Hong Kong authorities arrest 28 in crackdown on bid-rigging after Tai Po fire

Hong Kong companies can survive intense competition in mainland China by being innovative and maintaining high standards, the head of the city’s trade promotion body has said. Hong Kong Trade Development Council chairman Frederick Ma Si-hang said on Friday that the city was also tapping into emerging markets in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa to counter global trade uncertainties. “I feel that Hong Kong manufacturers need to be more innovative; think of ways to use our strengths to...

Emergency services tried to revive the man after finding him with stab wounds in a laneway near Queen Victoria Market.

Beijing has said responsibility for the “serious difficulties in China-Japan relations lay entirely with Tokyo” one year on from Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s controversial comments about Taiwan. Takaichi is planning to visit China this month for the Apec summit, but on Friday foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun accused the Japanese authorities of continuing to evade the issue and showing no willingness to correct her remarks. “A year ago, the Japanese leader made erroneous remarks on...

US senator Jon Ossoff is being touted as a potential presidential candidate following an impressive midterm showing.

Beijing has given the go-ahead for the Long March 9, a super heavy rocket often seen as China’s answer to SpaceX’s Starship, weeks after the American megarocket first reached orbit, according to a lecture slide circulating online. The stainless-steel giant received official approval last month, according to the slide. At 110 metres (361 feet) tall and 10.6 metres wide, it will be the most powerful and expensive launcher China has ever built. The slide, presented in the northwestern city of Xian...

Democrats flipped Senate seats in previously deep-red territory such as Kansas and Texas in part by criticizing Trump administration policies that helped create high diesel and beef costs. Now they're going to be under pressure to deliver for farmers, who want the party to put words into actions once they take control of the House...

A man accused of killing his five-week-old baby boy has faced a court.

China’s pure-play artificial intelligence chipmakers crossed an important milestone in the third quarter as several firms swung into profit, but severe supply chain hurdles and soaring memory costs cloud their long-term growth prospects. Domestic graphics processing unit (GPU) developers including Moore Threads, MetaX and Iluvatar CoreX are racing to fill the market void left by Nvidia, whose high-end processors face strict US export controls. These home-grown firms are competing fiercely to win...

Chinese state media showcased several Dongfeng-series missiles on Thursday to mark a key anniversary, including the nuclear-capable DF-61 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and the rarely seen DF-100 long-range supersonic cruise missile. The coverage coincided with social media reports suggesting that the PLA Rocket Force might have conducted an inland ICBM test, potentially involving a ground-based mid-course missile interception, although neither activity has been officially...

I was 13 when our family of 10 (mom, dad and eight kids ranging in age from 1 to 15) arrived at Kimpo Airport in August 1966. We arrived a bit prior to the first volunteers of the Peace Corps K-1, because our school started in early September. The older kids attended Seoul Foreign School (SFS) in Yeonhui-dong, behind Yonsei University. In fact, the founders of our school were some of the same missionaries who founded Yonsei, such as the Underwoods, the Allens and the Avisons. Today, there is a statue to Horace Grant Underwood in front of one of the Yonsei buildings. Being born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and at our young ages, none of us kids were very familiar with the outside world, so when Dad (Kevin O'Donnell, the first Peace Corps country director for Korea) told us he got a new job and we were going to move to Korea, we thought he said Berea, a Cleveland suburb near the airport, and wondered why in the world would anyone want to move there. He said, "Not Berea — Korea. It's a foreign country over by China and Japan." This got most of us quite excited, but my older sister wa

As I trudged across Sinchon Rotary and up the steep walkway to Severance Hospital, I kept repeating to myself a phrase from a childhood story about a train engine: “I think I can, I think I can.” It was a bitter cold winter morning in 1969. Today was the day that I was to come to the hospital and show the doctors in the ear, nose and throat section of the hospital that I could, indeed, get a deaf child to speak. Only days earlier, I had arrived in Korea to volunteer for the Peace Corps at age 23. Once it got around that I had training as a speech therapist for the deaf, Peace Corps Korea Director Kevin O'Donnell urged me to pursue it. At the time, Korea had no speech pathology center. George Worth, an American missionary in Korea, introduced me to staff at both Seoul National University (SNU) Hospital and Severance Hospital. Both hospitals were interested in starting a program but wanted to see how it could work, so they told me to come back the next day, when they could bring me a patient. That's how I found myself "auditioning" for a speech and hearing center. I was confident tha