The Hong Kong government is seeking to confiscate HK$56.5 million (US$7.2 million) from former media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying’s bank accounts and all of the shares in his 17 companies after he was jailed for 20 years under the national security law, court documents show. The secretary for justice applied to the High Court earlier this month to seize Lai’s assets linked to three conspiracies to instigate foreign sanctions and incite public hatred towards the authorities in 2019 and 2020. The...

Indonesia’s parliament passed a law on Tuesday to protect the rights of domestic workers after more than two decades of deliberations and multiple delays. The bill was first introduced in 2004 to protect the country’s 4.2 million domestic workers, almost 90 per cent of them women, according to data from the Ministry of Manpower. They were previously not legally classified as workers, meaning they were forced to operate in an informal and unregulated economy, exposed to exploitation and...

A long-standing pricing gap between the mainland China-listed and Hong Kong shares of dual-listed companies has narrowed – and in some cases reversed – as global investors re-rate China’s technology companies. The Hang Seng AH Premium Index, a widely watched gauge of the valuation gap between dual-listed companies’ A shares trading on mainland exchanges and their H shares in Hong Kong, has remained below 120 in recent sessions, down sharply from a high of 157.89 in February 2024. The shift has...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Hong Kong will face squally thunderstorms and a nine-degree plunge in temperature later this week as a cold front sweeps across the South China coast, with the mercury expected to dip to 21 degrees Celsius (69.8 Fahrenheit) on Friday, the city’s forecaster has said. The Observatory said on Tuesday that the city would first experience unseasonably hot weather...

A Chinese employee has caused widespread jealousy among netizens after she won seven days of paid “rain leave”, meaning she can stay home when it rains. The woman, whose personal details have not been divulged, from Changsha in Hunan province, southern China, works at a spicy snack company and went viral after winning the unusual prize in a company raffle. The company, Mala Wangzi, which literally means “Spicy Prince”, was founded in 2009 by Zhang Yudong and is headquartered in Changsha. The...

EU’s top court ruled on Tuesday that anti-LGBTQ legislation Hungary enacted in 2021 breached the bloc’s rules, including an article which sets out the fundamental values on which the EU is founded. The European Commission, 16 of 27 member states and the European Parliament took Hungary to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over the law, in what has been billed as the largest human rights case in the bloc’s history. Originally aimed at toughening punishments for child abuse, the law was amended...

Northeast Japan escaped relatively unscathed from the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck off its coast on Monday, but residents have been advised to stay alert as it is too early to tell whether the tremor was the main shock or a precursor to a far larger one. Hours after the quake, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) issued a special advisory warning of a slightly elevated risk of a temblor with a magnitude of 8 or stronger in the coming days. There was a 1 per cent chance of a megaquake,...