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News - South China Morning Post

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Hong Kong man arrested for allegedly groping...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

Hong Kong police have arrested a 65-year-old man in connection with a suspected indecent assault case in Mong Kok hours after footage appeared online showing a passenger harassing a schoolgirl sitting in front of him on a bus. Police said officers intercepted the suspect at the boundary checkpoint of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. The victim, 17, is understood to be a Form Three student. The incident took place at around noon on Friday as the KMB bus was stopping near an intersection of

UK’s Keir Starmer says Russia could attack Nato...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

Russia could attack a Nato country within four years according to western intelligence assessments, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned on Friday. He made the comments as he pledged his government would publish a long-delayed defence investment plan before next month’s Nato summit. “It is our intelligence assessment and the assessment of other countries in Nato that there could be an attack by Russia on Nato as soon as 2030,” Starmer said. “So you can see the urgency and the priority that...

Hong Kong ideal platform for Uzbek firms to spread...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

Hong Kong serves as an ideal platform to help Uzbek enterprises expand through its world-class professional services and international business environment, the city’s leader has told the Central Asian country’s prime minister as he wrapped up a five-day regional tour. Sources said Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu on Friday also invited Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov to be a keynote speaker at the coming Belt and Road Summit to be held in Hong Kong in September. It was understood that during a...

Most Asia-Pacific firms use AI for tasks without...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

While a wave of job cuts across Asia’s finance and other industries due to wider use of artificial intelligence has spurred concerns, a new study shows that the technology’s net impact on employment is not as clear-cut. Recruiters and industry observers say many companies are adding AI-related roles without having to lay off workers. A study by professional services firm Aon released on Wednesday shows that 74 per cent of 504 companies surveyed across industries in the Asia-Pacific region

Xi Jinping’s ‘chief of staff’ Cai Qi takes Central...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

Cai Qi, the fifth-ranked member in the Communist Party’s hierarchy, has been picked to head the Central Party School, the top training ground for cadres. Cai, 70, sits on the elite Politburo Standing Committee and is secretary of the party’s secretariat as well as director of the party’s general office. Responsible for daily operations of the party’s nerve centre, Cai is often referred to as President Xi Jinping’s chief of staff. His new post at the party school means that he will also

Summer most likely window for US attack on Cuba,...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

Any US military attack on Cuba would most likely take place this summer, according to a Chinese defence technology company closely tracking US military movements around the island. The assessment by Jingan Technology, a civilian start-up founded in 2021 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, said that if the US were to use force against Cuba, it would most likely take the form of a rapid “decapitation and paralysis” operation aimed at regime change, rather than a large-scale invasion. The company

China launches space computing hub as SpaceX gears up...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

China is ramping up its bets on space-based artificial intelligence computing with the launch of a state-backed research institute in Beijing, accelerating a frontier tech race with the US just as Elon Musk’s SpaceX eyes a record-shattering US$75 billion market debut to fund its own orbital AI ambitions. The establishment of the Beijing Space Intelligent Computing Research Institute marks a major step in the superpowers’ AI rivalry, which is increasingly extending beyond Earth as terrestrial

Norway crown princess awaits lung transplant

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit has been placed on a waiting list for a lung transplant after a significant deterioration in her health that likely gave her only a year left to live without the surgery, her doctors said on Friday. The 52-year-old wife of Crown Prince Haakon, the ‌heir to the Norwegian throne, was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in 2018, a chronic disease that causes scarring in the lungs and leads to a reduced oxygen uptake. Oslo’s University Hospital in December said

Do China-Russia trade payment frictions show limits...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

China and Russia have largely moved away from the US dollar in bilateral trade settlement, with most transactions now settled in their own currencies. Yet cross-border payment bottlenecks persist as Chinese banks carefully manage their exposure to Washington’s sanctions regime, according to a senior Russian banker. At the heart of the friction is a stark balancing act facing Chinese lenders: how to ease trade with Russia while safeguarding access to the US dollar-based global financial system

EU needs a ‘dedicated instrument’ to unwind China...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

The EU’s trade chief has confirmed publicly for the first time that the bloc is considering a specific rule to compel companies to diversify their suppliers, as Europe looks to unwind its dependencies on China. “Diversification now requires a dedicated instrument,” Trade and Economic Security Commissioner Maros Sefcovic said on Friday, adding that he would model it on the manner in which the EU reduced its reliance on Russian energy following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “Recent

US adds 172,000 jobs in May, strongly beating...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

US employment growth surged in May, beating market expectations, while the unemployment rate remained steady, government data showed on Friday, with the labour market in the world’s largest economy sustaining recent gains. “Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 172,000 in May, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.3 per cent,” the US Bureau of Labor Statistics said. Economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal had expected job growth of 80,000...

Chinese researchers claim breakthrough in training...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

A team of Chinese researchers has claimed a breakthrough in training robots in real-world home environments, tackling a long-standing data bottleneck in the field and potentially accelerating the adoption of robots at home. Kairos-HomeWorld was the world’s first unified framework capable of generating coherent, accurate and simulation-ready home environments using simple text prompts, according to researchers from Ace Robotics, a start-up backed by Hong Kong-listed artificial intelligence...

Thailand to join UN maritime arbitration with Cambodia

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

Thailand said on Friday it will join a UN arbitration process chosen by Cambodia to resolve a festering maritime boundary dispute, but put on hold for now other two-way efforts to settle their contested borders. This week Cambodia launched a compulsory conciliation process under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), after Bangkok decided last month to unilaterally end a ‌2001 framework pact for talks on a disputed maritime belt. For more than 25 years, both have

Hong Kong tutor who plotted to murder flight...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

A Hong Kong private tutor found guilty of orchestrating a failed plot to murder his business partner eight years ago has secured a three-year reduction to his 27-year jail sentence, but lost an appeal against his conviction. In a written judgment on Friday, the Court of Appeal found that the sentence imposed on Stephen So Hon-to was too high, despite the egregious nature of the offence and the need to ensure a “continuing danger to society” would be removed from society for “a very

Trump is turning allies and partners into friends of...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

China-Canada relations are undergoing a thaw after years of estrangement and recrimination. China and India are seeking a rapprochement despite deep-seated distrust and sometimes violent border disputes. Both cases share a common element: Donald Trump. Meanwhile, following the US president’s visit to Beijing, his defence secretary Pete Hegseth avoided mentioning Taiwan at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. He sounded almost conciliatory by hailing ties with Beijing as “better than they’ve...

Asia’s marine pledges face credibility test at global...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

Asia’s governments have spent years promising to protect the seas that feed their people, shelter their coasts and support some of the world’s richest marine life. World Ocean Day on Monday will put those promises back in the public spotlight, but the more consequential test will come days later in Mombasa, Kenya, where governments, donors, companies and conservation groups will gather for the 11th annual Our Ocean Conference from June 16 to 18. The conference has become a key stage for

Chinese EVs reclaim momentum as tech upgrades,...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

International marques have failed to sustain the market share they regained in China early this year after consumers fell back in love with electric vehicles (EVs), a sector where domestic brands continue to enjoy an overwhelming advantage. Foreign carmakers from Volkswagen to Toyota held a combined 30.3 per cent share of the Chinese automotive market in April, with about 418,140 vehicles handed to local customers, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). In the

Huawei chips refine DeepSeek model in major leap for...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

A research team that includes Huawei Technologies says it has successfully used the firm’s Ascend 910C chips to complete post-training for the DeepSeek-V4-Pro model, marking a major step forward as China’s semiconductor industry tries to leap from supporting basic AI inference to more complex model training amid tightening US sanctions. While Chinese chipmakers have found success in supporting AI inference – the relatively simple process of running an already-finished model to answer user...

Chinese black hole-hunting scientist Dai Liang quits...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

A physicist who was awarded a fellowship reserved for the “brightest young scientists” in the US and Canada for his work hunting for black holes has returned to China. Dai Liang, who received a Sloan Research Fellowship for physics in 2021, recently took up a professorship at Fudan University in Shanghai and joined the Fudan Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics. The fellowships were established in 1955 by former General Motors chief executive Alfred Sloan to support early-career researchers...

US Senate passes US$70 billion ICE funding; fails to...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2026/06/05

The US Senate handed President Donald Trump ⁠a victory early on Friday morning, passing a bill that would provide the Department of Homeland Security with an additional US$70 billion for immigration enforcement and sending it to the House of Representatives for final consideration. The Senate voted 52-47 to approve the legislation, with no support from Democrats and no provision to ban a US$1.8 billion “anti-weaponisation” fund that could compensate Trump’s political allies for allegations

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