World News by Wild Rose

Up to 200 Hong Kong-bound domestic helpers remain stranded in Indonesia despite the reopening of several affected airports, as the city’s employment agencies association braces for possible further closures due to volcanic ash. The Indonesian transport ministry said Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport resumed operations on Tuesday after being shut for several days, following the eruption of Mount Anak Krakatoa on Saturday, which affected thousands of travellers. Among those stranded...

When Cathay Pacific Airways announced direct flights to Almaty starting next January, the significance went beyond adding another destination. The service will be Cathay Pacific’s first to Central Asia and the only non-stop passenger connection between Hong Kong and Kazakhstan. Another announcement pointed to Hong Kong’s growing aviation reach from a different direction. Qatar Airways Cargo relocated its regional office to Hong Kong and agreed with the Airport Authority to increase frequencies...

Kazakhstan and Hong Kong could partner to build biotech unicorns – private start-ups valued at US$1 billion or more – by linking the Central Asian country’s strong tech workforce with the city’s global financial network, a top academic has said. Huck-Hui Ng, dean of the school of medicine at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University, said the nascent biotech sector in the country has already produced several start-ups in areas including artificial intelligence (AI) and digital health, and could build a...

PT Merdeka Battery Materials is considering a sale of depositary receipts in Hong Kong, according to people familiar with the matter, potentially following other Indonesian miners looking to raise capital in the city.

Hong Kong’s tourism watchdog has revoked the licences of two travel agencies and a guide after finding they failed to protect members of mainland Chinese tour groups from being subjected to “coerced shopping”. The Travel Industry Authority said on Monday that the licences of Go Go Ming Travel Services, Grandee Travel Company and guide Sun Kwun-ying had been revoked with immediate effect. “The authority adopts a zero-tolerance approach towards coerced shopping and any conduct that damages the...

Philanthropic giving in nine Asian jurisdictions is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion over the next decade, while corporate contributions play a larger role in Hong Kong than in many regional peers, according to a new report released at a Jockey Club forum. The Commission on Asian Philanthropy released its interim report on Monday, while the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust revealed in a separate report that it had contributed around 1.8 per cent of the city’s gross domestic product (GDP) in...

Hong Kong’s top financial regulators have urged local banks to make greater use of the city’s growing pool of offshore yuan liquidity, while also flagging the need to prepare for a coming wave of autonomous AI systems used in the financial sector. Speaking at the Hong Kong Association of Banks (HKAB) Distinguished Speaker Luncheon, Eddie Yue Wai-man, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), called on lenders to leverage their international networks to expand the Chinese...

The head of the European Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong (EuroCham) aims to “reset” perceptions about the financial hub during the organisation’s first-ever “door-knock” mission to Brussels, emphasising that the city remains “significantly, fundamentally” distinct from its mainland Chinese counterparts. With Hong Kong set to unveil its first five-year plan on September 16 – the same day the mission begins – chairman Johannes Hack told the South China Morning Post that the city lacked a clear...

Hong Kong police have arrested a man in connection with a scam in which at least 14 people were hired to “sell flags” for an animal concern group after they were spotted carrying fake donation bags and mixing with registered volunteers to collect money from passers-by. The rare street scam came to light during the group’s flag day on Saturday, a Social Welfare Department-approved fundraising initiative under which about 800 registered volunteers from the Hong Kong Saving Cat and Dog Association...

In the fourth instalment of a five-part Health Matters wellness series on Hong Kong’s growing wellness trends, Lo Hoi-ying examines how telehealth is reshaping access to care, as practitioners warn it cannot fully replace in-person diagnosis. Hong Kong housewife Chan Ket-yee, nearly 60, has battled severe eczema on her neck and underarms for decades. Splitting her time between the United Kingdom and the city, Chan saw a dramatic improvement after visiting a Hong Kong public dermatologist, whose...

Lawmakers and a government adviser have called for anti-stalking legislation to close a loophole that makes prosecuting repeated harassment difficult in Hong Kong, following the acquittal of a man who followed a teenage girl to her secondary school classroom. Some experts said the government should revisit a proposal for such legislation raised 26 years ago, after the magistrate who acquitted the defendant of a loitering charge also noted the absence of laws to criminalise stalking under certain...

English Premier League football club Chelsea’s lucrative new front-of-shirt sponsorship deal with a stablecoin issuer has left Hong Kong fans and retailers concerned about whether wearing or selling the top counts as illegal promotion under digital currency laws. Chelsea signed the deal with Circle to feature its USDC stablecoin brand on player jerseys for the 2026-27 season in late August, just three months after the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) warned Premier League clubs about...

Hong Kong has always had a simple answer to what young people should do with their lives: study hard, get a job, work harder, buy a flat and eventually complain about the next generation. That formula is becoming harder to sell. A whole lexicon has grown up around Generation Z’s uneasy relationship with work. In mainland China, there are “full-time children”, young adults who stay home and receive an allowance from their parents in return for doing household chores and running errands....

Hundreds of Hong Kong residents and visitors braved the heat on Saturday morning to visit a popular Sai Kung trail overlooking hexagonal rock columns, as a trial reservation system requiring real-name registration came into force, with some calling for the restrictions to be eased. The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department announced the arrangement last month, capping visitor numbers at 2,000 per designated day between 9am and 5pm for the Po Pin Chau section of the High Island Geo...

An overhead electronic display was left dangling in the air at Hong Kong airport’s newly reopened Terminal 2, prompting authorities to pledge a detailed investigation. A spokesman said the incident occurred at about 8.30am on Saturday, when a suspended screen “experienced a technical fault”, triggering its fall-arrest safety system. “The Airport Authority takes the incident very seriously and will conduct a detailed investigation into the cause, with a view to further enhancing the stability of...

Anita Lee Yan-kwan grew up around a traditional business that supplied fish balls to Hong Kong’s street food stalls and eateries. But for decades, Kau Kee Food Factory’s signature product was known only among industry operators until Lee, a second-generation owner, opened the company’s first retail store late last year. Kau Kee has operated as a silent giant in the food industry for 66 years, supplying its fish balls to nearly 1,000 eateries and snack stalls across the city. But it finally...

American ice cream chain Dairy Queen will open four Hong Kong outlets in the fourth quarter of this year, as part of an ambitious expansion plan amid the widespread closure of food and retail shops. Dairy Queen, an 85-year-old brand, said on Friday that it would launch its flagship store at the One Causeway Bay shopping centre on Hong Kong Island in November, followed by three other outlets in Kowloon, the New Territories and the outlying islands before the end of the year. “Following Causeway...

Five former employees of Hong Kong supermarket chain ParknShop and its contractors have pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud by falsifying workers’ attendance records to cheat the retail giant of HK$3.2 million (US$408,000). The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) on Friday said an investigation revealed that the former supermarket employees colluded with contractor staff over two years to deceive ParknShop by falsifying attendance records of 13 warehouse workers who...

Hong Kong film actor and director Louis Koo Tin-lok’s production company has rejected allegations that it owes HK$149 million (US$19 million) in outstanding debts to an offshore firm, saying the claim is incomplete and violates confidentiality principles. In a statement published on social media on Friday, One Cool Film Production said the civil lawsuit lodged by Sino Hero Ventures on Wednesday had concealed crucial details about a HK$70 million loan extended to Koo’s film production business in...

Impersonating customer service staff is the “most rampant tactic” used by phone scammers, Hong Kong police have said, with the number of such frauds rising 45 per cent year on year in the first half of 2026 to 4,830 cases amid an overall decline in deception crimes. Superintendent Kwok Ching-yee of the Commercial Crime Bureau said police received a total of 20,613 deception cases in the first half of this year, representing a slight drop of 0.7 per cent compared with the same period last...

A mainland Chinese man has been deemed unfit to stand trial for his alleged involvement in a deadly shooting during a botched robbery in Hong Kong three decades ago, after he was diagnosed with a cognitive impairment caused by lung cancer. A High Court jury of four men and three women ruled on Friday that Shenzhen resident Wen Wenye, 61, could not be held criminally liable for murder and attempted robbery because he was unable to understand the legal proceedings and give instructions to his...

City University of Hong Kong has disciplined students over an orientation event with a disco theme in which a half-naked man was seen carrying a woman wearing only a bra and shorts, two days after the institution said it had “zero tolerance” for improper conduct. The institution said on Friday that all students involved in the orientation camp incident on August 27 had admitted their mistakes, formally apologised to the university and accepted disciplinary action. “The University’s Student...

An Asian city will eventually overtake London and New York as the world’s leading financial centre, with Hong Kong well placed to compete for the top spot given its legal predictability and low tax burden, according to the creator of a closely watched ranking of financial hubs. “It’s going to happen because it’s so tight,” said Michael Mainelli, chairman of London-based think tank Z/Yen Group, in an interview with the South China Morning Post on Tuesday, referring to the narrowing gap between...

Hong Kong’s boom in initial public offerings has turned getting shares in the hottest deals into something of an invitation-only affair.

A Hong Kong Nepalese man is searching for his cousin who is missing after the catastrophic flood struck the Himalayan border between Nepal and Tibet. Y.B. Gurung, a 64-year-old retiree, told the South China Morning Post that he last spoke with his tour guide cousin Raju Gurung, 40, at 8am on August 26, shortly before a massive glacial collapse triggered the flash flood that washed away villages and left at least 1,225 people dead. “I cannot sleep every night. I am praying every day that he was...

A leading Hong Kong charity has called off a student eco-bag design contest meant to counter domestic violence following public backlash over its directive for pupils to draw inspiration from objects commonly linked to household abuse. Po Leung Kuk confirmed on Thursday that it had scrapped the competition, which was organised by its family crisis support service and funded by the Social Welfare Department. The charity said the event “might have caused misunderstanding and concern”, although its...

Hong Kong authorities are considering genetic testing as a supplementary tool for identifying breeds, an official has said after enforcement action against suspected fighting dogs sparked public concern. The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) also said on Thursday that owners could keep existing fighting dogs, provided they complied with statutory requirements, and urged owners not to abandon their pets. Dr Michelle Yeung Lee, the department’s principal veterinary officer,...

Retired Catholic leader Joseph Zen Ze-kiun and four other activists have lost an appeal against their convictions for failing to register their legal defence fund for those involved in the 2019 anti-government protests in Hong Kong. The Court of Appeal on Thursday upheld a magistrate’s findings that the now-defunct 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund fell within the definition of a society under the Societies Ordinance and its members were required to register the group with police or ask for an...

Chinese mainland investors rotated into Hong Kong stocks tied to artificial intelligence and pulled out of companies in traditional industries in August, taking advantage of a market dip to boost bets on the world’s most cutting-edge technology. AI model developer MiniMax Group logged net buying of HK$10.1 billion (US$1.29 billion) last month, the most among the Hong Kong-listed companies available for China’s onshore investors through the Stock Connect programme, according to data compiled by...

Hong Kong will roll out its first cross-industry exhibition for high-end products ranging from haute jewellery to supercars, yachts and private jets in November, as part of efforts to attract big spenders and cement the city as a global conference and event capital. The South China Morning Post learned on Wednesday that the inaugural Festival of Connoisseurs will receive some of the HK$100 million (US$12.8 million) set aside in Hong Kong’s 2026-27 budget to attract large-scale international...