Philippine police have foiled a school shooting and rescued seven students radicalised by foreigners online to stage an attack in Laguna province near Manila, as calls grow to enhance parental safeguards against digital threats. Officers rounded up the suspects five boys and two girls, aged 12 to 17 on February 2 after receiving a tip-off about the ...

Timing is everything in modern warfare, where even a nanoseconds delay can make the difference between hitting or missing a target in a coordinated drone or missile attack. China may now have taken a major step forward in this field with the mass production of the worlds smallest atomic clock something the researchers behind it say could transform drone ...

Actor Val Kilmer will posthumously appear in what First Line Films calls a first-ever performance enabled by generative artificial intelligence in the upcoming film As Deep as the Grave, the production company announced on Wednesday. Kilmer, best known for roles in Top Gun, The Doors and Batman Forever, had originally been cast as Father Fintan - a Catholic ...

The FBI is investigating whether Joseph Kent, who resigned his position as a top counterterrorism official this week in protest of the Iran war, improperly shared classified information, a person familiar with the matter said Wednesday. The investigation precedes Kents resignation Tuesday from his role as director of the US governments National ...

Japans education ministry has launched a campaign to fight sexual misconduct involving teachers and revised regulations against voyeurism in the wake of seven male educators arrested last year for taking inappropriate videos of students and sharing them on social media. A law aimed at preventing sexual misconduct in the nations schools went into effect in ...

Britain will roll out meningitis vaccines to students at a university in southeast England after an unprecedented outbreak of the disease killed two people while the number of new cases jumped to 20. The UK Health Security Agency said all those affected were young people. A 21-year-old student at the University of Kent and a teenage student at a school in ...

Heavy social media use contributes to a stark decline in well-being among young people, with the effects particularly worrying in teenage girls in English-speaking countries and western Europe according to the World Happiness Report 2026 published on Thursday. The annual report, published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, also ...

Chinas recent changes to the rules governing its global payment system could pave the way for turning it into a genuine alternative to Western networks, according to a new report. Beijing now appears to be moving towards building the Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) into a global platform compliant with multicurrency settlements and other ...

In my experience, most people misunderstand the concept of separation of powers, and so I would not be at all surprised if most people also misunderstand the term executive-led government. In the case of separation of powers, the confusion usually arises from the use of the word separation. It connotes a meaning of absolute independence or alienation. A ...

Middle East banks and wealthy investors are poised to increase their investments in Hong Kong amid geopolitical tensions to diversify their risk and capture growing opportunities in Asia, according to the head of InvestHK, the government agency tasked with attracting foreign investment. A couple of Middle East banks were in the process of setting up offices ...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMPs journalism by subscribing. The first of a series of public evidential hearings into a fire that engulfed a residential complex in Hong Kong and killed at least 168 people begins on Thursday, nearly four months after the disaster. Ordered by the ...

A man in China who had a 12cm-long metal chopstick lodged in his throat for eight years recently had surgery to remove the object. The man, surnamed Wang, underwent the surgery at Dalian Municipal Central Hospital in northeastern Liaoning province in early March. His experience has shocked internet users, the Daxiang News reported. Eight years ago, Wang ...

The Peoples Liberation Army has announced a new AI-assisted task dispatch system for Chinas aerial refuelling tankers, days after a US military tanker crashed in the Middle East. According to the official PLA Daily, the Chinese air force has streamlined its aerial refuelling operations with a smart artificial intelligence (AI) system to improve efficiency ...

Animal rights groups have urged Hong Kong authorities to review their culling strategy for wild boars and to install animal bridges and other measures to reduce human-wildlife conflict in urban areas after incidents involving wild boars and a buffalo. They warned that as urban expansion, particularly the Northern Metropolis project, cleared large tracts of ...

Chinese toymaker Pop Mart and Sony Pictures Entertainment announced on Thursday a feature film starring Labubu, the companys most popular character. Analysts said the film was a strategic move to extend Labubus intellectual property (IP) value and support medium-term growth, following the trajectory of global icons like Barbie and Hello Kitty. The film, ...

Spains King Felipe VI has been invited to the 2026 World Cup in Mexico by President Claudia Sheinbaum, the royal palace said on Wednesday, signalling a thaw in relations between the two countries. Diplomatic relations have been strained since 2019, when the Mexican government demanded that the Spanish crown apologise for the abuses committed during the ...

Hong Kongs monetary authority kept its base rate unchanged after a similar move by the US Federal Reserve, as analysts said that the Middle East conflict has added to the uncertainty over the pace of rate cuts this year. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) maintained the citys base rate at 4 per cent on Thursday. Hours earlier, the Fed also kept its ...

China and Japans long-standing rivalry has deep historic roots, and relations between the two have taken a significant turn for the worse in recent months. This, the second in a three-part series, looks at whether Beijing overplayed its hand on the Taiwan issue in the face of what is a strategic reality for Japan and how it may leverage its history of ...

Beijings global pharmaceutical push is following a playbook seen in rare earths, semiconductors and electric vehicles, US lawmakers said on Wednesday, as concerns grow over the United States reliance on Chinese drug ingredients. China is cornering the market on our medicines from the supply of generic drugs that Americans depend on every day, to the ...

Irans government has been degraded since the war began on February 28, but it appears to be intact and Tehran and its proxies remain capable of attacking US and allies interests in the Middle East, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on Wednesday. The regime in Iran appears to be intact but largely degraded by Operation Epic Fury, ...

China does not currently plan to attack Taiwan in 2027 and seeks to control the island without the use of force, the US intelligence community said on Wednesday, striking a measured tone on one of the worlds biggest potential flashpoints. The assessment in the intelligence agencies annual report on global threats comes as Beijing has stepped up pressure on ...

Irans huge Pars gas field was hit on Wednesday in the first reported strikes on Irans Gulf energy infrastructure of the US-Israeli war, prompting Tehran to announce it would respond with attacks on oil and gas targets throughout the Gulf. Oil prices shot up after the attack, a major escalation in a war that has already halted shipping from the worlds most ...

Pakistan announced on Wednesday a pause in strikes against Afghanistan, saying the decision was made ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr at the request of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. In a statement, Pakistans information minister Attaullah Tarar said the pause in strikes on terrorists and their support infrastructure in Afghanistan would take ...

Hong Kong authorities have raided three illegal fuelling stations and arrested two men, seizing more than 1,800 litres (475.5 gallons) of petrol with an estimated market value of HK$54,000 (US$6,891) as oil prices continue to spike amid the widening conflict in the Middle East. The joint crackdown by the Fire Services Department and the Customs and Excise ...