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Hong Kong travel agencies are offering tours featuring “five-minute clearance” at the revamped Huanggang Port when it opens on Monday, but the security chief has urged those who do not need to use the crossing immediately to delay their visits. Three days before the port’s official opening, the South China Morning Post on Friday found a number of tour packages advertised on social media that promoted the redeveloped border checkpoint as a new attraction for trips to mainland China. An...

China’s cooperation with the Pacific islands is not part of a geopolitical competition, top diplomat Wang Yi told a delegation of politicians from the region on Friday. The comments come as Beijing and Washington vie for influence in the South Pacific. “China’s engagement with Pacific island countries is a form of South-South cooperation based on mutual assistance and support,” Wang said, according to a statement from the Communist Party’s International Department. “This cooperation does not...

China should avoid taking a “confrontational posture” over a new security pact between the United States, Denmark and Greenland as it might end up being excluded from engagement on the emerging Arctic order. That was the warning from Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s National Institute of Strategic Studies (NISS), a Chinese think tank, in a report released on Wednesday. It also said the US was unlikely to turn the northern polar region into its “exclusive strategic backyard”. The report noted that...

Trivia buffs: can you get a perfect score in the interactive superquiz?

Two US lawmakers are pushing for a bill that would allow Hongkongers in the country to apply for permanent residency, but authorities and observers have dismissed it as a political move unlikely to succeed. Senator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, and Representative James McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, announced the Hong Konger Promise of Refuge Act, seeking to provide a pathway to green cards and ultimately citizenship for Hong Kong residents in the US currently protected under the...

Police were called to reports of an assault and found a man, aged in his 30s, with stab wounds to his torso.

Polar researchers have used a would-be Chinese rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink to make a satellite video call between the Arctic and Antarctic – the first publicly reported test of the Guowang constellation. The call highlights the growing capabilities of the country’s satellite constellations, according to state media. Beijing has been accelerating the development of its low-Earth-orbit constellations in recent years, particularly as the US-based Starlink showed its wartime value by helping...

The European Union and China have “reached an understanding” that will cut Chinese hybrid car shipments to the bloc by “more than a half”, in a temporary salve to trade tensions that have threatened to boil over into a full-blown trade war. Speaking after marathon trade talks in Beijing, EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic said the deal would see China slash its hybrid car exports “by several million cars” over a four-year period. “This is the first time that China has accepted to moderate its exports...

A 10-year-old Hong Kong girl filmed carrying heavy bags of beer will be placed in temporary care with her two siblings after welfare assessments found it would “not be suitable” for them to return home following the arrest of their parents on suspicion of ill-treating a child. Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun Yuk-han said on Friday that the three children were still in hospital for health checks and were expected to be discharged later that day or on Saturday. “Even after the three...

A Hong Kong news commentator accused of violating the national security law has denied exposing police intelligence operations, telling a court that details of his meeting with officers were already public knowledge before he posted them online. Wong Kwok-ngon, 72, who ran a YouTube commentary channel under the pen name Wong On-yin, stood trial at the District Court on Friday. He is the first person in Hong Kong to be prosecuted for allegedly prejudicing an investigation into national security...

The body of man, 29, found in the backyard of an Orelia home is being treated as a suspected family violence murder.

Nic Maddinson's struggles end off the bowling of Marco Jansen.