News - South China Morning Post

The Hong Kong Pride Parade committee has cancelled an indoor event at Central Market next month after being told the venue is unavailable due to an “administrative error”. In a social media post on Thursday, the committee said its Rainbow Market, scheduled for November 14 at the revamped landmark, had been cancelled because the venue “could no longer host it”. The group said it approached Central...

Hong Kong police have arrested a suspect in less than 24 hours after he allegedly stole a gold necklace worth nearly HK$80,000 (US$10,193) from a Chow Sang Sang jewellery store in Tai Po, the South China Morning Post has learned. The suspect was tracked down in the same district on Thursday afternoon, but the stolen jewellery has not been recovered, a source said. The unemployed man, in his fortie...

A mainland-produced film about a Chinese restaurant in Baghdad that became a wartime refuge has been selected as China’s entry for next year’s Oscars, bringing global attention to untold stories from the Iraq War. Directed by Wen Muye and starring Shen Teng and Jiang Qiming, Once Upon a Time in the Middle East became a box-office hit after its domestic release in China in August, earning more than...

China’s premier has reaffirmed his country’s support for North Korea and its leader during the much-delayed opening of a new bridge between the neighbours. In a taped speech to the opening ceremony on the New Yalu River Bridge on Thursday, Premier Li Qiang said the link was a landmark in Chinese-North Korean friendship. Li said the bridge would promote economic and trade ties, expand personnel exc...

Chinese artificial intelligence lab Z.ai’s latest flagship model, GLM-5.3, may be sophisticated enough to “fake” its way through safety tests, according to a new report published Thursday, sparking new fears about the ability of artificial intelligence systems to shape their own development. The model, launched in August, showed an ability to consider how its behaviour during safety evaluations mi...

Malaysia’s powerful Conference of Rulers and the government need to intervene and find a solution to the months-long royal stand-off in Negeri Sembilan and constitutional limbo over the status of the state’s ruler, according to political analysts. Negeri Sembilan’s royal house has been locked in a bitter deadlock since April over whether incumbent Tuanku Muhriz Tuanku Munawir or his proposed repla...

Revamped CTF Media and Entertainment, which holds one of Hong Kong’s three free-to-air television licences, plans to expand its focus beyond TV programmes and broadband to entertainment and the sports economy as its traditional businesses stagnate. Revealing the new logo of the company previously known as i-Cable Communications, CEO and executive director Ivy Wong Nga-fan listed its five core area...

South Korea will continue supporting Ukraine “as a responsible member of the international community” despite a diplomatic dispute over the disclosure of two North Korean prisoners of war being repatriated to the South, a foreign ministry official said on Thursday. The official said Seoul would treat its help to Ukraine separately from the dispute, while continuing bilateral consultations to resol...

Lingnan University in Hong Kong has scrapped its requirement for undergraduates to pass an English proficiency test before graduating, replacing it with internal language classes. The move has sparked concerns among some observers that the change was intended to accommodate students who struggle to meet international standards. Lau Chi-pang, special adviser to the president on publicity, confirmed...

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is in discussions regarding a potential role in Elon Musk’s proposed Terafab project in Texas, according to company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei, although he stressed that TSMC would retain operational control of any partner factory. The plant “has got to be run by TSMC”, Wei said during the third-quarter earnings call on Thursday. TSMC, the world’s larges...

China and the United States are in regular talks about artificial intelligence (AI) as they seek to firm up plans for an incident “hotline” and develop a formalised dialogue process ahead of a presidential summit next month. The two sides aim to agree on a basic framework for addressing AI incidents before Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump meet on the sidelines of the annu...

The Hong Kong public’s dissatisfaction with customer service is growing, with complaints in the first nine months of the year already exceeding the total for 2025 and many involving companies’ overreliance on artificial intelligence (AI). The Consumer Council received 3,078 complaints about traders’ customer service between January and September, compared with 2,715 for the whole of last year and...

The foreign ministers of China and Russia have discussed their relations with the United States, paving the ground for a possible meeting between their respective leaders at next month’s Apec summit in Shenzhen. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, met in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on Thursday, where they discussed “relations with the United States and...

Indian authorities have asked Bollywood actor ⁠Imran Khan to ⁠leave the country by ⁠the end of the month, saying he breached immigration laws after joining a protest against the election commission chief, local media reported on Thursday. Khan, 43, is a US ‌citizen, the Indian Express newspaper reported. Under Indian law, foreigners’ participation in political protests may be treated as a violatio...

Hong Kong has emerged as the third best city in the world for wealthy individuals seeking to make philanthropic contributions over the medium term, trailing New York and Seoul, according to a study by Altrata. The inaugural Giving Opportunity Index by the US-based group that tracks the world’s affluent population ranked 100 cities based on three criteria: wealth, donor affinity and philanthropic i...

Authorities in the central Chinese province of Hunan have warned of the potential risks of cross-border arranged marriages, saying some relationships lack genuine emotional foundations and can lead to financial ruin or legal trouble. Marriages can be risky when they are organised by illegal matchmaking agencies that charge high fees, according to a post on the Xintian county police branch’s social...

Every time Kristaen Albert returns home, he reaches for one of the dozen cans of oxygen on a table by the entrance of his house in Central Kalimantan. The air in his neighbourhood has turned dusty amber, with air quality far exceeding hazardous levels. “My breathing is noticeably heavier whenever I step outside. It’s hard to concentrate and stay focused, and it is really affecting my work,” Albert...

Twenty-seven pupils and a teacher were killed on Thursday after a roof collapsed at a school in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar, a hospital official said. Asim Khan from Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital confirmed the toll, adding that over 30 people were injured, with six believed to be in a critical condition. A spokesman for the emergency rescue service in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province sa...

Ukraine has resumed its attacks on Russian refineries with a strike at an installation in the Ryazan region, the regional governor said on Thursday, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky voiced his anger at a “dangerous” withdrawal of US intelligence. Since ‌US President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement of an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine on Sunday, Kyiv had refrained from...

Nepal has weathered three disasters in six weeks, including the deadly August flash flood, making this year one of the deadliest in a country where monsoon rains already frequently wreak havoc. Experts warn that climate change is only making matters worse. The rock-ice avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border that opened the floodgates in the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers on August 26 killed more th...

Slain Hong Kong socialite Abby Choi Tin-fung’s partner has acknowledged that her former father-in-law helped resolve a dispute over his HK$5 million gambling debt but maintained he was not obliged to repay it because he believed the company he owed would fold. Chris Tam Fong-chun told the High Court on Thursday that he had refused to repay a loan he took out while gambling at a casino run by Sunci...

More than 1,000 residents are expected to ride in autonomous vehicles (AVs) after Chinese technology giant Baidu launches Hong Kong’s first large-scale public trial next week. Baidu’s robotaxi platform, Apollo, will run the trial in Tung Chung from October 21 to November 3, inviting more than 1,000 residents to take part. Iris Wong Man-hei, senior project and business development manager for the i...

A South Korean manufacturing company owner accused of severely injuring a migrant worker by firing high-pressure air from an industrial air gun into his body has been sentenced to three years in prison. Judge Koo Na-young of the Suwon district court on Thursday sentenced the owner of a metal-cleaning company, a man in his 60s identified only as A, to three years in prison on charges of aggravated...

Three weeks into his tenure as the Communist Party secretary of Anhui province, Li Lecheng carried out an on-site inspection at China’s home-grown memory chip giant ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) on Wednesday, pledging to grow integrated circuits (ICs) as an emerging pillar industry. During the visit to the company’s headquarters in the central province’s capital of Hefei, Li urged CXMT to fu...

Inconvenience is one of the biggest obstacles to recycling, a challenge that prompted a Hongkonger to establish a one-stop recycling service. Jorch Wong Ching-hei left advertising in 2019 and started The Loops Hong Kong after finding that recycling different materials often required travelling to different collection points. With no prior background in the industry, he contacted recycling operator...