Tertiary institutions seeking to establish campuses in one of three university towns planned for the Northern Metropolis megaproject will be given favourable consideration if they do not require a government loan to build their facilities, Hong Kongs education minister has said. The government has expanded all three university towns formally named in Chief ...

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a phone call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday, just a week ahead of President Xi Jinpings planned trip to the United States. Chinese state news agency Xinhua said in a brief report that the two diplomats held an in-depth discussion on high-level exchanges between the two countries. The call is expected ...

Amid rising tensions over artificial intelligence (AI) competition and global concerns about the technology, China appears to have an edge over the US and European Union (EU) in trust to regulate AI among mostly middle-income countries. A new Pew Research Centre report released on Thursday found that, on a median basis across 12 countries, more people trust ...

China and the United States are discussing possible announcements to strengthen military-to-military ties during Chinese President Xi Jinpings state visit to Washington next week, multiple sources familiar with the discussions told the South China Morning Post. Another item that is being discussed, and a possible deliverable, is restarting the arms-control ...

Callers to Hong Kong polices 999 hotline will be able to send real-time audio and visual information to the emergency call centre using instant messaging apps in 2028, Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung has said. The security minister revealed the timeline for the upgrade on Thursday, a day after Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu announced in his ...

Swedens conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson announced his resignation on Thursday after the left-wing opposition won a slim majority in parliament in the countrys general election. It is now the speaker of parliament who will lead the next steps on the path towards forming a new government. In order for this work to begin immediately, I hereby ...

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyens state-of-the-union speech offered few details on new trade measures targeting China, but its sharp tone was designed to send a message to Beijing, analysts said. During her speech on Wednesday, von der Leyen warned that a second China shock was already affecting Europe and vowed that Brussels would use all ...

Hong Kongs plan to raise its gold holdings will further cement the citys status as an international financial centre, with the possibility of building vaults in the Northern Metropolis megadevelopment, according to authorities. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po also said on Thursday the city was under no pressure to raise interest rates following a US ...

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has issued a withering rebuke to foreigners behaving badly in Thailand following a wave of scandals involving illegal businesses and landholdings including a cemetery, saying the cases have gone too far by breaching Thai law and hospitality. Facing mounting public backlash against illegal foreign ownership of swathes of ...

A Malaysian woman has died while scuba diving after she was caught in strong currents in Bali, Indonesia. According to local media portal Bali News, the victim, Siti Nuraini Rusidi, 40, was on a diving trip with a divemaster, boat captain and several other divers when the incident occurred at 11.10am local time on Wednesday. The trips divemaster, Eugenius ...

There are reasonable grounds to believe the US committed war crimes against civilians in Iran, who also face gross human rights violations from their own government, United Nations investigators said on Thursday. In their latest report, due to be presented to the Human Rights Council on Monday, the independent investigators urged the 47 countries in the ...

A main contractor and two subcontractors have been fined more than HK$900,000 each for their role in the death of a 38-year-old worker who was electrocuted while handling wiring for solar panels during wet weather at the Hong Kong Science Park three years ago. Magistrate Jeffrey Sze Cho-yiu said China Power International Development, the main contractor for ...

Chinese panellists and experts at the Xiangshan Forum have warned against Japans remilitarisation amid reports that Tokyo is considering raising its midterm defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP. Japan might raise its midterm budget to 3-3.5 per cent of the countrys gross domestic product in line with Nato and other US allies, Bloomberg reported earlier ...

India and Vietnam could turn their competition for China plus one investments into a complementary partnership, analysts say, combining New Delhis scale and technology capabilities with Hanois manufacturing agility and links to East Asian supply chains. Such a shift could deepen both nations roles in global production networks across high-value industries ...

While the Chinese idiom, Having ink in their stomach, serves as a metaphor to commend the knowledgeable, the act of ingesting ink was a common practice among ancient literati. The earliest documentation of ink drinking dates back to the Northern and Southern dynasties (420589), where it was used as a sanctioned punishment for scholars with illegible ...

President Xi Jinping has reiterated calls for China to make its supply chains more resilient and self-sufficient while accelerating the creation of a modern industrial system underpinned by advanced manufacturing. Xis latest directives, issued at a national conference on advanced manufacturing in Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday, were said to be aimed at ...

Hong Kong will be short of 130,000 workers by 2028, about a third less than originally projected, a reduction the citys labour chief attributed to the development of artificial intelligence and government policies to import labour and top talent. A day after the release of the citys first five-year plan and annual policy address, Secretary for Labour and ...

When Cindi suffered her first severe psychotic episode a decade ago, she could no longer tell where reality ended and what her mind had created began. My reality and fantasy [were] all distorted. I had no idea what was real, what was not, the 38-year-old, who asked to be identified only by her first name, told This Week in Asia. It was so severe to the ...

Chinas urban youth unemployment rose last month, as a record influx of university graduates struggles to find work in a job market weighed down by weak domestic demand and the growing adoption of artificial intelligence. The jobless rate for those aged 16 to 24, excluding students, rose to 18.9 per cent in August from 17.9 per cent in July, according to ...

Hong Kongs property market dodged an immediate hit from the Federal Reserves rate hike on Thursday as major local banks kept their prime rates unchanged, but another increase could puncture the markets relatively fragile recovery, according to industry insiders. The Fed raised its benchmark rate by a quarter point at its latest meeting on Wednesday in the ...

Progress towards reunifying with Taiwan hinges on factors like the islands level of provocation, retired PLA major general Luo Yan told the South China Morning Post, warning that Taiwans leader had challenged Beijings red lines. Speaking on the sidelines of the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing on Wednesday, Luo said the timeline for reunification with mainland ...

Over the course of the summer, Russian attacks have been pushing ever deeper into European territory. On August 11, military divers destroyed two drones floating off the coast of Romania near a 4 billion (US$4.7 billion) energy project. Nine days later, Bucharest scrambled two F-16s to take out a maritime drone near the same Black Sea gas platform with ...

Indonesias latest ferry disaster has exposed persistent weaknesses in maritime safety oversight, experts have said, with poor enforcement and inadequate supervision continuing to leave passengers vulnerable across the sprawling archipelago. The capsizing of the Virgo Transport 8 in the Java Sea on Sunday has intensified scrutiny of a system that analysts ...

Taiwan has quietly acknowledged donating a coastguard vessel to the Philippines, potentially adding to Manilas maritime patrol capacity amid its long-running stand-off with Beijing in the South China Sea. Taiwans Coast Guard Administration said on Wednesday that this case was being handled in line with previous transfers of vessels to the Marshall Islands, ...

A diagnosed paedophile who sexually abused 11 girls over 33 years, with the acts ranging from molestation to rape, was sentenced by a Singapore court on Thursday to 21 years jail. The victims were as young as five, and included his daughter, granddaughters, nieces and students at an enrichment centre he ran with his wife. The judge noted that the jail term ...