News

Passengers travelling between Hung Hom and Tuen Mun faced delays of 25 to 30 minutes on Thursday afternoon after a signalling fault at Kam Sheung Road station, Hong Kong’s rail operator said. The MTR Corporation said at around 2.23pm on Thursday that the glitch had been repaired and train services on the Tuen Ma line were “gradually returning to normal”. At around 1pm, the MTR said it was repairing the faulty equipment near the tracks and urged passengers to allow extra time for their...

Hong Kong police have found the body of a man in the waters off Stonecutters Island and believe he drowned while swimming. The force received a report at 8.24am on Thursday that a person was floating in the water about 20 metres from a pier near Stonecutters Island in Tsing Yi. Emergency personnel recovered the man from the sea, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. No identification documents were found on him. The man was believed to be about 40 years old. He was around 1.7 metres tall and...

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the city’s second oldest university, has said it will reform its mandatory General Education programme for undergraduates by integrating national education with a global perspective, as well as concepts of innovation, entrepreneurship and sustainability, into its curriculum. The intiative was announced on Thursday as part of the university’s new five-year strategic plan, which charts its direction and development between 2026 and 2030. It is the first...

Hong Kong police have arrested 25 people, some as young as 13, in a crackdown on a loan shark syndicate that charged victims annual interest rates of up to 282 per cent. Police said on Thursday that the crime ring had provided a total of HK$200 million (US$25.5 million) in loans to about 2,000 residents over the past year, with at least HK$8 million in criminal proceeds funnelled into the core members’ personal accounts. During operations on Tuesday and Wednesday, officers raided three operating...

Legendary Hong Kong lyricist Peter Lai Bei-dak, who wrote the lyrics to a string of hits for the city’s Cantopop stars in the 1980s, has died at the age of 76, triggering an outpouring of condolences from fans of “The Lyrical Maverick”. Sports commentator Eric Chung Chi-kwong, a close friend of Lai, announced his death on Wednesday. He told the media that Lai had moved into a nursing home earlier this year after suffering a stroke and collapsing at home. He remained bedridden until his...

My 18-year-old summer intern is very scared of me. She spent the entire week watching me sit in front of my computer, in complete silence, motionless except for the occasional click of the mouse to move to the next electronic document, and barely breathing. She told me this could not be further from what she imagined a barrister’s life to be. And there was one thing she was particularly puzzled by: why were there so many documents? There were, indeed, many documents – over 40,000 pages of them,...

Hong Kong’s redevelopment policy is approaching an institutional turning point. Recent government proposals – pilot schemes for additional plot ratios and cross-district plot ratio transfers – are presented as new instruments to stimulate redevelopment in ageing districts. Yet they extend the same paradigm that shaped policy for decades: incentivising redevelopment through floor-area bonuses, relying on land premium as the financial logic and assuming more buildable area will automatically...

Hong Kong homeowners could adopt technology-led preventive maintenance of older buildings to avoid costly large-scale renovation, with the upmarket Residence Bel-Air serving as a viable example that saved residents more than HK$1 billion (US$127.5 million). Allen Ha Wing-on, convenor of the Residence Bel-Air owners’ committee, said while the Wang Fuk Court tragedy was a wake-up call to transform the city’s decades-old practice of conducting major renovation works for ageing estates, the private...

A Singaporean court has jailed a Hong Kong mother and her adult son for up to six months following a chaotic clash at Changi Airport, during which the pair attacked a police officer and a bystander. Chan Sui-kwan, 65, was reportedly sentenced to six months’ imprisonment on Monday for voluntarily causing hurt to deter a public servant from the discharge of his duty, while her son, Chan Wing-kwan, 42, was handed a 10-day jail term for voluntarily causing hurt. The incident occurred on the...

A Hong Kong lawmaker has warned that an unfolding crypto scam run by a coffee investment venture based in Vietnam could involve more than 1,000 victims, as an investor reported losses of HK$14 million (US$1.73 million) across her team. The warning came as police said that total reported losses tied to the syndicate operating as Fun Coffee have climbed to HK$104 million, with 225 complaints received since last month. Six people earlier arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud – a man and...

Hong Kong should act as a “super partner” helping enterprises expand into Asean, Middle Eastern, Central Asian and European markets, as well as build an annual review into its first five-year plan, one of the city’s oldest and largest chambers of commerce has said. The suggestions are among 65 that the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce put forward to the government on Wednesday, covering Hong Kong’s maiden five-year plan and the city leader’s final policy address of his term. Jonathan Choi...

Some vendors at Hong Kong’s coming Food Expo have said they expect brisker sales and higher foot traffic compared with last year, citing better weather, discounts and creative products such as caviar sake gelato. The five-day expo is among five trade fairs that will open next Thursday, with more than 1,850 exhibitors in total from over 30 countries and regions taking part, according to organiser the Trade Development Council. Smilely Lam Yuk-fung, associate executive director of the council,...