Hundreds of Hong Kong tourists were in Japan when a powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck late Monday night, but local authorities said all were reported safe with no requests for help received so far. The Travel Industry Council on Tuesday said that about 20 Hong Kong tour groups with about 300 people were in the country when the quake hit northern ...

Before the deadly landslides and floods hit Indonesia about two weeks ago, Amran Siagian, 39, frequently met Tapanuli orangutans on a hill in the region of Sipirok, North Sumatra province. Siagian, who has been working as a ranger to protect the endangered animal at the Orangutan Information Centre (OIC) for at least five years, remembers how the orangutans ...

Catch up on some of SCMPs biggest China stories of the day. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Tokyo closely monitoring backlash from China, Japanese PM tells lawmakers One month after the Taiwan contingency remarks that set off the diplomatic firestorm with China, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said ...

Taiwan has moved to deter what it sees as an alarming rise in deliberate damage to its undersea cables, revising its laws to impose stiffer prison sentences of up to seven years. The legal changes approved on Tuesday by Taiwans legislature came as the island accuses Beijing of sabotaging its submarine cables, describing such acts as grey-zone pressure ...

Last weeks release of the 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) was not a routine recalibration of diplomatic lines it was a rupture. It represented the most explicit declaration to date that the United States no longer regards Europe as a partner in a shared transatlantic project but as a challenge to be managed, a continent to be reshaped and a ...

A prominent economist has dismissed the China threat phenomenon as a complete mislabelling, arguing that the country has instead supported the global diffusion of technology by significantly lowering costs through production at scale. Speaking at a summit on Tuesday, Jin Keyu a professor of finance at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology ...

The issue of property rights and gaining consensus from more than 2,000 households of Hong Kongs blaze-ravaged Wang Fuk Court will complicate rebuilding efforts, lawmakers and building experts have warned as new sites for redevelopment are proposed. Legislative Council members said on Tuesday that authorities should listen widely to the views of Wang Fuk ...

Beijing and Tokyos war of words over Taiwan was expected to be bad news for Japanese businesses in China. Previous diplomatic flare-ups have brought waves of online vitriol, protests and boycotts. But at a Japanese-invested luxury department store in Chinas eastern Zhejiang province, the outlets executives seemed largely unruffled. They are already well ...

Hong Kong tycoon Victor Fung Kwok-king former chairman of supply chain management conglomerate Fung Group, warned on Tuesday that consumers around the world will ultimately bear the cost of a de facto 20 per cent tariff in global trade. Speaking at the Global Supply Chain Business Summit 2025 held by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technologys Li & ...

The renowned Chinese-born architect Wang Fei has died at the age of 45 following an accident in London. The China Academy of Art, where he had worked as a visiting professor between 2009 and 2011, confirmed that Wang, who taught at Syracuse University in New York state, had died on Monday. Some friends and colleagues leaving tributes online suggested that ...

Japan issued a megaquake advisory on Tuesday after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck off the eastern coast of Aomori, the northernmost prefecture of Japans main island of Honshu, and just south of the northern island of Hokkaido. Damage from this quake was modest 34 mostly mild injuries and some damage to roads and buildings. Officials said the advisory ...

Hong Kong authorities have closed hiking trails on Tsing Yi for large-scale mosquito control after five local cases of chikungunya fever were detected among recent visitors. The Centre for Health Protection said on Tuesday that the fact members of the public continued to be infected after visiting the Tsing Yi Nature Trails despite a series of mosquito ...

A Hong Kong tram driver faces jail for careless driving that killed a three-year-old girl and injured three others, after a court condemned his actions as having serious consequences. Deputy Magistrate Chung Wing-sze on Tuesday found Li Yaodong, 50, guilty of carelessly driving outside Kennedy Town Swimming Pool on the morning of August 15, 2024, when his ...

Hong Kong has launched a public consultation regarding a system for sharing information on crypto assets with other governments in compliance with international standards as the city ramps up initiatives to develop as a digital-asset hub. The government has invited members of the public to share views about the implementation of the Crypto-Asset Reporting ...

China has executed a former senior banker who was found guilty of taking more than 1.1 billion yuan (US$155 million) in bribes. Bai Tianhui, the former general manager of the asset management firm China Huarong International Holdings, was executed on Tuesday after the Supreme Peoples Court approved the sentence, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The ...

Chinese social media and gaming giant Tencent Holdings has pulled out of US media group Paramount Skydance Corps takeover bid for Warner Bros Discovery to avoid heightened scrutiny of foreign investment in the United States, according to a filing on the US Securities and Exchange Commissions website. Tencent had pledged US$1 billion as part of Paramounts ...

International and Chinese consumer brands will be forced to maintain a low-price strategy in mainland China amid persistent deflationary pressures, while looking to lower-tier cities and emerging sales channels for growth, according to a study by global consultancy Bain & Co and market research firm Kantar Worldpanel. Companies in the fast-moving consumer ...

A Russian military plane crashed on Tuesday during a test flight after repair work, the defence ministry said. TASS state news agency reported seven people were on board at the time of the crash and it was unknown whether they survived. Today in the Ivanovo region, during a test flight following repairs, an An-22 military transport aircraft crashed, state ...

Outgoing veteran Hong Kong lawmaker Michael Tien Puk-sun has called for expanding the number of directly elected seats in the legislature, saying the move will broaden the political spectrum and boost voter turnout. Mark Chong Ho-fung, the sole lawmaker-elect of the Roundtable party founded by Tien, also said on Tuesday that proposing the idea for political ...

Indonesia is confronting its deadliest natural disaster in more than two decades as floods and landslides ravage Sumatra, overwhelming local authorities and prompting scrutiny of how President Prabowo Subiantos administration is managing the crisis. Officials insist relief efforts have moved quickly, given how the scale of devastation demanded complex ...

New Zealands largest naval vessel was followed by seven Chinese warships in a deployment to East Asia last month, including a rare transit through the Taiwan Strait, according to the Pacific nations military. HMNZS Aotearoa, a Polar-class replenishment vessel, was deployed to the East China and Yellow seas with allies, the New Zealand Defence Force said in ...

A man in southwestern China who broke a bone in his girlfriends chest during a prank staged a car accident and used her injuries to claim an insurance payout. The couple was recently arrested, bringing the case to light. According to mainland media outlet, Hongxing News, a man surnamed Wang from Panzhihua in Sichuan province had been in a long-term ...

DeepSeeks founder and CEO, Liang Wenfeng, has been listed among the top 10 people who shaped science in 2025 by the British journal Nature, which hailed the 40-year-old entrepreneur as a Chinese finance whizz whose breakthrough artificial intelligence models had stunned the world. The Natures 10 profile of Liang recognised the disruption caused in January ...

Military aircraft from China and Russia entered South Koreas air defence zone without notification on Tuesday, prompting the deployment of fighter jets, the Korean military said. The nine aircraft appeared to be part of a joint patrol in the area, their first such exercise in more than 12 months. They did not violate Korean airspace, the countrys military ...

A last-minute medical intervention halted the deportation of a Filipino man from the United States after advocates warned that his deteriorating condition and months of alleged neglect in immigration custody had put his life at risk. Greggy Valerio Sorio, a 37-year-old long-time US resident affectionately known as Kuya G, had already boarded a plane bound ...