News - South China Morning Post

From online-gambling rings in eSwatini to SIM swapping in Kenya and cybercrime networks in Zambia, a wave of cross-border fraud is drawing African governments and China into closer security cooperation. China hosted East African security ministers and police chiefs in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, on September 10 for talks on terrorism, kidnapping, online fraud and other cross-border threats. Chi...

When one of my seniors from medical school was pregnant during her surgical residency, she planned the exact date of her C-section so she could complete her training on time. When I asked why she didn’t consider taking maternity leave to recuperate afterwards, she said she couldn’t bring herself to lag behind her peers. “I didn’t want motherhood to slow me down,” she said. In medicine, it is commo...

The head of Tennessee’s prison system is resigning, Governor Bill Lee announced on Saturday, the first major shake-up since the stunning failed execution of Christa Pike landed her on a ventilator at a hospital. Frank Strada, commissioner of the Department of Correction, will step down this month, Lee said. Strada said in a statement that resigning was “in the best interest of Tennesseans” while a...

Authorities have launched a probe into the building quality of a luxury residential development in one of Hong Kong’s most expensive neighbourhoods in the Southern district after receiving a complaint from an owner that insufficient steel bars were used during construction. The Buildings Department said on Saturday it was “highly concerned about the incident” relating to One Stanley in Stanley, bu...

Christie’s auctioneer Rupert Banner leans forward with practised showmanship as bidding stalls on a rare Yongzheng bowl near New York’s iconic Rockefeller Centre. He pauses as if willing offers from thin air, scanning dozens of in-person buyers and phone banks connecting with China, London, Texas. It will be a bad look if the frenzy abates for this delicate peach-decorated bowl highlighted on Chri...

Flames and smoke were seen rising from a facility belonging to Saudi oil giant Aramco south of the kingdom’s capital Riyadh on Saturday, an AFP journalist said. The circumstances remained unclear but in recent weeks Aramco, majority-owned by the Saudi state, has come under attack from the Houthi group targeting the kingdom as part of the war in Yemen where Riyadh is backing the internationally rec...

The US is set to deploy one of its signature anti-ship missile systems to the Japanese island closest to Taiwan, an unprecedented move that comes as tensions in the region between Beijing and Tokyo continue to simmer. The ground-based US uncrewed missile platform known as the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) will be deployed on Yonaguni Island in Japan’s Okinawa prefectu...

As global adoption of the open-source RISC-V chip architecture accelerates, US intellectual property provider MIPS is collaborating with Chinese firms at an unprecedented level, according to a senior executive, highlighting how cross-border cooperation persists despite intense tech rivalry between Washington and Beijing. MIPS, which was acquired by US chipmaker GlobalFoundries last year, was drivi...

North Korea said on Saturday it test-fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile that it claimed has manoeuvrable flight capabilities designed to evade missile defences in South Korea and Japan. The latest test comes amid heightened tensions between the two Koreas over border landmine blasts. Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said her brother supervised the tes...

Hong Kong public universities will raise undergraduate tuition fees for non-local students studying general courses by up to 26 per cent in the 2027-28 academic year, marking the sharpest increase in recent years as institutions adjust to an expanded quota. Non-local students admitted to the University of Hong Kong’s (HKU) medicine and dentistry programmes will face the steepest jump, with annual...

Hong Kong police have busted a burglary syndicate that recruited illegal immigrants and is believed to be behind at least 25 break-ins across the city in recent weeks, with stolen cash and valuables exceeding HK$3.6 million (US$458,773). Six people aged 31 to 45 – five mainlanders and a local resident – were arrested in a Friday operation following a review of surveillance footage, police said. Th...

Chinese troops have taken part in a mass multinational exercise in Russia featuring new anti-drone and ground robot systems – drills that Russian state media said “applied lessons” from the Ukraine war. The troops were among more than 47,000 military personnel involved in the Tsentr-2026 – or Centre-2026 – drills in the central western Chelyabinsk region from Monday until Saturday. The Russian Min...

Thirty-one years ago, Hongkonger Raymond Lo Shu-yuen was diagnosed with stage four liver cancer and had a quarter of the organ removed. Now 75, Lo said the illness, despite its physical and mental toll, had taught him invaluable lessons about ageing, health and making the most of life. “I can say that the cancer itself saved me,” he said. “Why? If I did not have this illness, I would not have chan...

The botanical societies of the United States and China have signed a plant science cooperation initiative, vowing to strengthen bilateral ties and foster an open scientific community to tackle global issues. The joint initiative was signed during a Sino-American botany conference last month in Taian, in China’s eastern Shandong province, which brought together hundreds of experts from institutions...

A 60-year-old woman in China has captured attention on social media for giving birth to a baby girl, just two years after welcoming a son. She made the decision to have children at a later stage in life after enduring the loss of her only child four years ago, as reported by the Red Star News. The infant girl, weighing 2.8kg, was born on September 17 through caesarean section at Zhumadian Central...

Hong Kong’s stronger economic performance over the past year was the reason for raising the monthly minimum wage for foreign domestic helpers by 2.35 per cent, the labour minister has said, amid disappointment from both unions and employers’ groups. Defending the government’s decision to raise the monthly minimum wage to HK$5,220 (US$665), Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun Yuk-han said th...

The European Union’s demand that Britain raise tariffs on Chinese cars exposes an awkward truth about post-Brexit trade. Britain might have left the EU, but it cannot easily escape the bloc’s industrial policy. According to the Financial Times, EU officials have told Prime Minister Andy Burnham that Britain needs to align more closely with EU trade policy towards China if it wants British manufact...

Pakistani troops are expected to take over various defensive functions for Saudi Arabia to enable the Middle East country to fight an all-out war aimed at defeating Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels. According to defence analysts, Pakistani troops are not expected to participate directly in ground offensives against the Houthis being planned by Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s squabbling government factio...

Latvia will vote on Saturday in an election shaped by concerns over neighbouring Russia and the cost of living, but the result is not expected to steer the country off its pro-European and pro-Ukrainian course. The centre-right United List party of incumbent Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs is at the head of the race, with over 14 per cent of the vote, according to the SKDS institute. His coalition,...

On his 29th birthday, Hong Kong bartender Tang Lung-wai boarded a flight to the Philippines for a holiday that would change his life. He ended up spending 26 years in jail in the country. Now 55, Tang spent years fighting his drug-related charges, insisting that he had been framed. But he told the South China Morning Post that he did not view those lost decades solely through the lens of bitternes...

China has announced the expansion of the resource base for a major lithium deposit in the southwestern province of Sichuan by about 70 per cent, strengthening the country’s potential long-term supply for the metal – an essential component in the production of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and energy storage. After recent detection efforts, the Jiada Lithium Mine has registered about 1.05 m...

More than 73,000 subdivided flats in Hong Kong have applied for a three-year grace period to meet the government’s minimum standards, a figure the housing chief has described as “better than expected”. Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho Wing-yin said on Saturday that authorities received around 73,800 applications during the “early bird” registration phase under the Basic Housing Unit Ordinance, whic...

Mainland Chinese visitor arrivals in Hong Kong during the first two days of the National Day “golden week” surpassed the pre-pandemic total for the same period in 2018, as the tourism chief expressed confidence that the city would reach its annual target of 53.8 million visitors earlier than expected. The city recorded 511,311 arrivals from the mainland on Thursday and Friday, according to Immigra...

The Airport Authority will reposition the 11 Skies commercial project after taking it over next April, with the government expecting it to become a high-end tourism landmark with minimal public investment, the transport chief has said. After developer New World Development (NWD) announced on Wednesday that it would return the 11 Skies project to the authority next April, Secretary for Transport an...

A “handful” of Group of 20 trade ministers rejected US calls to curb excess industrial capacity and “non-market” policies, the US Trade Representative’s office said on Friday, exposing divisions within the group of major economies. The US, this year’s G20 chair, issued the statement ‌a day after a trade meeting in Milwaukee that revealed that only two countries – Mexico and Argentina – signed on t...