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A new round of applications for more than 5,000 temporary housing units will open next Monday, with tenants expected to gradually move in from the fourth quarter of this year, the Hong Kong government has said. The second phase of the Light Public Housing (LPH) scheme will provide around 5,060 flats in four different locations: […]

By Hieun Shin Chinese AI app DeepSeek will not be available to download in South Korea pending a review of its handling of user data, Seoul authorities said Monday. DeepSeek’s R1 chatbot stunned investors and industry insiders with its ability to match the functions of its Western competitors at a fraction of the cost. But […]

Hong Kong police have taken in a third relative of ex-district councillor Carmen Lau, who has a HK$1 million bounty on her head for alleged national security law violations. A female relative of Lau was brought to Tuen Mun Police Station on Monday morning to assist with an investigation into the activist who fled the […]

Chinese President Xi Jinping held a meeting Monday with top private business leaders including Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, state media footage showed. Since coming to power more than a decade ago, Xi has consistently sought to bolster the role of state enterprises in the world’s second-largest economy and warned against the “disorderly” expansion of the […]

An eight-month-old infant has undergone heart transplant surgery after receiving Hong Kong’s second organ donation from mainland China, according to the city’s health authorities. The heart transplant operation on the baby girl, Whitney, was performed on Sunday evening at the Hong Kong Children’s Hospital in Kai Tak, the Health Bureau and the Hospital Authority said […]

Hong Kong has made its first arrest over possession of the drug “space oil” after the substance was included under the city’s dangerous drugs law on Friday. The Customs and Excise Department on Saturday seized one vape stick containing suspected space oil from a 28-year-old woman at the Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Terminal in Sheung Wan, […]

Hong Kong housing authorities are mulling a longer grace period for operators of subdivided flats to make repairs and for tenants to relocate, Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho has said. “We have received views saying that the grace period should last 36 months, and that would allow both landlords and tenants more time to move […]

President Ferdinand Marcos put Beijing firmly centre stage on the campaign trail on Saturday, saying his predecessor’s administration was all too happy for the Philippines “to be a province of China”. Speaking in the heart of Rodrigo Duterte’s stronghold Mindanao ahead of May mid-term elections, Marcos blasted the former president — without mentioning him by […]

On Thursday, pollster Robert Chung announced that the independent Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (PORI) would “suspend all its self-funded research activities indefinitely, including regular tacking surveys conducted since 1992… or even may close down,” citing the “current environment.” This is an alarming development. Robert Chung’s statement was apparently prompted by his run-ins with […]

Hayson Chan, business development director of rental company Rent to Rent Innovation, expects about a quarter of his subdivided flats to be deemed illegal under an unprecedented crackdown on unliveable dwellings in Hong Kong. Under a “rent-to-rent” arrangement, Chan’s company rents apartments from landlords, splits up the flats into subdivided units, and leases the individual […]

Animated Chinese blockbuster “Ne Zha 2”, based on traditional mythology, has smashed multiple box office records on its way to becoming the country’s most successful movie ever. The tale of a rebellious young deity who battles dragons is the first movie to earn over US$1 billion in a single market, overtaking “Star Wars: The Force […]

Thailand has deported 10 Chinese nationals linked to the high-profile alleged kidnapping of an actor who was rescued from a cyber-fraud centre in Myanmar, Thai police told AFP on Saturday. Scam compounds have mushroomed in Myanmar’s borderlands and are staffed by foreigners who are often trafficked and forced to work, swindling their compatriots in an […]

It appears – though the numbers published vary a bit – that our government is bleeding money on such a scale that the reserves will be run down in five or six years, placing us in the same boat as all those debt-addicted governments we have been looking down on. Of course, this will not […]

Hong Kong has unwittingly found itself caught in the US-China trade war, with US President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs on Chinese goods targeting the city’s products. Trump issued an executive order on February 1 to impose an additional 10 per cent tariff on all imports from China and Hong Kong – on top of the […]

By Tommy Wang with Anuj Chopra in Washington A deluge of disinformation about a flu-like virus called HMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the Covid-19 pandemic five years ago. AFP’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually […]

Chinese football team Shandong Taishan apologised to South Korea’s Gwangju FC on Friday after fans held up photos of a hated military strongman at an Asian Champions League match. An unknown number of home fans on Tuesday displayed images of Chun Doo-hwan, the autocratic former South Korean president, during the game against visiting Gwangju. Chun […]

The Hong Kong Journalists Association has cancelled its annual fundraising dinner after the Regal Hongkong Hotel axed its booking, citing “water leakage causing unstable power supply.” The journalists’ group said in an email to event attendees on Friday afternoon that the booking was cancelled on Thursday, two days before the dinner. “We offered some alternatives […]

A Hong Kong lawmaker has urged authorities to identify “high-risk” residents after an elderly man was found dead in a Tuen Mun flat he shared with a son who has an intellectual disability. The body of the 78-year-old man was found at his home in Butterfly Estate, in Tuen Mun, on Thursday after a security […]

A suspected gas explosion in a Taiwan department store killed at least four people and injured 29, authorities said on Thursday, with the force of the blast spraying large pieces of debris over the street below. The blast happened in the food court on the 12th floor of the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi department store in […]

Hong Kong activist Lau Ka-tung, whose social work license was suspended, has been warned by a licensing body that describing himself as a “social worker” or “former social worker” might violate the law. In a letter the Social Workers Registration Board sent to Lau – as seen by HKFP – the licensing body said it […]

Hong Kong has seen a 30 per cent increase in new cervical cancer cases over the past decade, reversing a downtrend since the 1980s, experts have said. Hextan Ngan, convenor of the HPV Prevention Alliance, said on Wednesday that nearly 600 new cervical cancer cases were diagnosed in 2021, compared with more than 450 new […]

HKFP has reported several new cases of harassment to the police and launched a new zero-tolerance policy. Hong Kong police are investigating fake complaints made to the authorities relating to HKFP, as well as a threatening message sent to its previous company secretary. In late 2024, a text message containing false claims about the newspaper […]

Harassment against journalists and news outlets has become more common around the world, and has seen an uptick in Hong Kong, according to press freedom NGOs. Independent media in the city have seen a surge of smear campaigns, trolling, surveillance, libel/defamation, message bombing, doxxing, cyberattacks, false/fake complaints to the authorities, unlawful use of branding or […]

China on Thursday said it was “happy” to see the United States and Russia “strengthen communication”, after US President Donald Trump said he expected to meet his Russian counterpart for Ukraine peace talks. Trump said he had a “lengthy and highly productive” call with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday — their first confirmed contact since the […]