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Hong Kong emergency services are searching for a missing 59-year-old man who may have drowned after he entered the swim leg of a triathlon in the city amid an amber rainstorm warning. Police told the South China Morning Post that they received a report at 7.57am on Sunday that a male participant of the 2026 Summer Triathlon Challenge at Tai Mei Tuk Water Sports Centre in Tai Po had entered the wat...
Hong Kong emergency services are searching for a missing 59-year-old man who may have drowned during the swimming leg of a triathlon in the city amid an amber rainstorm warning. Police told the South China Morning Post that they received a report at 7.57am on Sunday that a male participant of the 2026 Summer Triathlon Challenge at Tai Mei Tuk Water Sports Centre in Tai Po had entered the water dur...
Hong Kong emergency services are searching for a missing 59-year-old man who is suspected of drowning during the swimming leg of a triathlon in the city amid an amber rainstorm warning. Police told the South China Morning Post that they received a report at 7.57am on Sunday that a male participant of the 2026 Summer Triathlon Challenge at the Tai Mei Tuk Water Sports Centre in Tai Po had entered t...
For decades, the Philippine Sea has been seen as the gateway through which US and allied forces would sail to Taiwan’s defence in a war with the Chinese mainland. But with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) increasingly pushing into the western Pacific, experts say Beijing would seek to place aircraft carriers in the waters east of Taiwan to complicate any intervention. Rather than a gateway, the ...
When 39-year-old Beijing investor Song shelled out 159,800 yuan (US$23,680) for a companion robot, he knew it would not be cooking meals or scrubbing floors. For him, becoming one of China’s first owners of a consumer humanoid was more about embracing the cutting edge. “The happiest part is often the waiting,” Song said of his decision to buy the female version of the U1 Pro, made by Shenzhen-base...
Hong Kong authorities will raise the city’s full-year economic growth forecast after a stronger-than-expected performance in the first half of 2026, the finance chief has said, pledging to further promote the global use of the yuan after the coming debut of offshore Chinese government bond futures on the local stock exchange. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said in his weekly blog post on Sund...
McDonald’s in South Korea has suspended sales of its limited-edition Chungju corn cheese croquette burger after receiving multiple customer complaints about small stones being found in the product, cutting short a promotional campaign for one of its fastest-selling seasonal menu items. The company halted sales of the latest menu item in its Taste of Korea campaign on Thursday, nearly two weeks bef...
On what was once a palm oil plantation outside Bogor, Indonesia’s government is planting the seeds of a new institution designed to nurture the next generation of leaders. But President Prabowo Subianto’s ambitions for the University of the Republic of Indonesia (URI) do not stop at statecraft – officials have also billed it as the answer to the Southeast Asian nation’s shortage of technological t...
Hong Kong authorities are investigating an accident in which a patrolling robot fell down a staircase at the arrival hall of the Hong Kong International Airport and broke into pieces. The Airport Authority Hong Kong told the South China Morning Post on Sunday that the robot had tumbled down a staircase in Terminal One during a test run on Saturday, resulting in partial damage to the robot. It said...
An elderly woman who developed heatstroke while taking shelter in a car was the latest fatality from a powerful earthquake that struck Japan’s southwestern prefecture of Kumamoto last week, officials said on Sunday as concerns over heat-related illnesses grow in an area that is also suffering extreme temperatures. The woman in her seventies with heatstroke was found in a car, Kumamoto officials sa...
Rescuers have found the body of celebrated mountaineer Nirmal Purja as they sift through a massive avalanche that killed all 10 members of an expedition on Pakistan’s Broad Peak, officials said on Sunday. “The ground rescue team has reached Nirmal Purja ‘Nims Dai’ at approximately 5,700 metres on Broad Peak,” said Naila Kiani, a spokeswoman for the Alpine Club Pakistan. She said the bodies of seve...
British-Nepali climber Nirmal Purja, who died in an avalanche in Pakistan’s Broad Peak, was renowned for ascending all 14 of the world’s 8,000-metre (26,000-foot) peaks in a record 189 days in 2019. His feat was spotlighted in Netflix’s 2021 documentary, 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible. The 43-year-old was leading a multinational expedition of nine other climbers on the world’s 12th-highest mounta...
US President Donald Trump in a Saturday evening social media post claimed that Middle Eastern allies had reached the parameters of a deal to end the Iran war and said that he would hold off on ordering new strikes in the five-month-old conflict for now. Trump added that the emerging deal “would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear th...
This article was first published on August 4, 2006. Observatory lashed over typhoon signal by Agnes Lam, Clifford Lo and Martin Wong The Observatory was under fire yesterday (August 3, 2006) for not hoisting a storm warning above the No 3 as Typhoon Prapiroon lashed some parts of the city with winds of up to 200km/h. Unions said workers had been put in danger as they had gone to work as required b...
Dinosaur fossils, rare meteorites and French Impressionist masterpieces are among Shenzhen’s newest attractions drawing residents across the border on weekends, as Hong Kong’s northbound spending trend evolves beyond dining into cultural tourism. Shenzhen recently unveiled a series of ambitious, mega-scale cultural facilities. Among them is the Shenzhen Natural History Museum, boasting 35,200 squa...
As a teenager, Ashley Wong spent many Sundays in church, waiting for a feeling that never quite came to her. Family and friends spoke of finding comfort and solace in Christianity during times of trouble, but prayer seemed to offer no such salve for her soul. “There was a detachment that I couldn’t place,” said the 26-year-old marketing executive, who identifies as a freethinker. “I feel like mayb...
Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has pledged to improve Hong Kong’s urban management to better handle natural disasters and public complaints, while attending a town hall meeting to gather feedback for the city’s first five-year plan and his fifth annual policy address. The city leader said on Sunday that the two blueprints would leverage Hong Kong’s strengths as an international centre for financ...
Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has pledged to improve Hong Kong’s urban management to better handle natural disasters and public complaints, as he attended a town hall meeting to gather feedback for the city’s first five-year plan and his fifth annual policy address. The city leader said on Sunday that the two blueprints would leverage Hong Kong’s strengths as an international centre for finance...
Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has pledged to improve Hong Kong’s urban management systems to better handle natural disasters and residents’ complaints, as he attended a town hall meeting to gather public feedback for the city’s first five-year plan and his fifth annual policy address. The city leader said on Sunday that the two blueprints would leverage Hong Kong’s strengths as an international...
Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has pledged to improve Hong Kong’s urban management systems to better handle natural disasters and residents’ complaints, as he attended a town hall meeting to gather public feedback for the city’s first five-year plan and his fifth annual policy address. The city leader said on Sunday that the two blueprints would leverage Hong Kong’s strengths as an international...
Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has said his annual policy address will serve as a progress report on the city’s five-year plan, describing the first simultaneous consultation of the two documents as “especially meaningful”. In his first townhall meeting, held on Sunday as part of a public consultation exercise to gather feedback on Hong Kong’s first five-year plan and his fifth annual policy add...
US President Donald Trump knows the world hangs on his every word. Now he wants you to pay for it. The social media posts of the world’s most powerful man went on sale on Saturday, when his Truth Social business began offering sneak peeks of them to Wall Street traders willing to pay up. The move raises the prospect of big profits for Trump’s company and big questions about insider trading and usi...
On a midsummer Thursday night, the entertainment district of Hongdae in Seoul is slowly coming alive. Short for Hongik University, Hongdae neighbours several university campuses and typically attracts thousands of young people to its flashy streets. Just a few blocks away from the main clubbing area, the atmosphere is quieter with hardly any patrons at a row of pubs and restaurants. “Hongdae is no...
Researchers from China’s national police academy have developed an AI framework that can detect illicit cryptocurrency transactions with nearly 90 per cent overall accuracy, according to a recent study. Cryptocurrency transactions are growing rapidly, but their pseudonymous and cross-border nature can provide channels for money laundering and other illegal activities. In an article published in th...
Every summer, mainland Chinese parents send their children to join a variety of costly physical training camps or even travel to Africa to observe animal migrations. Over the past two years, new financial quotient (FQ) training classes aiming to cultivate “little Warren Buffetts” have gained significant popularity among parents concerned about their children’s futures, as reported by Phoenix Weekl...
Old, dense and diverse, Sham Shui Po exemplifies many practical challenges associated with grass-roots governance in Hong Kong: ageing buildings, narrow alleys, low-income households, elderly residents living alone and routine issues that demand constant attention. As an ancient maxim states: “Government means rectitude. If you set a righteous example, who will dare to act otherwise?” My extensive...
Beauticians from outside Hong Kong are performing illegal cosmetic procedures such as botulinum toxin and filler injections in the city, with middlemen setting up online “secret societies” or chat groups for customers to share information, industry experts have revealed. A beauty industry expert and a plastic surgeon said they had seen or received reports of botched procedures by beauty practition...
New Zealand’s defence diplomacy has shifted into overdrive this year, with Wellington sealing three major Pacific security agreements in less than four months. Since April, the country has signed a defence pact with Papua New Guinea, locked in a security declaration with the Cook Islands and floated the idea of joining a fledgling Australia-Fiji defence alliance. Analysts say the common thread is ...
A shooting at an In-N-Out Burger restaurant in southern Idaho on Saturday afternoon left multiple people dead and others injured, police said. The shooter was among the dead, Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks said in a news conference. “We believe the threat to the community is over,” Hicks said, adding that he did not yet know exactly how many were killed or wounded, and officials were still ...
The crushing defeat of Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition in the Negeri Sembilan polls has raised doubts about his political strategy, as state rival but federal ally Barisan Nasional (BN) grows in dominance. Analysts say BN’s effective cooperation with opposition party Perikatan Nasional (PN) could reshape Malaysia’s political landscape ahead of the next natio...
