News from Hong Kong-based sources, ranked by recency.
The Hong Kong Science and Technology Park (HKSTP) and SenseTime, a Chinese artificial intelligence firm headquartered and listed in the city, have partnered to build a home-grown AI data centre by 2030 to support the sector’s industrialisation. The data centre will be built in three stages, with phase one expected for completion by the end of this year, targeting 40,000 petaflops – a measure of...
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Russia should make a peace deal with Ukraine, adding that he would do what he could to end the war after a “very good” meeting between President Volodymyr Zelensky and Group of Seven leaders at a summit in France. Trump arrived at the G7 summit in the lakeside resort of Evian-les-Bains brandishing a preliminary deal to end the conflict with Iran a...
China’s largest ground-based arms manufacturer is displaying air defence systems specifically for drone warfare, along with advanced artillery equipment at this year’s Eurosatory exhibition in France. Demand for air defence solutions is skyrocketing, fuelled by the conflict in Ukraine and the US-Israeli war on Iran which have been largely defined by the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and...
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Tuesday that ending the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon, was “the most important” issue in the peace deal with the United States announced the day before. “The important point I want to emphasise here is that in our view, there are two parties to this memorandum – one side is America and Israel, and the other side is Iran and Hezbollah,” sa...
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, one of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, said in an interview published on Monday that Russia and Ukraine must compromise to end the war that has raged for more than four years with no end in sight. Lukashenko, whose ex-Soviet state has been improving ties with Washington, also said that he would not rule out meeting US President Donald ...
Alibaba Group Holding has launched its first suite of artificial intelligence models for robots, joining a global race to move AI out of chatbot windows and into the physical world. The Hangzhou-based tech giant on Tuesday introduced the Qwen Robot Suite, marking its latest foray into “embodied AI” – machines that can perceive, reason and interact with physical environments. Developed by Alibab...
Shipowners will not resume transit through the Strait of Hormuz for weeks until they are confident that the US-Iran deal is “material”, the CEO of Japan’s Mitsui O.S.K. Lines told the Financial Times in an interview published on Tuesday. The Iran war that began on February 28 with US-Israeli strikes largely stopped shipping through the transit route for around a fifth of the world’s oil and ...
The drones are grounded, tankers are reportedly moving again through the Strait of Hormuz and an electronically signed memorandum of understanding has formalised the pause. After 108 days, thousands dead and hundreds of billions of US dollars stripped from the global economy, the US-Israel war on Iran has ended – for now. Not with victory. Not with defeat. With a freeze. The United States and I...
Beijing’s point man on Hong Kong affairs began a two-day visit on Tuesday with inspections of key projects across the city, focusing on housing, technology and Northern Metropolis developments. Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, greeted residents at a light public housing project on Yau Pok Road in Yuen Long in the morning, accompanied by Chief Executive John Lee K...
Hong Kong may enter its summer flu season earlier than usual this year, with a peak likely to occur later this month, health authorities have said, urging unvaccinated residents to receive jabs for protection. Dr Edwin Tsui Lok-kin, controller of the Centre for Health Protection, said on Tuesday that influenza activity in the city had increased since May. He noted that the last summer flu seaso...
We have selected seven stories from the SCMP’s coverage of Asia over the past week 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. Singapore PM Lawrence Wong to visit Russia, first since Ukraine war sanctions Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong is set to visit the Russian city of Kazan in a trip...
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s first attendance at this week’s G7 summit aims to turn her rapport with Donald Trump into a bridge between the US president and the bloc’s leaders, as she seeks to cement her image as Japan’s “Iron Lady”. During a working dinner at the three-day meeting which began in Evian, eastern France, on Monday, Takaichi also proposed a joint strategic stockpile partnership...
Hong Kong’s anti-corruption watchdog has charged a former senior staff member at the Chinese University Medical Centre over alleged fraud. The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) said on Monday that it was accusing Lau Mun-cheung, 65, former head and consultant physiotherapist of the institution’s Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Centre, of falsely claiming that he had personally...
When Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) held its 11th group wedding for doctoral students on May 31, each of the 187 newlywed couples was presented with a one-carat diamond ring, with the diamonds grown in the university’s laboratory. The gems were developed by Zhu Jiaqi and his team from HIT’s School of Astronautics using a technology that in theory could produce high-purity, single crystal ...
When Singaporean Kristen Chng watched Chinese indie film Dear You with his father in Suzhou last month, he was reminded of his grandfather’s journey of sweat and hardship after leaving his ancestral village in Guangdong province with little to his name. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room, he said, as cinema-goers followed the story of a man uncovering his family’s past by tracing remittance let...
The images were difficult to ignore. A viral video showed the body of a 35-year-old Indian seafarer on a vessel off Oman, with crew members using cold water bottles in a desperate attempt to slow the decomposition process. He had died last Thursday from medical complications, but it had not been possible to send help or evacuate him from the ship because of the US blockade in the Strait of Horm...
Benjamin Netanyahu bet that his joint war alongside Donald Trump would topple Iran’s clerical rulers and bolster himself ahead of the election at home, as the architect of a US-Israeli alliance that would reshape the Middle East. Instead, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is on a collision course with Trump as the US president seeks to extricate himself from the war, with both men’s goal...
Many Hong Kong shoppers remain undaunted by a mainland Chinese investigation into the food safety practices of popular supermarket Sam’s Club in neighbouring Shenzhen, saying they will still shop for bargains – but more selectively. Despite reports that Chinese regulators had summoned the warehouse retailer over “frequent food safety issues” on Monday morning, the superstore remained busy in th...
Taiwan’s new website for mainland Chinese to securely report intelligence-related information has sparked debate over whether it is workable. The self-governed island’s National Security Bureau (NSB) on Sunday said it had established a “contact window” to collect political, military, economic and social intelligence from mainland China. The bureau said the initiative was modelled on the practic...
An enterprising 19-year-old student in China heads a start-up tech company and is also a philanthropist who donated 100,000 yuan (US$15,000) to sanitation workers at his school. Wei Siyuan graduated from Baoan Middle School in Shenzhen, southern China’s Guangdong province, last year and was admitted to Hunan University. He also has another identity: the chief executive officer of a company that...
The custody of a Hong Kong couple’s four-year-old daughter remains in the balance after a Swedish court threw out their attempted appeal against the local social welfare administration’s application to transfer her legal guardianship to a foster family. The Swedish Social Welfare Committee said in a report dated June 3 that the child, Lily, had to be protected from a “rootless and insecure exis...
New homes that Hong Kong developers will launch in the coming days and weeks will serve as a crucial test of the impact of Beijing’s latest capital-control measures, amid signs of recovery in the city’s residential property market. “Seemingly, a number of developers have turned more cautious in launching primary projects of late,” said Jack Tong, director of research and consultancy at Savills ...
North Korea’s latest spirited defence of its nuclear arsenal signals a strategy that goes beyond rejecting international calls to disarm and instead leans into mounting global superpower rivalry to legitimise its weapons build-up. The verbal offensive comes as North Korea could soon face renewed pressure to return to the negotiating table. Analysts say the winding down of the Iran conflict may ...
Iranian Americans streamed into the Los Angeles stadium where Iran play their first match at the 2026 World Cup on Monday, with some calling for Iranians to band together and forget politics while others bore symbols protesting the government. The team arrived at the stadium, having flown into the US on Sunday from their training base in Tijuana, Mexico, touching down in Los Angeles just as a ...
Eight people are believed to be dead after a B-52 bomber crashed soon after take-off on Monday morning at a US Air Force base in Southern California’s Mojave Desert, the US military said. “Initial indications are that the crash was not survivable,” Edwards Air Force Base posted on social media. The cause of the crash is under investigation, officials said. There was no information yet on the cr...
As trade tensions between Beijing and Brussels continue to rise, China’s firms in the European Union have been forced to walk a delicate tightrope: expanding their presence in the lucrative market while grappling with heightened regulatory hurdles and rapid geopolitical shifts. In the first part of this three-part series, we look at a new, complex EU carbon tariff system that has business owner...
British prosecutors have charged with sanctions contravention offences the Indian captain of an interdicted alleged Russian shadow fleet vessel seized in the Channel, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said on Monday. It follows British armed forces on Sunday intercepting the sanctioned oil tanker Smyrtos – said to belong to Russia’s shadow fleet – in a dramatic operation hailed by Kyiv and London...
Most Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) adults believe the United States used to be a great place for immigrants but no longer is, according to a survey released on Monday ahead of the 250th anniversary of American independence next month. “Forty-one per cent of AAPI adults say they have started carrying proof of immigration status or citizenship, or know someone who has, and 34 per cen...
When it comes to the performance of real estate markets in the Asia-Pacific, Japan reigns supreme. Asia’s second largest economy is the deepest, most widely traded, and the safest market in the region. Last year, Japan accounted for 28 per cent of direct investment in Asia-Pacific commercial real estate, data from MSCI shows. The average vacancy rate for grade A offices in Tokyo was 0.7 per cen...
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday he was willing to meet Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the United States, suggesting Putin would find such an offer “harder to refuse”. The Ukrainian leader said he made the proposal in a call with US President Donald Trump, and was waiting to see what came of it. Putin has repeatedly rejected offers for a face-to-face meeting with Zel...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he intends to run in elections scheduled for later this year, as he faces domestic criticism over his wartime leadership. Netanyahu, 76, is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, has led his country through three years of war on multiple interconnected fronts and is currently on trial for corruption. In recent months, he has come under ...
Argentina’s top central banker sat down with his Chinese counterpart in Shanghai, a quiet overture towards Beijing months after Buenos Aires moved to unwind a currency lifeline that Washington had pushed it to abandon. Santiago Bausili, president of the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic, met People’s Bank of China governor Pan Gongsheng on the sidelines of an international symposium organi...
California Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday accused US President Donald Trump of directing the Justice Department to undertake a politically motivated investigation of him and his wife. “Donald Trump isn’t just coming after me because of my mean tweets,” Newsom said in a video statement posted to social media. “He’s coming after me because I am considering running for president.” Federal polic...
A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, that accused rival Sam Altman’s OpenAI of stealing trade secrets for chatbots. US District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco, California, said xAI failed to show that OpenAI induced former xAI senior engineer Xuechen Li, a Chinese national, to divulge confidential information related to its Grok ch...
Hungary’s parliament approved a constitutional amendment on Monday that allows prime ministers to serve for a maximum of eight years, effectively barring former premier Viktor Orban from holding the role again. Prime Minister Peter Magyar ousted Orban in an election in April after 16 years, gaining a two-thirds majority in parliament that allows his party to roll back or change legislation ...
US President Donald Trump announced plans on Monday for a major “rally” in Washington on the July 4 Independence Day, further imposing his political brand on celebrations of the United States’ 250th anniversary. The announcement comes a day after the Republican billionaire staged a mixed martial arts fight on the White House lawn – on what just happened to be his 80th birthday – with military h...
A senior US official on Monday said that President Donald Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance had signed the memorandum of understanding electronically with Iran to formally reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the American blockade of Iranian ports. The official also claimed Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf signed the document on Tehran’s behalf. Trump “wanted to sign it pers...
[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] Last Tuesday (9 June), Hong Kong Metropolitan University (HKMU) held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new campus on a slope site at the junction of Sheung Shing Street and Fat Kwong Street in Ho Man Tin, marking the official commencement of the new campus development project and a new chapter for both the University an...
The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said on Monday that the bloc has verified reports that China’s military has been “training Russian military personnel to fight in Ukraine”, a development that could deepen tensions between the two sides. Kallas, speaking after chairing a meeting of the EU’s 27 foreign ministers in Luxembourg, said that the EU was “carefully assessing the implicati...
A sample collected from a market in Hong Kong has tested positive for bird flu H9, days after a two-year-old boy who visited the venue contracted a mild strain of the infectious disease. But the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) said on Monday that the risk of a serious bird flu outbreak was low. The boy, who lives in Sha Tin, became ill after visiting Wo Che Market in the district and was lat...
