A major pro-establishment union has called on the Hong Kong government to eliminate poverty by appointing a commissioner to revamp the city’s existing policies.The Federation of Trade Unions also said that a new benchmark should be set to gauge the true number of residents in the city who were poor.Sunday’s suggestions from union bosses came as the city’s leader defended the handful of poverty measures outlined in her policy address.“There are not a lot of measures to alleviate poverty in the…

As the latest K-pop tunes play in the background, groups of young people chat quietly in Mandarin over bubble tea in a variety of colours. A sign in simplified Chinese characters directs the adventurous towards a studio upstairs where they can use a QR code to book places in its murder mystery role-playing games.At the restaurant across the road, a couple scan the QR code on the table and order Cantonese clay pot rice. They pay for it with WeChat, the Chinese mobile app which lets them settle…

Protests erupted for a second day in Bangladesh’s capital on Saturday, amid a wave of violence against local Hindus following a viral social media image perceived as insulting to the country’s Muslim majority.Some 10,000 protesters – many of them carrying banners of Islamist political parties – took to the streets outside the main mosque of the capital, Dhaka, a day after demonstrations on the same site ended in clashes with police.The crowd chanted “Down with the enemies of the Islam” and …

Sales picked up on day two of a residential project launch in Sha Tin as the developer allocated smaller flats that tend to appeal to genuine end users, who are more price-sensitive than people buying purely to invest.Centralcon Properties, a local developer, had sold 150 of the remaining 265 units at The Arles near Fo Tan subway station in the eastern New Territories as of 3pm, according to sources. All the flats looked likely to change hands well before the close of sales at midnight.The 265…

About five years ago, a herd of elephants showed up at Su Chun Fa’s estate in Malaysia and ate all the young oil palms in an eight-acre plot.Su blamed himself. Elephants had long roamed the adjacent forests in Johor, but they had stayed away from the estates for some time, so he opted not to install electric fences.“I was careless,” said the 75-year-old, who has lived in Peninsular Malaysia’s southernmost state of Johor for most of his life. He has since abandoned his plot near the town of…

Hong Kong has come up with several Covid-19 health code-sharing options in a bid to meet strict contact-tracing requirements in mainland China and eventually enable residents to cross the border without having to undergo quarantine, the city’s technology minister has revealed.Among the proposals is a new platform that would allow would-be travellers to voluntarily provide information beyond that contained in the “Leave Home Safe” app, according to Secretary for Innovation and Technology Alfred…

When China’s late paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, came up with his creative idea of “one country, two systems” more than four decades ago for governing postcolonial Hong Kong, he had a bigger picture in mind: this special formula should apply to Taiwan some day for eventual reunification.While Deng did not have a clear timeline, generations of Chinese leaders from Mao Zedong to President Xi Jinping share this common goal. And Xi has gone a step further than his predecessors to make it clear…