Five people have been jailed and another 20 arrested as part of a Hong Kong Immigration Department crackdown on illegal employment this week. The department said on Friday that it had raided 23 locations, including restaurants, cleaning companies and commercial buildings, as part of an operation that ran from Monday to Thursday. Those arrested comprised 19 ...

At least 16 US military aircraft have been lost since the start of the war with Iran, including 10 Reaper strike drones hit by enemy fire and a half-dozen other planes badly damaged in attacks or accidents. The most serious losses were because of accidents: three US F-15s downed by friendly fire in Kuwait, and a KC-135 tanker destroyed during a refuelling ...

AstraZeneca said it would establish drug manufacturing facilities in Guangzhou and Shanghai as well as a separate innovation centre in Shanghai, joining a group of foreign players building new plants in China amid geopolitical tensions. The moves are part of a US$15 billion commitment the British firm pledged to make in the worlds second-largest drug market ...

Beneath the powder snow at internationally popular Japanese ski resort Niseko, anxiety is mounting among residents over soaring prices and a massive influx of overseas workers. At a time when Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is talking tough on immigration, upscale Niseko has never been more popular with seasonal workers, investors and skiers from across the ...

An emerging form of therapy in China has stirred controversy over blurred boundaries by using sensory tools, touch and hugging to ease clients stress. Mainland media reports say workshops and services centred on intimate touch have spread across social media since late last year. In quiet, softly lit rooms, intimate touch therapists offer what they describe ...

Hong Kong should review its crane safety guidelines to include mandatory testing for metal fatigue, an industry expert has said after the city recorded another fatal case involving a collapse. An operator was killed on Thursday afternoon when a tower crane fell at a construction site for the second phase of a public housing project on Tai Wo Hau Road, ...

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Irans parliament speaker and a veteran of the Revolutionary Guards, has emerged as the highest-profile political figure in the Islamic Republic after the killing of its leaders. A pillar of the Iranian establishment for some three decades and one of the Islamic republics most prominent non-clerical figures, Ghalibaf, 64, now ...

Xiaomis updated SU7 electric vehicle (EV) is expected to bite into the market share of Tesla and some domestic rivals in China, as demand weakens and regulators tighten oversight. Founder and CEO Lei Jun on Thursday announced official pricing for the new-generation smart sedan, with the standard edition starting at 219,900 yuan (US$31,900) and the pro and ...

As the US-Israel war on Iran strains global energy supplies, Japan is discussing reviving domestic production of liquefied natural gas carriers for the first time in more than half a decade to bolster its national security. The move would see Japanese shipbuilders return to a market that is currently dominated by China and South Korea, as Tokyo looks to ...

Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino has accused a subsidiary of Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings of lying about the countrys response to an arbitration initiated by the company over the seizure of two strategic ports. Mulinos rebuttal on Thursday was in response to claims several days earlier by the Panama Ports Company (PPC) that his ...

We have selected seven stories from this weeks news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Precision strike: China targets US, Japan stranglehold on photoresist supply Chinas push for ...

Flights are cancelled, schedules are in chaos and scores of European tourists are still waiting to go home, three weeks after the United States and Israeli attack on Iran. Some of them, like retiree John Williams, 61, and his wife Gillian, 60, from the United Kingdom, are making good use of their extended time in Malaysia. Were sort of stranded, but frankly ...

Anyone applying to become a minister in Madagascars new government will be subjected to lie detector tests to root out those who are corrupt, the countrys military leader said on Thursday. President Michael Randrianirina, who took power in a coup in the Indian Ocean island in October, said Madagascar had acquired a polygraph machine and a specialist to ...

A punishing heatwave has been gripping the western United States, with parts of the region logging record temperatures - even though it was still winter. A desert community in southwestern Arizona reached 43.3 degrees Celsius (110 Fahrenheit) on Thursday, breaking a record for the highest March temperature recorded in the United States. The record-setting ...

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko freed 250 prisoners on Thursday - the biggest batch to be released so far - in return for a further easing of US sanctions, the US embassy in neighbouring Lithuania said. The releases were part of a bargaining process in which Lukashenko was seeking a normalisation of ties with Washington after years of isolation ...

European Union leaders failed to convince Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Thursday to lift his blockade on a 90 billion (US$103 billion) EU loan to help Ukraine keep up its fight against Russias invasion. After a summit in Brussels, several leaders voiced deep frustration with Orban, who has cited a dispute over a war-damaged pipeline to justify ...

A US intelligence assessment warning of a potential threat from Pakistans prospective intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) has been challenged by nuclear non-proliferation experts, who say Islamabads defence programme is focused on regional deterrence rather than targeting the American homeland. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told ...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMPs journalism by subscribing. A public evidential hearing into a devastating fire that engulfed a residential complex in Hong Kong and killed 168 people enters its second day on Friday. Victor Dawes SC, lead barrister for an independent judge-led ...

By the time this column appears, the world will feel very different from when my previous column appeared earlier this month. In just days, a conflict that some in Washington seemed to believe would quickly topple Irans leadership has instead become a potentially long and uncertain war, with little clarity on how or when it will end. The front lines will ...

A Chinese woman who was abandoned in a toilet as a newborn by her grandfather has reunited with her biological parents 28 years after being adopted by a Dutch couple. Hong Yangli, 28, was born into a rural family in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, central China, as the third child, the mainland media outlet Daxiang News reported. Her mother, Yang Xiaoying, said ...

China has followed last years secretive high-orbit satellite-to-satellite refuelling test with another in-orbit servicing mission that is aimed at advancing docking and refuelling technologies, while also testing ways to speed up the disposal of satellites at the end of their usefulness. Hukeda-2, which lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in ...

Hong Kongs Baptist University placed a big bet when it told the government in 2023 that it was interested in moving its campus from the upmarket Kowloon Tong residential area to a proposed new academic town near the mainland Chinese border. The 70-year-old universitys move to the Northern Metropolis megaproject will mean giving up a prime site for a spot ...

Prime office vacancy rates in Hong Kongs main business district dropped to single digits for the first time in 26 months, lifting overall rents in the citys struggling office property market, according to JLL. The vacancy rate in Central for premium offices fell to 9.9 per cent in February from 10.1 per cent the previous month, the property consultancy ...

South Korea finds itself boxed in as Tehran moves to turn the Strait of Hormuz into a bargaining chip amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, leaving Seoul caught between its dependence on Middle East oil and its unwillingness to antagonise Washington. Economists note that South Korea relies on Washingtons security umbrella to deter threats from nuclear-armed ...