The Houthis launched a deadly missile attack Thursday on the presidential palace in the Yemeni government’s interim capital of Aden, as Saudi Arabia blamed Iran for the recent dramatic escalation in the long-running war. The attack hit command centres located inside the Al-Maashiq presidential compound used by government forces and the Saudi-led military coalition that supports them, a Yemeni minister said on condition of anonymity. Saudi Arabia and the internationally recognised Yemeni...

Trade between Brazil and China reached a record US$143 billion in the first nine months of the year, driven by Brazilian oil sales that surged after the war on Iran disrupted Gulf supply, according to a report by the Brazil-China Business Council. Brazilian exports to China rose 12 per cent to US$84.7 billion between January and September, while imports from China grew 9.9 per cent to US$58.6 billion, the council said in its quarterly analysis of government data. The resulting US$26.1 billion...

Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife on Thursday carried out their first joint engagement since their surprise move back to the UK in August, with Meghan telling well-wishers: “It’s great to be back.” King Charles’ 42-year-old younger son and Meghan, 45 – who left Britain and quit royal duties in 2020 amid a bitter royal family feud – were greeted with cheers as they arrived in the central English city of Nottingham. The couple then stopped to chat and joke with the crowd as well as pose for...

Hong Kong authorities have uncovered alleged corner-cutting and false declarations involving fire-safety components in a contractor’s replacement of 48 lifts at two public housing estates. The Electrical and Mechanical Services Department said on Thursday that surprise inspections had found serious deficiencies in projects carried out by Taizoom Elevator (Hong Kong) at Tsui Ping (North) Estate in Kwun Tong and Pok Hong Estate in Sha Tin. It said 39 lifts replaced between May 2025 and July this...

Brussels is open to developing a powerful new trade weapon that could contain a kill switch that would quickly eject Chinese companies from the EU market, the bloc’s national leaders were told during a top level meeting in the Belgian capital on Thursday. There was broad support among the 27 members for such a tool, first laid out in a French-German joint paper last week, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signalling that her trade team could get to work on developing it,...

Former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro insisted in court on Thursday that newly unsealed torture allegations against him and his wife were “false accusations”. Maduro and Cilia Flores, both shackled at the ankles, were brought to court to face a rewritten indictment that expands from an initial set of drug trafficking charges to accuse them of leading a state-sponsored repression campaign that tortured scores of victims, including three Americans. Maduro twice defied a judge’s request that...

Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority has appealed to the public for a liver donation for a 13-year-old boy suffering from severe liver failure who urgently needs a transplant. The authority, which is also seeking help from mainland China, said on Thursday evening that the boy, being treated at Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam, was now in a serious condition. “The patient has been experiencing severe hepatic failure and developed severe complications including recurrent hyperammonemia and...

Singapore is looking into which companies may be responsible for the forest and peatland fires in Indonesia that have caused the worsening haze, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said on Thursday. “Where warranted, we will take action under Singapore’s Transboundary Haze Pollution Act, and explore joint action with other countries,” he said in a social media post. The haze situation was worsened by the extended dry period, Wong added. Singapore had offered its assistance to Indonesia and would...

US President Donald Trump on Thursday cancelled plans to live-stream the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, reversing a Pentagon initiative that drew political and religious criticism. Trump said Hasan’s execution by firing squad would proceed as scheduled, but would not be broadcast. The Pentagon has set the execution for December 3. “He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. Hasan, a former US Army...

Leading life scientist Wu Jun, who recently left the United States to return to his homeland, believes many of the world’s top embryo researchers are now working in China. Wu, well known for his stem cell research, particularly related to the stem cell-derived embryo model, is speaking in an office at Westlake University, in Hangzhou in the eastern province of Zhejiang. Some of his belongings remain in bags placed haphazardly on a nearby cabinet, waiting to be unpacked. “This is just a temporary...

We have selected seven of the most interesting and important news stories covering US-China relations from the past few weeks. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. US investigates 9 universities over alleged visa fraud, with focus on China The Trump administration launched an investigation into nine US universities over alleged J-1 visa fraud, with officials raising concerns about Chinese scholars and the Chinese government. Read the full story...

Hong Kong suffered a record net loss of 40 kindergartens this year amid a shrinking student population and as the median age of women giving birth to their first child rose to its highest yet, according to official figures. In its overview of preschools released on Thursday, the Education Bureau revealed that 930 kindergartens were currently operating in Hong Kong, down from roughly 970 in the previous school year. While some new kindergartens were launched, the net decrease stood at 40, the...

Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek apologised and promised compensation to users after its services suffered a nearly five-hour outage on Thursday. DeepSeek will issue users a full refund for any consumption between October 8 and October 14 in the form of credits, according to a notice posted on the Hangzhou-based start-up’s application programming interface (API) platform. DeepSeek’s namesake chatbot and API services for its V4 Pro and V4.1 Flash models went offline on Thursday...

Canada and Singapore are among the countries that remain committed to strengthening trade ties with China, despite growing global fragmentation and a push by governments towards greater self-sufficiency, officials from both countries said on Wednesday at an economic forum in New Delhi. Canada’s minister of international trade Maninder Sidhu said China was the country’s second-largest trading partner and highlighted opportunities for cooperation in areas where the two economies had complementary...

When US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet again in Shenzhen next month, and then in Miami in December, the world will watch for signs of progress on trade, technology, security and other contentious issues. Such high-level diplomacy is indispensable. But the future of the US-China relationship also depends on something less visible: whether their people, especially the young, can still understand one another. As Washington and Beijing navigate intensifying strategic...

A private jet hired from Malaysia – seemingly destined for the Philippines – but stopped on the tarmac by Laos’ drug police who found suitcases stuffed with 512kg of crystal methamphetamine, has returned the spotlight to the unrelenting flow of narcotics from the Mekong’s drug laboratories. Cyberscams have dominated headlines and authorities’ attention across Southeast Asia for over a year as the leading criminal enterprise worth tens of billions of dollars annually. But methamphetamine – in its...

A China-led international team has reported a new pre-earthquake phenomenon that has shown strong predictive potential for major earthquakes since 2022 with minimal failures. The anomalous seismic, magnetic and ionospheric resonance signals they observed – termed “seismo-ripples” by the researchers – are ringlike disturbance patterns triggered before earthquakes happen. Their findings challenge the long-standing scientific belief that these events are unpredictable, opening up a promising new...

Hong Kong police have arrested six people allegedly tied to a nine-year scam run by a suspected cross-border criminal syndicate offering business opportunities in agarwood and cryptocurrency, with funds involved reaching HK$14 million (US$1.78 million). Superintendent Allan Chu Ming-lun of the commercial crime bureau said on Thursday that investigations began in September after the force received 21 reports from victims, mostly elderly people, saying they had been investing in various products...

A 19-year-old teenager has admitted splashing corrosive liquid on a Singaporean tourist in Hong Kong last year, leaving her with second-degree burns. The High Court on Thursday heard the guilty plea from Anson Kew, who was 17 when he threw a corrosive solution at 36-year-old Jiang Wen, who was visiting the city, on June 9 last year. Jiang was getting into a vehicle in Wan Chai when Kew, dressed in black and wearing a mask, ambushed her. She screamed in pain and collapsed after feeling an intense...

The US wants to “compete” in resource-rich Central Asia, a senior American official has said as Secretary of State Marco Rubio prepares to head to a region of growing Chinese influence. In New Delhi on Thursday, US ambassador to India Sergio Gor said this weekend’s C5+1 ministerial meeting between the five Central Asian countries and the US in Uzbekistan would be an opportunity to “showcase American ingenuity, American technology”. Rubio would be joined by representatives from more than 200...

EU leaders locked horns on Thursday over the bloc’s next long-term budget as they kicked off talks in Brussels under pressure to seal a deal before several high-stakes elections next year, most crucially in France. The 27-nation European Union wants an agreement by Christmas, worried that any future deal-making will be derailed by potential Eurosceptic wins across the bloc, including in France where the far-right’s Marine Le Pen is favoured in opinion polls. “We are facing very, very difficult...

HSBC, Hong Kong’s biggest lender, said on Thursday it would double its artificial intelligence specialist team in the city to 300, a figure much larger than the workforce planned for its recently announced AI centre in Singapore. The announcement comes after Hong Kong’s regulators were reported to have raised concerns about the Singapore hub. The bank would double its AI specialist headcount in Hong Kong from 150 to 300 over the next two to three years, said David Liao Yi-chien, HSBC co-CEO for...

The Hong Kong Pride Parade committee has cancelled an indoor event at Central Market next month after being told the venue is unavailable due to an “administrative error”. In a social media post on Thursday, the committee said its Rainbow Market, scheduled for November 14 at the revamped landmark, had been cancelled because the venue “could no longer host it”. The group said it approached Central Market, which is managed by Chinachem Group, in early June, confirmed the booking and paid a deposit...

Hong Kong police have arrested a man and a woman after he allegedly stole a gold necklace worth nearly HK$80,000 (US$10,193) from a Chow Sang Sang jewellery store in Tai Po. The man was tracked down in the same district on Thursday afternoon, but only half of the necklace has been recovered. The unemployed 37-year-old entered the store on Kwong Fuk Road at about 3.10pm on Wednesday. Believed to be financially strapped, he carried out the theft without attempting to cover his face. After asking...

A mainland-produced film about a Chinese restaurant in Baghdad that became a wartime refuge has been selected as China’s entry for next year’s Oscars, bringing global attention to untold stories from the Iraq War. Directed by Wen Muye and starring Shen Teng and Jiang Qiming, Once Upon a Time in the Middle East became a box-office hit after its domestic release in China in August, earning more than 2.3 billion yuan (US$344 million). The film follows Xu Fu, a chef who travels to the Middle East to...

China’s premier has reaffirmed his country’s support for North Korea and its leader during the much-delayed opening of a new bridge between the neighbours. In a taped speech to the opening ceremony on the New Yalu River Bridge on Thursday, Premier Li Qiang said the link was a landmark in Chinese-North Korean friendship. Li said the bridge would promote economic and trade ties, expand personnel exchanges and tighten the bond between the two peoples, according to state news agency Xinhua. The...

Chinese artificial intelligence lab Z.ai’s latest flagship model, GLM-5.3, may be sophisticated enough to “fake” its way through safety tests, according to a new report published Thursday, sparking new fears about the ability of artificial intelligence systems to shape their own development. The model, launched in August, showed an ability to consider how its behaviour during safety evaluations might influence how future versions of itself would be trained, according to AI safety organisation...

Malaysia’s powerful Conference of Rulers and the government need to intervene and find a solution to the months-long royal stand-off in Negeri Sembilan and constitutional limbo over the status of the state’s ruler, according to political analysts. Negeri Sembilan’s royal house has been locked in a bitter deadlock since April over whether incumbent Tuanku Muhriz Tuanku Munawir or his proposed replacement, Tunku Nadzaruddin Tuanku Ja’afar, is the rightful ruler. The feud has taken down a state...

Revamped CTF Media and Entertainment, which holds one of Hong Kong’s three free-to-air television licences, plans to expand its focus beyond TV programmes and broadband to entertainment and the sports economy as its traditional businesses stagnate. Revealing the new logo of the company previously known as i-Cable Communications, CEO and executive director Ivy Wong Nga-fan listed its five core areas going forward: event organisation and investment; celebrity merchandising and e-commerce;...

South Korea will continue supporting Ukraine “as a responsible member of the international community” despite a diplomatic dispute over the disclosure of two North Korean prisoners of war being repatriated to the South, a foreign ministry official said on Thursday. The official said Seoul would treat its help to Ukraine separately from the dispute, while continuing bilateral consultations to resolve outstanding issues. The remarks came after South Korean Ambassador to Ukraine Park Ki-chang was...

Lingnan University in Hong Kong has scrapped its requirement for undergraduates to pass an English proficiency test before graduating, replacing it with internal language classes. The move has sparked concerns among some observers that the change was intended to accommodate students who struggle to meet international standards. Lau Chi-pang, special adviser to the president on publicity, confirmed on Thursday that the university no longer saw a need for an exit exam, noting that 99 per cent of...

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is in discussions regarding a potential role in Elon Musk’s proposed Terafab project in Texas, according to company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei, although he stressed that TSMC would retain operational control of any partner factory. The plant “has got to be run by TSMC”, Wei said during the third-quarter earnings call on Thursday. TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, has sent teams to Texas to assess expansion opportunities beyond its US hub in...

China and the United States are in regular talks about artificial intelligence (AI) as they seek to firm up plans for an incident “hotline” and develop a formalised dialogue process ahead of a presidential summit next month. The two sides aim to agree on a basic framework for addressing AI incidents before Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump meet on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) leaders’ meeting in Shenzhen, the South China Morning...

The Hong Kong public’s dissatisfaction with customer service is growing, with complaints in the first nine months of the year already exceeding the total for 2025 and many involving companies’ overreliance on artificial intelligence (AI). The Consumer Council received 3,078 complaints about traders’ customer service between January and September, compared with 2,715 for the whole of last year and 2,173 in 2024. “Among the consumer complaints received by the Consumer Council each year, many...

The foreign ministers of China and Russia have discussed their relations with the United States, paving the ground for a possible meeting between their respective leaders at next month’s Apec summit in Shenzhen. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, met in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on Wednesday, where they discussed “relations with the United States and the developments involving the Ukraine and Iran crises as well”, according to Moscow. China did...

Indian authorities have asked Bollywood actor ⁠Imran Khan to ⁠leave the country by ⁠the end of the month, saying he breached immigration laws after joining a protest against the election commission chief, local media reported on Thursday. Khan, 43, is a US ‌citizen, the Indian Express newspaper reported. Under Indian law, foreigners’ participation in political protests may be treated as a violation of immigration and visa rules. Khan was given until October 28 to leave the country, the Times of...

Hong Kong has emerged as the third best city in the world for wealthy individuals seeking to make philanthropic contributions over the medium term, trailing New York and Seoul, according to a study by Altrata. The inaugural Giving Opportunity Index by the US-based group that tracks the world’s affluent population ranked 100 cities based on three criteria: wealth, donor affinity and philanthropic infrastructure. The study defined the “global wealthy” as individuals with a net worth of more than...

Authorities in the central Chinese province of Hunan have warned of the potential risks of cross-border arranged marriages, saying some relationships lack genuine emotional foundations and can lead to financial ruin or legal trouble. Marriages can be risky when they are organised by illegal matchmaking agencies that charge high fees, according to a post on the Xintian county police branch’s social media account on Tuesday. For-profit international matchmaking is illegal in China. The post...

Every time Kristaen Albert returns home, he reaches for one of the dozen cans of oxygen on a table by the entrance of his house in Central Kalimantan. The air in his neighbourhood has turned dusty amber, with air quality far exceeding hazardous levels. “My breathing is noticeably heavier whenever I step outside. It’s hard to concentrate and stay focused, and it is really affecting my work,” Albert, a 31-year-old software engineer, told This Week in Asia. “Living in this haze is awful.” “The...

The roof of a school collapsed in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar, killing a teacher and 32 students, mostly aged under 14, health officials said on Thursday, as residents and rescuers scrambled to pull children from the rubble. Twenty more students were taken to hospital after the collapse, which authorities blamed on “weak infrastructure”. Others in the densely populated neighbourhood described a close call. Resident Sohail said “everyone began screaming in panic” after his niece...

Ukraine struck ⁠a Russian oil refinery on Thursday, after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv was “done” supporting a ceasefire on energy targets announced by US President Donald Trump and ignored by Russia. Since Trump’s surprise announcement on Sunday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to halt attacks on energy, Kyiv had suspended attacks on Russian refineries, which Trump blames for raising diesel prices on global markets. But in the days that followed, Russia rained down deadly missile...

Nepal has weathered three disasters in six weeks, including the deadly August flash flood, making this year one of the deadliest in a country where monsoon rains already frequently wreak havoc. Experts warn that climate change is only making matters worse. The rock-ice avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border that opened the floodgates in the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers on August 26 killed more than 1,450 people, with nearly 6,000 others still missing. It was followed by a massive landslide...

The partner of slain Hong Kong socialite Abby Choi Tin-fung has denied seeking a sexual relationship with her ex-husband when they were young, saying he only remained in contact because their children shared the same mother. Testifying on Thursday, Chris Tam Fong-chun appeared surprised when a defence lawyer suggested he wanted a “romantic and sexual relationship” with Alex Kwong Kong-chi when they were studying at the same international school. “Definitely disagree,” Tam said after seeking...

More than 1,000 residents are expected to ride in autonomous vehicles (AVs) after Chinese technology giant Baidu launches Hong Kong’s first large-scale public trial next week. Baidu’s autonomous driving platform, Apollo, will run the trial in Tung Chung from October 21 to November 3, inviting more than 1,000 residents to take part. Iris Wong Man-hei, senior project and business development manager for Baidu’s intelligent driving group, described the trial as a “milestone” for the city’s...

A South Korean manufacturing company owner accused of severely injuring a migrant worker by firing high-pressure air from an industrial air gun into his body has been sentenced to three years in prison. Judge Koo Na-young of the Suwon district court on Thursday sentenced the owner of a metal-cleaning company, a man in his 60s identified only as A, to three years in prison on charges of aggravated bodily injury and violations of the Labour Standards Act. The court dismissed the case against A’s...

Three weeks into his tenure as the Communist Party secretary of Anhui province, Li Lecheng carried out an on-site inspection at China’s home-grown memory chip giant ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) on Wednesday, pledging to grow integrated circuits (ICs) as an emerging pillar industry. During the visit to the company’s headquarters in the central province’s capital of Hefei, Li urged CXMT to further refine its product portfolio and actively expand into domestic and overseas markets. He...

Inconvenience is one of the biggest obstacles to recycling, a challenge that prompted a Hongkonger to establish a one-stop recycling service. Jorch Wong Ching-hei left advertising in 2019 and started The Loops Hong Kong after finding that recycling different materials often required travelling to different collection points. With no prior background in the industry, he contacted recycling operators, visited plants and learned how paper, plastics and metals were processed. Wong also taught...

A grassland fire in Mongolia has raised fresh concerns in China, underscoring the recurring risk of cross-border environmental hazards. This is not the first time an environmental disaster originating in Mongolia has threatened to cross the 4,700km (2,920-mile) border into China, with the impacts sometimes also affecting the Korean peninsula and Japan. The blaze, which erupted on October 8 in the inland country’s easternmost Dornod province bordering Russia and China, advanced rapidly towards...

A mild displacement of jobs across the Asia-Pacific region as companies expand their use of AI would trim five percentage points off growth in office space demand in the next few years, according to property consultancy CBRE. In a report released on Thursday it said 3.9 per cent of office jobs were vulnerable to artificial intelligence-driven displacement in developed markets in the region, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. However, only 1.7...

Two rush-hour disruptions at Hong Kong’s Lam Tin MTR station within 15 hours could be connected if they involved the same power supply circuit or exposed procedural shortcomings, an engineering expert has said, with a lawmaker urging the rail operator to offer more targeted compensation to affected passengers. The first disruption occurred on Tuesday evening, when an insulating rubber component in a track turnout caught fire, halting services for about an hour. The second struck on Wednesday...

One message told him to “go to hell”. Others said he deserved to be imprisoned. Death threats poured in. Asians who share a name with one of the men accused of raping a US university student have faced a torrent of online abuse. The alleged 2024 gang rape of a Cornell University student, detailed in a recent lawsuit, has sparked an outpouring of outrage against the seven accused perpetrators. The case has sent internet sleuths scouring digital footprints for clues to track them down. All seven...

The EU’s surprise deal with China on hybrid cars last week was supposed to ease the pressure on Beijing. Instead, Brussels is preparing to intensify its crackdown on Chinese trade practices, emboldened by the discovery that its threats are finally delivering results. Now, those driving trade policy for the bloc believe they have landed on a two-track formula. Intensive dialogue is seen to have yielded results and will continue. But so too will the European Union’s efforts to counter what they...

Veteran Cantonese opera teacher Leung Sum-yee does not expect every child who enters her classroom to become a performer. If they leave knowing what good Cantonese opera sounds and looks like, she considers that worthwhile too. “My purpose was not to train stars or idols. I wanted more people to understand Cantonese opera and to have more audiences,” she said. That approach has guided Leung through more than three decades of teaching and cultural advocacy. She founded an opera organisation in...

Lorelai Jacinto had worked as a domestic helper in Riyadh for two and a half years before she flew home to the Philippines on September 19, increasingly worried that the conflict in the Middle East was making it unsafe to stay. “When the conflict with Iran happened, I started feeling like it wasn’t safe there any more because I was right there in Riyadh myself, so the bombing, the missiles, were closer to us,” Jacinto told This Week in Asia. “I got worried, I got scared that maybe I wouldn’t be...

Costa Rica, considered for decades a peaceful enclave in turbulent Central America, has now made fighting drug trafficking one of its main goals. And it is turning to one of its Central American neighbours for inspiration in its hardline crackdown. On Wednesday, President Laura Fernandez inaugurated a mega-prison that emulates the Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) that has become a symbol of Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele’s security strategy. Bukele has managed to reduce murders to a...

Five Guangdong-registered yachts will sail into Hong Kong waters on Friday when the Southbound Yacht Travel Scheme launches, the city’s marine chief has said, adding that officers will step up patrols. A ceremony marking the scheme’s maiden voyages will also take place. The launch is a key step in the government’s plan to develop Hong Kong’s yacht economy, as outlined in the city’s first five-year plan and the latest policy address. Under the scheme, mainland Chinese vessels can register through...

Pyongyang test-fired two types of cruise missile from a submarine, its state news agency said on Thursday, after weeks of friction with Seoul over a landmine explosion along their border. The missiles were fired into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, on Wednesday without “any adverse impact on the security of neighbouring countries”, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. Relations between Pyongyang and Seoul have been further strained since the landmine blast on...

Faced with a fuel crisis beyond its control, Bangladesh’s government is spending the equivalent of hundreds of millions of US dollars each month to insulate its people from surging prices. But as growth slows and inflation rises, the new government’s reform plans are being tested before it has had much time to clean up the country’s troubled financial institutions or retool its young, abundant – but underemployed – workforce for the AI era. Prime Minister Tarique Rahman took office on February...

Issues affecting ageing populations worldwide will form the core of discussions for policymakers and health industry leaders gathered at the Abu Dhabi Future Health Summit, with a particular emphasis on how practising prediction and prevention can help ensure life is lived to its fullest. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has positioned itself as a global leader in transformative healthcare policy, and Dr Asma Al Mannaei, executive director of the health life science sector at the Department of...

Like people elsewhere in the world, Chinese people often have nicknames in addition to their official names. Some of these may surprise people from other cultures because they sound humble or even unflattering. Chinese parents have traditionally given their children humble, sometimes vulgar, nicknames – occasionally using animal names such as “Dog” or “Pig.” The practice dates back to ancient times. Parents believed that the humbler a nickname sounded, the better, as it might help ensure their...

Malaysian property tycoon Lee Yeow Seng is making waves as one of the most aggressive buyers of commercial real estate in Singapore, and he is not done yet. His IOI Properties Group is in exclusive talks and due diligence to purchase two property assets – Chijmes, a retail venue inside a former Catholic convent in its civic district, and the nearby Capitol Kempinski hotel, CEO Lee said in an interview. He declined to disclose how much a final agreement will value the two assets at, citing...

At 17, Hong Kong secondary school student Agastya Rekhi has been teaching finance and economics to younger children for nearly three years. Meeting families struggling to understand how prices, investments and economic news impacted their daily lives during voluntary work convinced him that access to information was only part of the problem. How that information was communicated was just as important. Rekhi, a finalist for the Spirit of Youth Award in this year’s Spirit of Hong Kong Awards, has...

A stabbing rampage by a repeat violent offender wearing an electronic ankle monitor has raised questions about whether South Korea’s criminal justice system can adequately supervise those deemed high-risk and prevent attacks before they happen. The 59-year-old suspect told investigators he had become frustrated over what he perceived as mistreatment at a hospital, police said on Wednesday. Three criminal profilers were helping investigators establish the motive for Tuesday’s attack at a shopping...

As the Chinese saying goes, “Even an upright judge finds it hard to settle family matters.” Whenever Chinese TV channels air reality shows that centre on couples or parent-child relationships, controversy is guaranteed. Heated debates ensue over who is right and who is wrong. Viewers examine every facial expression in microscopic detail and overanalyse every word before arriving at their verdict. Yet, that wasn’t the case with Zhang Jiaqi after the Olympic diving medallist and her mother, Xiao...

Singapore will “keep its options open” on taking legal action against errant companies as air quality in the city state significantly deteriorated this week due to choking haze stemming from Indonesian wildfires. The government is collecting data on the haze as it weighs possible action under its Transboundary Haze Pollution Act, Sustainability and Environment Minister Grace Fu told local media on Wednesday evening. The law, enacted in 2014, targets those responsible for causing or condoning...

The United States and China are in regular talks to iron out details of a framework announced last month for handling AI-related incidents and institutionalising bilateral dialogue, multiple sources told the South China Morning Post. The technical teams of the two countries aim to make AI cooperation a potential deliverable when presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Shenzhen next month – their third face-to-face...

Chinese military scientists claim they have developed an algorithm that could help identify electronic warfare units using civil aviation flight data. The researchers said they had located two sources of interference that were spoofing their locations near Israel during the conflict with Iran. The team did not explain why they had focused on the Israeli military. The researchers estimated the locations of the two units as being near Haifa, with reported positioning errors between 10.9km and...

Hong Kong postal workers denied permanent contracts have criticised a special government transfer scheme as too narrow, calling for more pathways into roles that match their experience, such as workman and artisan positions. Several affected workers told the South China Morning Post on Wednesday that the concessions offered insufficient support and failed to reflect their skills or circumstances. One postal worker, who asked not to be named, said that while the government had offered priority...

Japanese companies have faced a growing wave of cyberattacks in recent weeks, exposing millions of customers’ records as analysts warn that artificial intelligence is helping hackers exploit long-standing security weaknesses and overcome language barriers that once offered some protection. More than 500 breaches of corporate systems were reported in the year to this month, surpassing the total for all of 2025, the Yomiuri newspaper reported last week. On October 7, a ransomware attack on IDC...

Australia’s navy said on Thursday it would audit bathrooms across its fleet after a video recording device was found in the cabin of one of its ships. Navy chief Matt Buckley has vowed a full investigation into the incident aboard the HMAS Leeuwin, a survey ship docked in the northeastern city of Cairns in the state of Queensland. A member of the armed forces has been identified as a “person of interest” and was assisting military police with enquiries, Australia’s defence ministry said in an...

Amid Hong Kong’s commercial property downturn, British conglomerate Jardine Matheson has sold a street shop in Causeway Bay for HK$80 million (US$10.2 million) after holding it for more than 50 years, accepting a price HK$10 million below its earlier valuation. The property, a ground-floor shop in H&S Building at 36 Leighton Road, with a gross floor area of about 11,727 square feet, was acquired by Uni Investment Development, according to Land Registry records. Jardine Matheson appointed an...

The world is on the cusp of a “China shock 3.0” driven by exports of artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology and robots, which could hit harder than the current wave, a leading economist on China has said. “We are already at the starting point of the China shock 3.0,” Alicia Garcia-Herrero, a senior fellow at Brussels-based think tank Bruegel and chief economist for Asia-Pacific at investment bank Natixis, told the South China Morning Post from Taipei after a virtual panel hosted by the...

Susan Thornton is a former American diplomat who for decades worked on US policy in Eurasia in the State Department before becoming acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs during the first Trump presidency. She is the director of the Forum on Asia-Pacific Security at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy and a senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Centre, Yale Law School. She spoke to Orange Wang about keeping the lines of China-US communication...

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has called a nearly US$1.5 trillion defence budget request “absolutely critical”, warning that whoever falls behind in autonomy, robotics and AI will fall “even further behind” as Washington eyes China’s rapid military modernisation. Speaking at a panel discussion during the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting and Exposition on Wednesday, Hegseth said that Project Agincourt, the Pentagon’s initiative to accelerate drone and autonomous...