A Hong Kong court has ordered a civil servant at public broadcaster RTHK to perform 160 hours of community service after he admitted filming upskirt footage of a woman in public. Chong Tak-yin, assistant chief assignment editor at RTHK’s Chinese news and current affairs division, received the sentence on Wednesday at West Kowloon Court after pleading guilty to one count of unlawful recording or observation of intimate parts. The 57-year-old told arresting officers the offence was “a momentary...

Hong Kong’s growing number of expatriates is boosting the city’s residential property leasing market with luxury rents likely to rise by about 5 per cent this year and continue their upswing in 2027, according to property consultancy JLL. The private residential rental index by the Rating and Valuation Department had surged by 18.5 per cent as of June to 205.8 from the Covid-19 pandemic trough in January 2023, which was 173.6, marking the first sustained breach of the 200 threshold. “Hong Kong’s...

Long before the digital age, a Ming dynasty scholar made it his mission to map human knowledge from a Chinese perspective. The result was an encyclopaedia spanning 127 volumes known as the Tushu Bian, or Compendium of Illustrations and Texts. The work – published in 1613 – was compiled by Neo-Confucian scholar Zhang Huang and drew on more than 200 printed sources across several decades to document the concepts of heaven, Earth and humanity. “His goal was to gather all the illustrations and texts...

“I want to survive.” That was uppermost in Senior Seaman Michael Coccon Johen’s mind while he was drifting in the South China Sea, hours after a free-fall parachute training exercise went wrong. Johen, 27, was one of six Malaysian navy special forces personnel who landed in the sea on August 12 after missing their designated landing site at Pulau Layang-Layang, off Sabah’s coast. It happened during the drill’s second jump at 4.30pm, when a sudden change in weather severely affected...

A roller coaster malfunction at a major theme park on the outskirts of Malaysia’s capital city injured 10 people on Saturday, the operator confirmed after coming under fire for what critics called a prolonged silence over the incident. Authorities said on Monday that the riders had suffered minor injuries after the ride abruptly stopped, leaving them stranded. The incident sparked a flurry of complaints across Malaysian social media, with numerous posts sharing videos purportedly showing the...

A Chinese-proposed international standard for automotive solid-state batteries has been approved as a new work item by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) – marking the first of its kind for the advanced power systems and the nation’s latest effort to shape rules in emerging industries. Led by China, with input from technical experts in France, Japan, South Korea and other countries, the proposal outlined application guidelines, items and conditions for testing rechargeable...

A Chinese woman developed life-threatening muscle breakdown after her company forced her to perform 200 squats as punishment for unfinished work. The young woman, surnamed Yang, recently moved to Hangzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang province and began her first job as a financial consultant at a loan assistance company in June. The role is essentially a tele-sales position. Her team manager, surnamed Zhang, required each team member to make 200 calls, invite one client, and secure one client...