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Recent criticism of aspects of Hong Kong’s economic development and work on safeguarding national security, by a so-called expert on Hong Kong, is factually baseless. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government rightly rejects the allegations. We must set the record straight. Since the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance...
US President Donald Trump has personally pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping over transnational criminal organisations involved in Southeast Asia’s sprawling online scam industry, a senior State Department official said on Thursday. Michael DeSombre, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Washington was raising concerns ab...
Long-time Republican US Senator Mitch McConnell said he was released from a rehabilitation centre on Thursday and would continue his recovery from a fall and from pneumonia at home. “On the advice of my doctors, I’ll maintain an intensive regimen of physical therapy from home during the state work period, and I’ll continue to engage with my staff and colleagues on important Senate business,” ...
A British sociologist who became famous as the youngest black professor ever at the University of Cambridge has resigned after the university opened an investigation into “new information” about his academic qualifications. Professor Jason Arday, who was 37 when he became a Cambridge professor in 2023, announced his decision late on Wednesday following weeks of allegations about plagiarism in his ...
Argentina has renewed its currency swap with China for five years, preserving a US$19 billion lifeline that Washington spent more than a year pressing it to give up. The Argentine central bank and the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) signed the extension of the 130 billion yuan line on Wednesday, a day before the existing deal was due to expire. The new term runs to 2031, two years longer than any pr...
China has bought at least another 10 cargoes of US soybeans, three Asian traders said on Thursday, the latest in a flurry of purchases ahead of President Xi Jinping’s expected US visit next month. State-run buyer Sinograin bought 10 to 15 cargoes on Wednesday, the traders said. At least 10 cargoes were for October-November shipment, one trader said. The deals follow trade talks between Washing...
Congolese health authorities were screening more than 300 people travelling on a river boat intercepted near Kinshasa on Thursday after the death of a passenger suspected of having Ebola raised concerns the virus may have spread on board, officials said. Authorities deployed a mobile laboratory to the vessel after it was stopped in Maluku, around 65km (40 miles) upstream from the capital on Wed...
The United States sanctioned Cuba’s senior military representative in Beijing on Thursday, accusing him of helping procure military-related equipment from China for the island’s armed forces. Waldo Perez Cortes, Cuba’s military, naval and air attache in Beijing, was among six Cuban nationals and five entities added to the US Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons ...
A swimming pool at a private housing estate in Hong Kong’s Happy Valley has been ordered to close after authorities discovered a lifeguard on duty was suspected of using fraudulent credentials. The Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) said on Thursday that the lifeguard’s credentials did not match records held by the Hong Kong China Life Saving Society. The licensed pool at the private...
China honoured two coastguard personnel who died in a vessel collision in the South China Sea last year, state media reported on Thursday, marking the first official confirmation that the incident resulted in fatalities. The People’s Armed Police (PAP) on Thursday announced the latest recipients of its “Loyal Guards of the Chinese People’s Armed Police” honour. Among the four posthumous awardees w...
Beijing and Washington’s latest tit-for-tat measures could test ties, but observers say they are little more than a “speed bump” on the road to a potential summit between presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. China’s Ministry of Commerce sanctioned seven US entities and tightened export controls on drones and related technologies on Wednesday, citing the need to “safeguard national security”. Th...
Jetstar’s plan to charge passengers for overhead locker space is set to test how far budget airlines in the Asia-Pacific region can go in making travellers pay separately for what was once part of a basic fare. The Australian carrier’s move comes as rising costs and competition push airlines to find new revenue beyond the ticket price, potentially giving regional rivals cover to study similar fees...
A US Senate committee voted on Thursday to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after the former top US infectious disease official refused to answer questions about his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved a referral pushed by its Republican Chair Rand Paul of Kentucky, a long-time Fauci antagonist. The vote followed a h...
Britain on Thursday gave the green light to Paramount Skydance’s US$110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, as the entertainment and media mega-deal still faces a key hurdle in the United States. The UK government and the antitrust watchdog both cleared the deal after initially raising concerns over media plurality and competition, respectively. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ...
Imagine a woman sitting at her vanity as a robotic arm reaches across the table, picks up her lipstick, and applies it to her lips while running through her morning schedule. Meet Iron Bestie, a personalised make-up assistant that just snatched top honours at what organisers billed as Hong Kong’s first physical artificial intelligence hackathon, beating more than 160 global competitors in an inten...
Two former relationship managers at Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong have been jailed for three years for swindling HK$28 million (US$3.6 million) from 21 Japanese investors who believed their money would fund development projects in Africa. The District Court on Thursday sentenced Woo Man-ho and Chan Tak-ching on a total of four counts of conspiracy to defraud arising from a transnational inv...
Two former relationship managers at Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong have been jailed for three years for swindling HK$28 million (US$3.6 million) from 21 Japanese investors who believed their money would fund development projects in Africa. The District Court on Thursday sentenced Woo Man-ho and Chan Tak-ching on a total of four counts of conspiracy to defraud arising from a transnational inv...
Hong Kong should require a double-check mechanism for all embryo biopsy procedures and overhaul its reproductive technology law, the city’s largest political party has proposed following a rare mix-up of specimens at a fertility clinic. The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) issued the call on Thursday, nearly a month after the Council on Human Reproductive Tech...
The fate of a five-year-old boy starved to death by his mother, who had a history of drug abuse, could have been different had social workers noticed he was “just skin and bones”, a Hong Kong judge lamented in her ruling. Just three months before the boy died in September 2022, a worker from the Social Welfare Department handling the case visited the 37-year-old mother at home and reported observi...
The recent decision by the US government not to extend its Hong Kong-related state of emergency saw the effective lifting of sanctions on nine mainland Chinese and Hong Kong officials. At a Ministry of Commerce press briefing, a spokesman called it “an important step in fulfilling the consensus” reached in negotiations. Some view the move as a part of the wider attempt at stabilising bilateral rel...
In a show of space surveillance strength, a newly launched Chinese satellite tracked a piece of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket crashing into the moon and captured footage of its impact. No visible plume can be seen in the images that appear to show the moment of impact, which is consistent with what other scientists and telescopes reported immediately after the rocket debris struck on Wednesday. China’s...
A dramatic drop in US student visas issued to Chinese and Indian nationals is the latest flashpoint in the debate over education and security after an American think tank framed the fall as a benefit for US students and national security. The report by the Washington-based Centre for Immigration Studies (CIS) has triggered a backlash in China, where Chinese media accused the organisation of recycl...
A dramatic drop in US student visas issued to Chinese and Indian nationals is the latest flashpoint in the debate over education and security after an American think tank framed the decline as a benefit for US students and national security. The report by the Washington-based Centre for Immigration Studies (CIS) has triggered a backlash in China, where Chinese media accused the organisation of rec...
A dramatic drop in US student visas issued to Chinese and Indian nationals is the latest flashpoint in the debate over education and security after an American think tank framed the decline as a benefit for US students and national security. The report by the Washington-based Centre for Immigration Studies (CIS) has triggered a backlash in China, where Chinese media accused the organisation of rec...
Two women who were switched at birth 37 years ago grew up just 4km apart in southern China, discovering that a hospital error had set their lives on divergent paths. Huang Xiaolin and Li Hui were born 55 minutes apart at Qingyuan People’s Hospital in Qingyuan, Guangdong province, in October 1989, according to China Newsweek. Nurses briefly presented the newborns to their mothers before taking them...
A German court on Thursday handed an Afghan man a life sentence for a car-ramming attack in Munich last year which killed a two-year-old girl and her mother and left dozens injured. The court in Munich found the man, named only as Farhad N., guilty of two counts of murder, 23 of attempted murder, and 22 counts of bodily harm, 19 of them serious. The court found that the offences carried a “particu...
In China, robots are being used to inject pigs with vaccines to support intelligent pig farming and meet the production demands of the world’s biggest pork-producing nation. While eating, a pig may not notice the machine approaching from behind before the robot uses a camera to locate the base of the pig’s tail before delivering a needle-free vaccine injection into its buttock. Vaccination is a ro...
In China, robots are being used to inject pigs with vaccines to support intelligent pig farming and meet the production demands of the world’s biggest pork-producing nation. While eating, a pig may not notice the machine approaching from behind before the robot uses a camera to locate the base of the pig’s tail before delivering a needle-free vaccine injection into its buttock. Vaccination is a ro...
Travellers at Hong Kong International Airport grappled with delays and had to take alternative routes to their boarding gates on Thursday morning after concrete fell near the tracks of an automated train system. In a reply to the South China Morning Post, the Airport Authority said the concrete had broken off from a plinth along a section of track at Terminal 1’s West Hall. The damage was discover...
Scores of travellers at Hong Kong International Airport faced delays and were forced to take alternative routes to their boarding gates after an automated train serving Terminal 2 broke down on Thursday. Photos circulating on social media on Thursday morning showed crowds gathered outside the platform doors, while signs erected at the terminal said the train was “temporarily not in service”. Passe...
