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News - South China Morning Post

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Kiwi Chow’s new film Deadline banned in Hong Kong...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/17

Hong Kong authorities have banned director Kiwi Chow Kwun-wai’s latest film, the campus thriller Deadline, citing national security concerns, according to the award-winning filmmaker, whose previous documentary on the 2019 social unrest was also barred from cinemas. Chow, whose past works include Revolution of Our Times, a documentary on the anti-government protests, and Ten Years, an anthology film, revealed in a social media post on Tuesday that he had received an official letter denying...

MetaX soars nearly 700% in debut as traders snap up...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/17

MetaX Integrated Circuits soared on its trading debut in Shanghai as investors piled into the second Chinese producer of graphics processing units (GPUs) to go public this month amid optimism about China’s push for self-sufficiency in semiconductors and artificial intelligence. The shares of the Shanghai-based company surged 693 per cent from the offer price to 829.90 yuan at the close on Wednesday on the technology-heavy Star Market, making the five-year-old company the third-best performing...

Alleged Bondi Beach shooter Naveed Akram charged with...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/17

A man who allegedly opened fire on a Jewish Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach was charged with 59 offences, including murder and terrorism, police said on Wednesday. The alleged father-and-son perpetrators killed 15 people on Sunday in an attack that shook Australia and intensified fears of rising antisemitism and violent extremism. Funerals of the Jewish victims of the attack began on Wednesday amid anger over how the gunmen – one of whom was briefly investigated for links

Bikini-clad Taiwan ‘bodybuilding grandma’, 72,...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/17

A 72-year-old grandmother in Taiwan has stunned the internet by donning a bikini and showcasing her toned muscles at a recent bodybuilding competition, demonstrating that age is just a number and igniting a wave of admiration online. Dubbed the “bodybuilding grandma,” Lin Sui-tzu, 72, from Taipei, took the stage at the 2025 President’s Cup Bodybuilding and Fitness Championships. As a grandmother of five, she competed in the over-70 category, impressing judges and the audience with her firm...

Open court, detailed ruling in Jimmy Lai trial ‘prove...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/17

An open court and a detailed ruling in former media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying’s closely watched national security trial have demonstrated the strength of Hong Kong’s rule of law, legal experts have said. Lawyers, including the Hong Kong Bar Association, on Tuesday urged members of the public to respect the city’s judicial process and study the High Court’s judgment carefully before drawing conclusions after several Western countries criticised Lai’s guilty verdict, prompting a strong rebuke

Trump orders blockade of sanctioned oil tankers going...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/17

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he was ordering a blockade of all “sanctioned oil tankers” into Venezuela, ramping up pressure on Nicolas Maduro’s government in a move that seemed designed to put a tighter chokehold on the South American country’s economy. Trump’s escalation came after US forces last week seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast, an unusual move that followed a build-up of military forces in the region. In a post on social media on Tuesday night announcing the...

Calls to halt Indonesia’s free meal drive after...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/17

Indonesia’s flagship programme to provide millions of schoolchildren with free nutritious meals is back in the spotlight after a delivery van linked to the initiative ploughed into a group of students in Jakarta last week, leaving 21 children and a teacher injured. The accident on Thursday has raised fresh questions about safety and oversight in what critics call the “chaotic” roll-out of the signature initiative of President Prabowo Subianto, which has a 71 trillion rupiah (US$4.2 billion)...

Trump expands US travel ban and restrictions to...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/16

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it was expanding travel restrictions to an additional 20 countries and the Palestinian Authority, doubling the number of nations affected by sweeping limits announced earlier this year on who can travel and emigrate to the US. The Trump administration included five more countries as well as people travelling on documents issued by the Palestinian Authority to the list of countries facing a full ban on travel to the US and imposed new limits

China’s new drug insurance: lifeline for patients or...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/16

Mainland China’s 17 million Alzheimer’s patients can, for the first time, pay less out of pocket for a costly drug touted as “historic” and “the beginning of the end” for the memory-robbing disease after Beijing launched a commercial insurance innovative drug list in an effort to make medicines more accessible and affordable. Leqembi, developed by Japan’s Eisai and costing a mainland Chinese patient about US$28,400 a year, could see its price cut by half after it was added to the inaugural...

Senior US and Chinese defence officials meet as...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/16

Senior US and Chinese defence officials met in Washington this week in the latest sign of renewed military-to-military communication as the two countries seek to stabilise ties. Alvaro Smith, a deputy assistant secretary of defence for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the Pentagon, met with China’s Major General Ye Jiang, Deputy Director of the Central Military Commission Office for International Military Cooperation, for the 19th annual US-China Defence Policy Coordination Talks from December

Rob Reiner’s son Nick charged with murdering his parents

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/16

Rob Reiner’s son Nick Reiner was charged on Tuesday with two counts of first-degree murder in the killing of his parents, which stunned their communities in Hollywood and Democratic politics, where both were widely beloved. Nick Reiner, 32, was charged with killing the 78-year-old actor and director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced at a news conference with LA Police Chief Jim McDonnell. “Their loss is beyond tragic and we will commit...

Surviving the shocks: what China and the US learned...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/16

It has been a turbulent year for the fraught US-China relationship. In the second story in this new series, we look back at the events of 2025, examining how the trade war tested policymakers and firms, forcing a rethink in business, strategy and supply chains. In April, when US President Donald Trump upended global trade by announcing “reciprocal tariffs” on almost all the country’s trading partners, officials in eastern China’s Ningbo – a national export hub – went on a wartime

How China’s US$150,000 robotic start-up beat Tesla...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/14

The odds seemed impossible: a shoestring Chinese start-up founded in 2023 with just 1 million yuan (US$142,000) taking on Elon Musk – tech legend, disrupter in space and CEO of Tesla – who is valued at half a trillion dollars.But in less than two years, EngineAI Robotics, led by CEO Zhao Tongyang, created the T800 – a robot that delivers Bruce Lee-style roundhouse kicks with the force of a small car – and, under the instruction of smiling engineers and scientists, tried it first on the boss...

We want to stay in Hong Kong, say Filipino helpers...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/14

Filipino domestic helpers who survived Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades say they have no intention of leaving the city, even though they were traumatised by the tragedy. Some of 35 survivors attending a full-day fair at St John’s Cathedral in Central on Sunday told the Post about their ordeals after losing all their personal belongings in the inferno last month. Some continued to work for their employers and had moved with them into transitional housing, but at least one had been laid...

Woman, 26, arrested as Hong Kong expands crackdown on...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/14

Hong Kong’s national security police have arrested a woman for allegedly taking part in illegal drills as officers continue operations against a group accused of conducting military‑style combat training aimed at subverting the government. A police spokesman said on Sunday the 26‑year‑old woman was taken into custody on Friday night on suspicion of committing the offence of “unlawful drilling” under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance. She was later released on bail and required to...

Why has reference to Taiwan attending Rimpac been...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/14

A proposal to invite Taiwan to next year’s US-led Rim of the Pacific (Rimpac) military exercises has been removed from defence policy legislation progressing through Congress, raising concerns in Taipei that Washington’s political calculus may be shifting. Some analysts have warned that the removal of language approved by the US Senate in the 2026 National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA) could even pave the way for Beijing’s return to the world’s largest naval exercise. For the first time,

US is rewriting its China policy under national...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/14

The recently released US National Security Strategy (NSS) marks a sharp geographic and political turn. It moves the western hemisphere to the top of the agenda and pushes Asia – and with it, visible China-centric “great power competition” – down a notch. This does not mean China no longer matters. Rather, it means Washington now sees China partly through the lens of what it is doing in the Americas instead of only what it is doing in the Indo-Pacific. This shift is not accidental. It is a...

HKIR ‘one of the greatest days of Hong Kong racing’...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/14

A protester calling for a deeper investigation into the Tai Po fire almost cancelled Hong Kong’s richest horse race on Sunday, but even that could not stop Jockey Club boss Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges calling it one of the city’s “greatest days”. With a record number of tourists making the trip to Sha Tin, and two of the city’s stars cementing their places among the world’s greatest racehorses, not even a drop in turnover could dim the CEO’s delight at the climax of the Hong Kong

China orders local governments to settle company...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/14

China has set a deadline for local governments to settle outstanding payments owed to companies, calling it essential for improving the country’s business environment amid an economic slowdown. All arrears below 500,000 yuan (US$70,870) must be cleared by the end of the year, said Xiao Weiming, deputy secretary general of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planner. “The biggest step in improving the business environment right now is clearing the...

‘I cried for an hour’: Hong Kong preachers offer...

News - South China Morning Post ·

2025/12/14

Two Tai Po-based preachers offering emotional support to survivors of Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in seven decades have said their work has forced them to confront their own traumas from the tragedy. Jessie Fu Kam-wah and Ron Cheng King-on, both members of the Chinese Rhenish Church in Tai Po, said they had met elderly people displaced by the fire and struggling with the shock of losing loved ones. Cheng also said he knew someone who had died in the blaze, while Fu described coming across an...

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