, according to official media. Nanfang Daily, the mouthpiece of the Guangdong party committee, confirmed on Tuesday that Zhu had died due to illness. Shanghai-born Zhu spent more than five decades in the sou...
Ten drivers have been arrested for allegedly taking part in illegal street races on a Hong Kong highway, with police deploying drones and unmarked high-performance vehicles to capture the suspects’ activities and apprehend them. The force revealed on Tuesday that the suspects, consisting of nine men and a woman aged between 25 and 51, were arrested between August 3 and 10 on suspicion of dangerous...
A Republican-led congressional committee focused on US competition with China has issued a public call for American academics to come forward if they think they missed out on jobs in favour of “applicants from China”. “Are you an American student, postdoctoral researcher, or academic who believes you were denied a research position, laboratory opportunity, or postdoctoral appointment because prefe...
A Republican-led congressional committee focused on US competition with China has issued a public call for American academics to come forward if they think they missed out on jobs in favour of “applicants from China”. “Are you an American student, postdoctoral researcher, or academic who believes you were denied a research position, laboratory opportunity, or postdoctoral appointment because prefe...
A former Deloitte information technology (IT) manager has been remanded in custody pending sentence for stealing 423 laptops from the accounting firm’s Hong Kong office over 17 months to fund his stock trading addiction. Ho Man-kit, 40, pleaded guilty to a count of theft at the District Court on Tuesday, after he misappropriated Lenovo computers worth HK$1.2 million (US$153,000) and sold them to a...
A former Deloitte information technology (IT) manager has been remanded in custody pending sentence for stealing 423 laptops from the accounting firm’s Hong Kong office over 17 months to fund his stock trading addiction. Ho Man-kit, 40, pleaded guilty to a count of theft at the District Court on Tuesday, after he misappropriated the Lenovo computers worth HK$1.2 million (US$153,000) and sold them ...
Fast-fashion retailer Shein Global Holdings is planning to take investor orders for its Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) as soon as next week, aiming for a valuation of US$35 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The Singapore-headquartered company, which was founded in China, aims to raise as much as US$2.8 billion and began gauging investor demand last week, said sources ...
Havelock Palace has apologised for cooking foraged seafood in Singapore. The apology comes weeks after the Chinese restaurant received online flak and a barrage of one-star Google reviews for its involvement in a video showing a group of individuals foraging for seafood in mass quantities at Changi Beach. In the video, the foragers are seen collecting various marine life in large quantities, inclu...
On the southern edge of China, near the border with Vietnam, a breathtaking array of wall art stretches 260km and is over 2,000 years old. This extraordinary collection, known as Huashan rock art after its most notable site, is celebrated for its vivid imagery depicting humans, animals, boats, weapons, and musical instruments. Located in Guangxi autonomous region, the site was designated as China’...
