News - South China Morning Post

The US military in Okinawa will impose a curfew from midnight to 5am for a month starting Friday following the arrest of a marine on suspicion of robbing and murdering a local woman, its regional coordinator said on Tuesday. All US military personnel on Okinawa will also observe a 48-hour operational pause from noon on Wednesday, during which there will be “no off-base liberty, including a complet...

Creators of China’s first Tibetan-language AI model have pledged to speed up upgrades aimed at promoting ethnic integration. Approaches to advancing the large language model, DeepZang, were discussed at a seminar on Monday that brought together representatives from research institutes, universities and enterprises, according to state-run portal Chinanews.com. It said the event held in Hohhot, in C...

Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District is betting on property development to ease its financial pressures amid a widening operating deficit, but experts have warned that land sales will only provide temporary relief and cannot replace a sustainable long-term funding model for the arts hub. The warning comes as the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority prepares to tender a prime residential...

Jeff Kingston used to take long walks with his dogs across the hills of Gunma in central Japan. But not this year. He has good reason. Kingston said he has encountered bears in those mountains more than 100 times over the years and been charged by aggressive bears around a dozen times. In 2014, a black bear knocked him down and attacked him across the skull with its claws, leaving a gash that requ...

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he would speak very soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the reported plague death of a laboratory technician, as Washington pressured Moscow for transparency. Russian authorities denied that they were imposing anti-plague measures and played down the reports of an incident at a plague research institute in Siberia’s Irkutsk region last wee...

Japanese, South Korean and Thai brands have increased their share of new entrants in Hong Kong’s retail property market by 7 percentage points to more than one-third in the first nine months of 2026, while the demand for shops from mainland Chinese brands has slipped, according to Cushman & Wakefield. A slew of new brands helped lift the combined share of Japanese, South Korean and Thai brands to...

US authorities arrested ⁠a person in Washington state on Tuesday ⁠who they accuse of providing advice and offering to live-stream a deadly mass shooting carried out earlier this year in Canada. James Cody Bryant, 30, was detained on a charge of conspiracy to murder people in a foreign country in connection to the shooting at ‌Tumbler Ridge, according to the Department of Justice. The charge carrie...

China’s economic growth is expected to slow further next year as export strength fades and weak domestic demand persists, even as the global economy remains resilient, according to a new outlook from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). The Washington-based think tank projects China’s GDP will grow 4.6 per cent this year and 4.3 per cent in 2027, down from 5 per cent growth i...

A former senior CIA official pleaded guilty on Tuesday in Virginia to a charge that he abused his position and government funds to enrich himself by acquiring Florida real estate and hundreds of gold bars worth over US$40 million, according to court records. David J. Rush fabricated a “highly classified” government programme to justify the acquisition of luxury property in south Florida that he in...

As President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump talked tariffs, agricultural quotas and critical minerals at last month’s closely watched summit in Washington, an “elephant in the room” loomed over the discussion: China’s efforts to gradually diversify away from US dollar assets. Beijing has gradually been cutting its holdings of US Treasuries while pushing to expand the yuan’s global use an...

Los Angeles County prosecutors are seeking bail of US$100 million each for a Chinese-born couple charged on Tuesday with conspiring to abuse young children who were born through surrogacy and raised in their California mansion. Guojun Xuan, 66, and Silvia Zhang, 39, allegedly directed nannies to physically punish the children, watched the beatings through an extensive surveillance system and coach...

Christa Pike, a Tennessee inmate who survived Tennessee’s attempt to execute her, is awake and speaking as she receives treatment at a hospital, her lawyers said on Tuesday. “Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking and continues to receive critical medical care. “Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medica...

“Morally bankrupt”? Was Michigan Republican John Moolenaar talking about himself? Last week, the chairman of the House Select Committee on China demanded that Starbucks “immediately reverse course and close its stores”. The coffee chain’s crime? It opened two stores in Urumqi – the capital of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region – in the city centre’s Grand Bazaar and its international airport. The wa...

President Donald Trump suggested to a crowd of his supporters in Nebraska that Iran could “take out” a major US city like Los Angeles or San Diego, drawing a swift rebuke from California’s Democratic leaders and some fellow Republicans. Trump, speaking at a political rally in the state’s farm belt on Monday, discussed American wartime economic sacrifices and said he was determined to “see a tremen...

The European Union has launched a €35 million (US$39.4 million) tender to fund research and coordination on, among other things, detecting rogue efforts to alter the Earth’s atmosphere by blocking out the sun. The EU’s Horizon Europe arm, which funds research and innovation, launched the call for projects on Tuesday as part of an early stage effort to coordinate action on so-called Solar Radiation...

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] Against a backdrop of persistent geopolitical uncertainties, global energy price trends and energy security have returned firmly to the spotlight. Taking place in Hong Kong late this month, the International Gas Union (IGU) Council 2026 and the “Empowering a Sustainable Future” Summit will offer an essential platform for c...

Hong Kong’s private, semi-private and international schools have been given the green light to raise tuition fees by an average of 4.75 per cent, 4.07 per cent and 4 per cent, respectively. The Education Bureau said on Tuesday it had received applications from 185 schools as of August 31 to adjust tuition fees for the 2026-27 academic year. They comprised 49 semi-private schools under the governme...

Four Indonesian seamen who were kidnapped and held hostage by Somali pirates aboard an oil tanker for more than five months arrived back home on Tuesday. The men were among 17 crew rescued a week ago when maritime police from the semi-autonomous region of Puntland in northern Somalia stormed the Palau-flagged MT Honour 25 tanker that was hijacked in April. Before the vessel could be recaptured, th...

British police on Tuesday arrested a 22-year-old man in London on suspicion of a terror offence over a security incident at a US-run military airbase in England that authorities have linked to Iran. The arrest is the seventh in connection with a suspected plot against RAF Fairford, located 160km (100 miles) west of London, which has been used by American bombers to strike Iran during this year’s w...

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that Iceland had long been a “critical outpost” for security during a visit to the island, as his country pushed for greater US influence in the Arctic region. His trip comes after US President Donald Trump has stirred up the power balance in the region by making threats to buy or annex Greenland. The United States signed a security pact with Denma...

Risks to Southeast Asia’s energy supplies are multiplying faster than nations are coming up with solutions to meet rapidly rising demand for electricity, according to an International Energy Agency report released on Tuesday. Southeast Asia has a seemingly insatiable appetite for energy, but the region is now in a pinch as energy costs rise, partly due to the Iran war. Fast-growing Southeast Asian...

Chinese researchers have developed a “lifelike” shape-changing hydrogel they say could provide a platform for next-generation developments, such as flexible tissue engineering scaffolds, brain-computer interfaces and humanlike robots. Inspired by living organisms, the team created a light-triggered system called STERS, which uses liquid metal particles to generate slow, self-sustaining chemical re...

Hong Kong and mainland Chinese residents will have to register with immigration authorities on both sides of the border to use automated “joint clearance” channels at the revamped Huanggang Port crossing, with around 100,000 travellers a day expected to use the control point when operations begin. Hong Kong’s Immigration Department would deploy sufficient manpower to help passengers register at th...

A Spanish judge on Tuesday lifted an arrest warrant for exiled former Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, paving the way for his return to Spain ahead of a general election in November. Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena made the move after Spain’s Constitutional Court backed extending a 2024 amnesty law to include the crime of embezzlement. The law was aimed at easing tensions in the weal...

Two combat-tested American drones could become part of Taiwan’s expanding unmanned arsenal as the island seeks to build a “drone shield” against the People’s Liberation Army. California-based defence technology company Aevex Aerospace is working with Taiwan’s Coretronic Intelligent Robotics Corporation (CIRC) to produce its Vandal and Onyx drones locally, combining lessons drawn from the war in Uk...