China Tightens Drone and Tech Controlsactive

Scheduled drone performances at tourist attractions and events across China have been grounded as the country steps up scrutiny of low-altitude aviation, although in many cases no clear reason was given for the cancellation. Tourist attractions and event organisers in 11 provinces and regions, including Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Shandong, Guangdong and Hainan, took the unusual step last week of announcing that drone shows scheduled from Friday onwards were cancelled. By Monday, none had announced...

DeepSeek's participation in Unitree's Shanghai STAR Market IPO was made at the corporate level, not personally by founder Liang Wenfeng or a fund associated with him.

DeepSeek has invested CNY140.8 million (approx. US$20.8 million) in Unitree's Shanghai IPO and agreed to jointly develop AI models for humanoid robots, linking one of China's highest-profile AI developers with the country's leading robotics contender at a critical stage of Unitree's public-market debut.

Rescuers continued searching on Sunday for a nine-year-old boy who has been missing since he was swept away by a giant wave in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang. The incident, in the coastal town of Shitang, happened on Friday afternoon – a time when a typhoon warning was already in place as Typhoon Dolphin headed towards the province. Local officials warned that high tides, rapid currents and dangerous whirlpools had made the search efforts very difficult, according to media...

A hiker collapsed and died in the Tai Po countryside on Sunday afternoon as Hong Kong endured its hottest temperatures since records began 142 years ago. Police said they received a report at 2.17pm that a man in his sixties had been discovered unconscious on the Plover Cove Reservoir Country Trail. Firefighters and rescue teams assembled at the reservoir dam before heading up the mountain, with the Government Flying Service also dispatched. The man was located but was pronounced dead at the...

About eight per cent of homeowners at the fire-ravaged Wang Fuk Court in Hong Kong have yet to accept the government’s buy-back offer, which is set to expire at the end of this month. Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said on Sunday that 91.9 per cent of owners had submitted acceptance letters, while 65.7 per cent of owners had already signed sale and purchase agreements with the government. Speaking to the media after a town hall meeting to gather views on the city’s first five-year plan and...

Typhoon Dolphin is expected to make landfall along the coast of Zhejiang and Fujian provinces between Sunday night and Monday morning, prompting Shanghai to cancel nearly 60 per cent of flights to and from the metropolis on Sunday. China’s National Meteorological Centre issued a red alert for Typhoon Dolphin at 10am on Sunday, when the centre of the storm was over the southern East China Sea, about 215km (134 miles) east of Wenzhou, Zhejiang. The typhoon is projected to move towards the west and...

Hong Kong’s Northern Metropolis will provide an opportunity to diversify the housing ladder for young people, the city’s leader has said, while also pledging to create a more conducive environment for the cultural sector to build a globally recognised “Hong Kong brand”. “The government has been diversifying the housing ladder,” Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said at the second town hall meeting held at Kowloon Tong Government Primary School on Sunday. “The Northern Metropolis gives us an...

"Women hold up half the sky." This iconic quote attributed to Mao Zedong has been central to Beijing’s messaging about gender equality for decades. It was not just a slogan. After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, the Communist Party passed a Marriage Law that banned arranged marriages, abolished foot-binding, and encouraged women to enter education and the workplace. But the party’s stance on where women belong has shifted over the decades, according to a new study. To gauge the...

A medical team in Japan had to perform an unprecedented task when, during surgery, an earthquake of nearly seven magnitude struck the city of Kumamoto. The reaction of the professionals was recorded on one of the operating room security cameras. The incident occurred on July 28, when an earthquake of 6.8 magnitude and ten meters deep hit the Asian country, leaving 39 dead and 170 injured. At the moment the seismic movement arrived, around 4:30 p.m. that day, a medical team at Kumamoto General Hospital was performing abdominal surgery. In recent hours, images of their reaction have been released. According to what can be seen in the video, the operation seems to proceed smoothly until the entire structure of the operating room begins to shake. Only seconds later, all the supplies and medical materials in the room started moving from side to side. Five people were involved in the operation, and two of them fell due to the intensity of the earthquake. Meanwhile, the two apparent surgeons tried to hold the stretcher where the patient was to prevent it from moving and suffering irreversible damage. In the midst of the impact, and for a second, the hospital completely lost power, but then regained it. Once the tremors passed, the medical assistants began to lift all the fallen materials…

The US accused China on Saturday of using "dubious" pretexts to press its disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea by enforcing a nature reserve at Scarborough Shoal and barring Filipino fishermen from entering the contested waters.

US State Department accuses China of attempting to deny Filipino vessels access to fishing grounds in contested area.

A cigarette butt discarded without extinguishing on a pile of combustible materials is the most likely origin of the fire that in November 2025 left 168 dead in the Wang Fuk Court residential complex, in the Tai Po district of Hong Kong. This is stated in the latest report of the independent committee investigating the incident, released this Saturday. The document rules out an intentional origin. After eliminating other sources of ignition—including electrical short circuits and spontaneous combustion—the experts concluded that it was an accidental fire. Lee Wing-man, head of the Forensic Sciences Division of the Hong Kong Government Laboratory, presented photographs showing that the exterior walls of the Wang Cheong block suffered significantly more damage than the interior walls, with concrete detachment caused by prolonged high temperatures. According to Lee, this pattern of damage demonstrates that the fire spread from the outside to the inside of the building, rather than originating within a residence. The exact starting point, however, does not seem clear. One report places the focus in the light well of the building's podium. Another, based on the text disseminated by the Xinhua agency, locates it on an exterior platform adjacent to two apartments, covered by up to two meters of debris, including safety nets and foam panels used to cover the windows. In the images under analysis…

The devastating fire that left 168 dead last November in a residential complex in Hong Kong, the deadliest in the former British colony in nearly eight decades, started from an unextinguished cigarette butt thrown outside one of the buildings, according to the latest official report. The local newspaper The Standard echoes this Saturday the dossier published by the independent committee trying to clarify the causes of the fire, in which the head of Forensic Science at the Hong Kong Government Laboratory, Lee Wing-man, states that the damage to the facade of the Wang Cheong building - where the fire originated - would demonstrate that the flames spread from the outside. In the analyzed photos of the point where the flames are believed to have started, "large quantities" of packaging materials such as cardboard or plastic bags, as well as multiple cigarette butts, can be seen; the experts concluded that these were the most probable origin after ruling out other possible causes such as electrical short circuits or even spontaneous combustion. Thus, the committee, which has been investigating the incident since December, concludes that the cause of the fire was accidental, having found no other sources of ignition. The fire began in the afternoon of November 26, 2025, while the buildings - erected in 1984 and capable of housing 4,600 residents - were surrounded by scaffolding and construction tarps due to rehabilitation work and...

The world might be dividing into rival camps and competing trade blocs, but international capital flows remain footloose and fancy free. In so doing, they pose a threat to what remains of stability in the real economy. A good example of this growing potential for international contagion is the influence of the weak yen on global stock prices. The Japanese currency is expected to remain weak for the foreseeable future – despite recent official intervention in foreign exchange markets by Japan and...

Flights serving eastern China were disrupted on Saturday as Typhoon Dolphin approached the coast, with some services cancelled and airlines offering flexible rebooking and refund options for affected passengers. Most of the typhoon-related flight disruptions have been reported at airports in the cities of Ningbo, Wenzhou, Taizhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai, according to Chinese media. Some travellers also reported receiving notifications that flights to and from Shanghai on Sunday and Monday would...

A 111-year-old grandmother in eastern China has captured the attention of social media by attributing her remarkable longevity to simple habits, such as viewing housework as a form of daily exercise. Wang Gaiying lives in Rugao, Jiangsu province, which is renowned as one of the country’s “longevity capitals.” As of February, the area was home to 672 centenarians, according to the Jianghai Evening News. Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Soil Science in Nanjing have...

Taiwan's hardware manufacturing sector leads globally, but the country's level of investment in cybersecurity software and identity governance still ranks in the back half of the Asia-Pacific region, SailPoint Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau managing director Simon Tai told DIGITIMES in an interview. As the tech industry speeds up digital transformation, remote collaboration, outsourced workflows, and AI agents are increasingly common in enterprise operations, shifting the focus of corporate cybersecurity defenses.

Security concerns, control over fishing rights and rising living costs are shaping Iceland's debate over whether to restart talks on joining the European Union.

Weak figures give some cover to central bank’s July decision to hold rates

Job cuts in July were unexpected, revealing a weakening labor market as the unemployment rate fell to 4.1%.

Lacklustre figure prompts traders to scale back bets on Fed rate rises

The long-awaited initial public offering of Unitree Robotics, which values the Hangzhou-based firm at 60.99 billion yuan (US$9 billion), is set to serve as a valuation benchmark for China’s booming embodied-AI sector, buoyed by retail investor excitement and high-profile AI backers like DeepSeek. Widely billed as “mainland China’s first humanoid stock”, Unitree has priced its IPO on Shanghai’s Star Market at 150.8 yuan per share, according to a filing released Thursday evening. The firm will...

After deadly tremors a decade ago, Kumamoto built earthquake-resistant buildings and even trained locals in search and rescue.

China’s export growth maintained robust in July, though at a slower pace from June, on persistently strong global demand for artificial-intelligence products.

For more than a decade, president has been fixated on trying to undermine a key constitutional right With a pair of executive orders on Thursday, Donald Trump has tried – once again – to undermine the guarantee of birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the US constitution and reaffirmed by the supreme court just five weeks ago. The orders attempt to broaden the categories of children who would be ineligible for automatic US citizenship and ban so-called “birth tourism”, which the president claimed is practiced by “hundreds of thousands” of people. Continue reading...

The US president's move comes just two months after the Supreme Court ruled that his first executive order on citizenship was unconstitutional.

Plus: White House AI guidelines exempt U. S. open models from government review, and U. K. regulator eases listing rules

Valar Atomics, a three-year-old microreactor developer that has a forged a close relationship with the Trump administration, has raised $1 billion in its Series B funding round as investors increasingly bet that the White House’s overhaul of nuclear regulations will clear the way for the country’s first big atomic buildout in more than half a century. This week, the Torrance, […] The post US microreactor startup Valar Atomics raises $1B appeared first on Asia Times.

Foreign minister sets red lines ahead of referendum this month on reopening talks to join bloc

The White House, however, insisted on Wednesday that the president was never in danger.

A Hong Kong lawmaker has warned that an unfolding crypto scam run by a coffee investment venture based in Vietnam could involve more than 1,000 victims, as an investor reported losses of HK$14 million (US$1.73 million) across her team. The warning came as police said that total reported losses tied to the syndicate operating as Fun Coffee have climbed to HK$104 million, with 225 complaints received since last month. Six people earlier arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud – a man and...

A rare joint intervention to stabilise the yen has given US-Japan relations a near-term lift, according to analysts. But whether that goodwill endures depends on how long the currency’s rebound can survive mounting market and policy pressures. Friday’s operation, Washington’s first yen purchase since 1998, came after the Japanese currency had slumped to a four-decade low of almost 164 yen to the US dollar. The intervention briefly lifted the yen to a three-month high of 155.2 on Friday before it...

The underwater cables that play a vital role supporting the international digital economy are increasingly vulnerable to attack from low-cost drones, Chinese military researchers have warned. They said the seabed had long been viewed as a strategic “blind spot” due to the difficulty of exploration and the high cost of controlling it, but was becoming a “new arena for great power rivalry”. “The barrier to entry for undersea warfare is lowering,” Shi Guanglei and Shi Haiming from the National...

Gold to German Florian Wellbrock. The blue: "The answers ahead of Los Angeles are coming"

On the 2nd, there was a report of a suspicious person at President Trump's golf course in California, Western United States, and he was detained on suspicion of carrying a concealed firearm. President Trump is scheduled to visit this golf course on the 4th, and the Secret Service responsible for presidential security is investigating the background.

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday accused China of fueling the growing nationwide backlash against AI data centers, claiming Beijing is promoting resistance because the United States is pulling ahead in the global artificial intelligence race. "A big part of it is China," Trump told Fox News during a California visit focused on the economy ahead of the midterm elections in November. "Look, whoever wins the AI race is going to win AI. It’s bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than maybe...

The arrest happened shortly before President Trump was due to host a fundraising dinner at the golf course.

The move deepens a clash with the Trump administration ahead of Brazil’s October election.

US customs officials reimburse about 60% of the levies that were struck down by the Supreme Court

Taiwan's major semiconductor company TSMC, which has expanded into Kikuyo Town, Kumamoto Prefecture, announced that it will donate 250 million yen to support the recovery and reconstruction of the disaster-affected area.

Clashes between the United States and European Union are becoming the “new normal” with competition over tech regulations at the “core”, according to an analysis published by a leading Chinese think tank. Guo Mingxu, head of the European Economy Programme at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, cited a recent row about hefty fines imposed on US tech giants for breaching European law as an example of how the relationship was shifting from being a collaborative partnership...

President Trump's tariff policies have faced criticism for failing to reduce the trade deficit, hurting U. S. businesses, and providing insufficient revenue to offset the federal deficit.

Hong Kong and Macau police have arrested eight people in a crackdown on an investment scam syndicate that cheated more than 200 people out of nearly HK$100 million (US$12.75 million) by promoting itself as a pioneer of “kinetic coffee philosophy”. Operating under the name Fun Coffee, the syndicate established a presence in Hong Kong last year. It says on its website that it is a coffee investment enterprise based in Phu Quoc, Vietnam, with assets of more than US$1 billion and a team of more than...

Japan’s immigration agency on Tuesday proposed tougher requirements for granting permanent residency to foreigners, including requiring applicants to maintain income above the average for Japanese households and a certain level of projected pension benefits. The proposed guidelines are part of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s push to create an “orderly society” in which Japanese and foreign nationals coexist while cracking down on illegal activities. The Immigration Services Agency will solicit...

A group of 25 Democratic-led U. S. states has filed a joint lawsuit against Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs. The president signed off on a new set of trade levies a couple of weeks ago, imposing duties of between 10% and 12.5% on more than 90 countries, arguing they failed to comply with rules on forced labor. Seguir leyendo

As China enters the peak of summer heat, an increasing number of youth believe they have found a solution to fatigue, oily skin, and low energy: qushi, or eliminating dampness from the body. Rooted in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the centuries-old concept of “dampness” dates back about 2,000 years to the Huangdi Neijing, one of the earliest foundational texts of Chinese medicine. Recently, it has evolved into a viral wellness trend, inspiring remedies ranging from cupping and herbal foot...

TSMC has announced that Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing (JASM), its subsidiary in Kikuyo, Kumamoto Prefecture, has resumed normal operations following production disruptions caused by the recent Kumamoto earthquake.

The island opens up about American role in training troops for self-defense.

A group of 25 Democratic-led states sued President Donald Trump’s administration Monday to block the latest round of tariffs imposed on goods from dozens of countries. The lawsuit in the U. S. Court of International Trade marks the latest in a growing list of legal actions that accuse the White House of exceeding its authority when it used Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 — which allows a president to impose tariffs over unfair trade practices — to penalize countries over the alleged use of forced labor after prior trade penalties had either expired or been invalidated by the Supreme Court. “The Plaintiff States oppose forced labor in all its forms and support protections for workers around the globe,” the states said in their lawsuit. “But the Administration cannot use forced labor as a pretext to continue its illegal tariff scheme.” Monday’s complaint contests tariffs of 10 or 12.5 percent the administration slapped on goods from 60 economies, including China and the European Union, that took effect last month. “President Trump is so intent on raising the cost of living for Americans that he is willing to break law after law after law to do so,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose state is among the plaintiffs, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Tariffs are taxes,” Bonta said. “And the American people cannot and should not shoulder the extra costs that come from the President’s failed and illegal economic policy — no matter how much the President wants them to.” The effort to block Trump’s third crack at rebuilding his global tariff regime comes after the Supreme Court in February knocked down tariffs the president imposed on countries under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and after the Court of International Trade ruled in May that the Section 122 surcharge Trump imposed in their place was also illegal. The trade court’s May ruling was stayed, allowing the duties to keep being collected pending appeal. Those tariffs expired last month. The White House defended the tariffs, saying the administration was using its “lawful authority” to crack down on practices that burden American commerce. “A foreign country’s failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor is unreasonable and burdens U. S. commerce, including American workers, and must be addressed,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement. “Section 301 tariffs have proven to be a legally durable tool since the President’s first term, and they remain so now.” The lawsuit also accuses the U. S. of bypassing country-specific consultations and failing to explain why duties on countries with such varied forced-labor measures were set in a “nearly uniform manner.” And it comes on the heels of lawsuits from two groups of small businesses that challenged the tariffs the day they took effect: one led by Burlap & Barrel, a New York spice importer, and a separate suit led by Learning Resources, an educational-products maker that was the named plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that invalidated Trump’s IEEPA tariffs. Background: The dispute centers on Trump’s use of Section 301, an authority widely viewed as far more legally durable than the other powers Trump tapped to impose tariffs. Duties from one Section 301 investigation into China during Trump’s first term have now lasted more than seven years. But Section 301’s durability does not give the president unlimited discretion, because the law requires the USTR to identify specific foreign acts, policies or practices and show that they burden or restrict U. S. commerce. Matthew Seligman, founder of Grayhawk Law and an attorney representing importers seeking tariff refunds, said the states’ challenge is strong but faces a harder legal path than the challenges to the IEEPA and Section 122 tariffs. “Unlike those prior cases, this case will turn on how much the courts defer to the administration’s seemingly pretextual rationalization that these tariffs are aimed at combatting forced labor,” Seligman said. “Typically, courts grant substantial deference to the executive branch about these sorts of policy judgments — especially when it implicates foreign affairs —but, as is so often the case with the Trump administration, this case will really test the limits of that judicial deference,” he added.

Prime minister Sanae Takaichi visited Kumamoto prefecture almost a week after a magnitude 7.1 quake hit, killing 38 people Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has visited the south-western prefecture of Kumamoto, where recovery efforts are being hampered by heat and a lack of water supplies, almost a week after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake killed dozens and caused widespread damage. Thirty-eight people died during the quake, including one person who died of apparent heatstroke while taking shelter in a car in hot weather, officials said on Monday. Continue reading...

I admit I arrived a bit late to comment on The Odyssey. I suppose it's because I have young children. I don't go to the movies much. But what a feat its director, Christopher Nolan, has achieved! Elon Musk didn't understand what this movie was about. But this movie does understand Musk. It understands who we are becoming and who we have become, and points to a way out. Trickery is fundamental in The Odyssey. In the myth, Odysseus is a trickster. At the beginning of the story, he is described as a man of many paths, many cunning tricks, or many turns. According to the translator, he is a clever, cunning, and complex man. He is a man of appetites and contradictions, longing to return home but preferring to stay abroad, yearning for his wife but unable to resist seducing goddesses. Odysseus is never just one thing; he is always many. Matt Damon is no trickster. I thought he would be the problem with Nolan's Odyssey. Amid the controversy on the right over the choice of Lupita Nyong'o and Elliott Page, it was Damon's selection as Odysseus that I couldn't reconcile with The Odyssey. Damon often seems to me a man of principles, a man who gets up early, follows a strict diet, and rarely drinks more than one glass of wine before bed. That is not Odysseus. But Nolan wasn't looking for a trickster. His Odysseus is something else. One could say that was Nolan's first trick. I want to detect...

About 500 Hong Kong students are getting a taste of army life, with the PLA garrison launching its annual summer camp to instil patriotism and discipline, and teach military skills, among young people. Among the new recruits is Lo Wan-lung, a Form One student at Salesian English School who is attending the two-week camp for the first time. Attracted by the chance of weapons-related training, the young military enthusiast said he was curious to experience holding weapons during mock shooting...

Local farmers have suffered six-figure losses because of extreme downpours since May, with a farm in northern Hong Kong flooded for seven hours during heavy rain on Sunday. Leung Yat-shun of Shun Sum Yuen farm in Yuen Long said on Monday that efforts to grow tens of thousands of sunflowers had been a washout since May, with precipitation in July alone having already surpassed typical levels by 23 per cent. “This year has dealt a severe blow to the farming industry,” Leung said. “It has been a...

Renesas Electronics plans to gradually end production at its Takasaki factory in Japan over the next two to three years while strengthening research and development there. The move reflects wider supply-chain strain in legacy semiconductor manufacturing and could affect customers, workers, and global users of analog and power chips.

Two women who died in an explosion at an Aeon shopping centre following a powerful earthquake in Japan’s Kumamoto prefecture last week were instructed by their employer to return inside to put sales proceeds in a safe, according to the company. Two executives of Habita, which operates the variety store where the women died, said on Sunday they apologised to the family of one of the victims, 22-year-old Kurumi Otake, at her wake and handed over a written account of events. Otake evacuated from...

On Friday, July 31, the US Treasury jointly intervened with Japan to prop up the yen for the first time in nearly three decades. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York took the unusual step of selling euros to buy yen on behalf of the US Treasury.

A doctor sees a patient with persistent pain. With the best intentions, they prescribe a medication. Since this causes side effects, they prescribe a second drug to mitigate them. Then a third to correct the effects of the second. After a few months, the patient is no longer being treated for their original ailment, but for the consequences of the treatments. Something similar often happens in public policy. The aim is to improve workers' well-being through regulations that increase the cost of formal hiring — high minimum wages, burdensome severance pay, social security obligations, and other employment-related costs — but when these reduce hiring, increase informality, or limit the growth of wages for those with lower productivity, the response is often to add new subsidies, exceptions, or compensations to correct the effects of previous measures. We all want better wages and a higher quality of life. The question is whether we are treating the right illness. A recent analysis by The Economist warns that an increasing proportion of higher education students in developed countries lack the necessary skills to succeed in complex jobs. Some concerning examples are: at elite institutions like the University of California, up to 30% of students arrive with serious preparation deficits, forcing the pro…

An elderly woman who developed heatstroke while taking shelter in a car was the latest fatality from a powerful earthquake that struck Japan’s southwestern prefecture of Kumamoto last week, officials said on Sunday as concerns over heat-related illnesses grow in an area that is also suffering extreme temperatures. The woman in her seventies with heatstroke was found in a car, Kumamoto officials said, as they raised the death toll from the quake to 36. The magnitude 7.1 hit Kumamoto prefecture on...

London-listed businesses face a surge in unsolicited public offers that aim to pressure boards into acceptance

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has said his annual policy address will serve as a progress report on the city’s five-year plan, describing the first simultaneous consultation of the two documents as “especially meaningful”. In his first townhall meeting, held on Sunday as part of a public consultation exercise to gather feedback on Hong Kong’s first five-year plan and his fifth annual policy address, Lee pledged to consider residents’ views. The city leader met more than 130 residents at South...

Taiwan's GDP is soaring on back of US imports of AI chips, but experts warn that problems could arise with Trump, China.

Having marked its 99th anniversary on August 1, the People’s Liberation Army is now just one year away from its centenary goals, with its evolution highlighting the past, present and future of China’s military strategy. In the third part of a series, Yuanyue Dang and William Zheng examine how Beijing leans on Mao-era doctrines and anti-corruption drives to guarantee absolute party control over the armed forces. In December 1929, then Communist revolutionary Mao Zedong led a pivotal meeting in...

The movie Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan and produced by Universal Pictures, surpassed 700 million dollars in global box office revenue after its release on July 17, 2026. The launch affects the international film industry and distribution markets, establishing the title as one of the biggest commercial successes of the year, according to data collected by Box Office Mojo and reports from specialized media. According to figures from Box Office Mojo, the film achieved a domestic gross of 344.5 million dollars and an international gross of 362.6 million dollars, totaling 707.1 million dollars worldwide. The feature film, with an estimated budget of 250 million dollars, was distributed in theaters by Universal Pictures and was shown in 81 international markets, according to a report published by Variety and validated by reports from Brandsynario and NST. The production is based on the Homeric epic and follows Odysseus's journey after the Trojan War. The project marks Christopher Nolan's return to epic cinema and features a cast led by Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Robert Pattinson. According to 3DVF, the film exceeded in two weeks the total revenue obtained by Oppenheimer in the domestic market, positioning itself only behind The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises within the director's filmography by earnings in the US…

Hong Kong authorities are gauging public feedback on a possible shift in the supply ratio of public rental flats to subsidised sale homes to an even 50:50 split, the housing minister has said. Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho Wing-yin told a planning forum on Saturday that the total supply of public housing would reach 196,000 flats over the next five years. Under measures outlined in Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s 2024 policy address, the Housing Authority – Hong Kong’s biggest public...

The Hong Kong garrison of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) celebrated the 99th anniversary of the military’s founding on Saturday with a reception at the barracks on Stonecutters Island, with a top officer pledging to expand its role in promoting patriotic and defence education across the city. Speaking at the reception at the Ngong Shuen Chau Barracks, garrison political commissar Rear Admiral Lai Ruxin said troops would resolutely obey the command of the Communist Party of China, while...

Japan’s Kumamoto prefectural government said on Saturday it has ended rescue operations at an Aeon shopping centre where seven workers died in an explosion shortly after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck the southwestern Japan prefecture four days earlier. Officials said there should be no more people unaccounted for after local police and firefighters, joined by the Self-Defence Forces and others, searched the shopping centre in Kashima. Its second floor collapsed in a possible gas explosion...

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) carried out a missile test in the Pacific last month. The July 6 launch – in which a dummy warhead travelled 8,000km (5,000 miles) – was China’s first confirmed submarine-based missile test since 1982, and the first known firing from a nuclear-powered submarine. The type of missile used has not been officially confirmed, but a report in the Global Times – a newspaper owned by the party mouthpiece People’s Daily – suggested it was a JL-3, which can be fired from...

Kumamoto faces a “double disaster,” as rescuers work in 100 degree heat, and shelters with limited air-conditioning put displaced people at risk for heatstroke.

A political row is threatening to undermine Taiwan’s efforts to increase its stockpiles of military drones and has raised questions about the future of its domestic manufacturers. On Monday, lawmakers failed to agree on competing versions of a bill to buy and develop military drones after six hours of debate. While the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the opposition broadly agree on the need to expand the island’s arsenal of drones, they disagree about who should oversee the...

Factories churning out servers for data centres are pushing exports to record levels

When asked about the business environment in China, about 60% of Japanese companies operating there responded that they are satisfied, but a survey by an organization of Japanese companies revealed that the tightening of export controls on both military and civilian items has led to effects such as prolonged customs inspections even for general cargo.

A single canned ingredient imported from the Netherlands has quietly fuelled Hong Kong’s daily hustle for the past 85 years, evolving from a simple dairy product into the soul of local diner culture. For decades, the Black and White brand of full-cream evaporated milk has been a crucial element in Hong Kong-style milk tea culture and craftsmanship, giving this popular drink in the city’s cha chaan teng – local cafes – its signature fragrance, thickness and smoothness. “Everything starts from a...

According to the agency, the purpose of the reform is to ensure joint actions of the US and Japan’s armies in the event of war and to expand the capabilities of US troops to conduct independent operations in the region

The UK’s approval of a new Chinese embassy in London was lawful, High Court judges have ruled in a decision that could mark the end of a long-running saga that’s strained Britain’s ties with China.

The parents of a Hong Kong infant are applying for a legal order to review welfare authorities’ decision to remove the child from their care, as they expressed “fear and anger” about arrangements for their son, Danny, to receive “medical intervention” against their will. Danny’s father, Tsang Wai-bong, and mother, Kwan Pui-sin, said they had already requested that the child not be vaccinated, adding that the decision to remove the child from their custody should not be based on their stance...

The magnitude 7.1 quake has killed 34 people and left six more seriously injured.

Hirosuke Shimada's house was almost unscathed from this week's earthquake in southwestern Japan, but the violent tremor left him, his wife, and their three daughters too scared to sleep inside, forcing them to live in a tent in the front yard. On the other side of the city, carpenter Makoto Sawatari watched the crumbling plaster, broken tiles, and cracked windows, wondering how much it would cost to rebuild his house in the coastal city of Yatsushiro, a decade after another major earthquake damaged it. The magnitude 7.1 earthquake on Tuesday claimed at least 25 lives, but for thousands of survivors, especially those living near the epicenter in places like Yatsushiro, the psychological and economic aftermath will last long after the initial disaster. "It was a feeling of 'not again'," said Sawatari, 52, as he assessed the repair costs under the sweltering summer heat, while his wife and other family members cleaned the interior. "We spent about 10 years leaving everything as we wanted." He estimates the bill could exceed 10 million yen ($61,000), more than double what he spent after the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake, which killed more than 260 people and damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes. A decade later, his lively and historic city is plagued with collapsed houses. Most of the...

This decision sets the country apart from European monarchies and contributes to the decline in Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's popularity in late July polls.