Some construction netting samples taken from the site of the fatal Tai Po blaze failed to meet fire safety standards, authorities have said. In full: buff.ly/pnhn6gZ

ICAC alleges that, in order to replace mesh netting damaged by typhoons, "someone" purchased substandard mesh netting from a local supplier at the price of $54/roll in july. And used up-to-spec mesh netting only at the bottom of the scaffoldings as a cover

#TaiPo fire: Took 4 days to arrive here: Man arrested for sedition. HKFP understands is the student who made "4 demands" of the authorities: hongkongfp.com/2025/11/30/h... Beijing warns "anti-China disrupted" they'll face the "full force" of the security law: hongkongfp.com/2025/11/29/b...

今日好多人獻花

cf. www.thestandard.com.hk/hong-kong-ne...

“There was no alarm,” said Ng Yuk-fan, a 62-year-old retired cleaner who was babysitting her 3-year-old grandson. “If there had been an alarm, you would have heard it go la-la-la-la-la,” she said. Latest on the deadly Hong Kong fire: www.wsj.com/world/asia/t...

Though the cause of the deadly Hong Kong fire remains unknown, authorities said renovation work used flammable materials that may have accelerated the blaze, including styrofoam used to seal windows, protective netting, canvas and plastic sheets www.wsj.com/world/asia/t...

After his call with Xi, Trump set up a call with Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi and advised her not to provoke Beijing on the question of Taiwan’s sovereignty. Japanese officials worried that Trump didn’t want the issue to undermine the detente with Beijing on trade www.wsj.com/politics/nat...

Police in Hong Kong said three people have been arrested in connection with a fire that engulfed a housing complex and killed dozens. Death toll now reported at 44 www.wsj.com/world/asia/h...

RIP Jerry Cohen. A hugely important figure in U.S.-China relations who was always willing to help reporters make sense of it all www.wsj.com/world/china/...

Impressive cloaking technology for Taiwan and the Philippines

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un plans to join Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping at a grand military parade in Beijing next week, in a show of unity and defiance of the West www.wsj.com/world/asia/k...

BREAKING: Democrat Catelin Drey has pulled off a victory in a special election for the Iowa Senate, flipping a Republican-held seat and breaking the GOP's supermajority in the chamber for the first time in three years. www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/p...

Zelensky on Russia's suggestion of China as a security guarantor “We don’t need guarantors who don’t help Ukraine, and didn’t help Ukraine at the moment when we really needed it...we need security guarantees only from those countries that are ready to help us.” www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Incredible chart from Goldman’s desk: “.. construction on data centers is poised to surpass general office construction, having been only 20% as large as offices less than three years ago.”

The White House Twitter account shared this photo of Trump on speakerphone with Putin today. You can see the map of Russia's territorial gains in Ukraine off to the right.

Chinese drones during preparations for the military parade in Beijing.

After all of that, a federal magistrate judge released the confessed sandwich-thrower on his own recognizance.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees in the U.S. will begin losing legal protections Friday without action from the Trump administration, leaving them vulnerable to possible arrest and deportation www.wsj.com/us-news/ukra...

Trump in an interview with Fox News on Thursday said he would "do everything I can to save" Jimmy Lai. But there was some backpedaling. Trump denied ever saying he would get Lai freed: "I didn’t say 100% I’d save him." radio.foxnews.com/2025/08/14/p...

Closing arguments in Jimmy Lai’s national security trial in Hong Kong were postponed once again. The court wanted him to receive medicine and testing for a heart condition before they proceeded. So the trial will resume Monday

Out of the blue, Trump called the Norwegian finance minister to ask when he would get the Nobel prize suggesting he would impose tariffs if he did not www.dn.no/politikk/fre...

A little bit of an update

Stanley and Shek O have already received over 140mm of rain this morning up to 8am.

Line of people waiting outside the West Kowloon Courts in Hong Kong to see closing arguments of Jimmy Lai’s national security trial. The city just announced a black rain signal, the highest. Mercifully everyone was let into the building shortly after this

Their presence patrols appear to have a minimum personnel requirement of about 5 (are they worried about being overrun??) plus a token local partner force member Not quite community policing…more like what US COIN patrol must’ve looked like to residents of a nice Baghdad neighborhood like Karada

A senior administration official, as well as other officials, told Rolling Stone that it is a priority of Trump that these kinds of military deployments -- in times of relative calm -- become normalized in American political culture. More: rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Lots of posts in recent days on Chinese social media supporting the Chinese Navy and Coast Guard crews whose ships collided, blaming the Philippines and highlighting US Navy accidents at sea. Still no official word on any casualties

SCMP: Hong Kong man who allegedly placed several bottles of Coke and 7-Up contaminated with his urine among other goods in a supermarket attended a court hearing on Tuesday wearing an “Enjoy Coca-Cola” T-shirt www.scmp.com/news/hong-ko...

Russia has high expectations for the summit with Trump in Alaska. Peace in Ukraine isn’t one of them. My analysis. www.wsj.com/world/russia...

Was trying to understand why Trump hammered India with tariffs for buying Russian oil but not China, the bigger buyer. This from the Washington Post's WorldView offers a clue www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

The U.S. military is preparing to activate hundreds of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., following President Trump's threats of a federal takeover.

A longer video of the collision between PLA Navy destroyer Guilin and a Chinese coast guard ship as they pursued a Philippines coast guard patrol vessel about 10 miles east of Scarborough Shoal

PLA Navy Type 052DL "Guilin" and China Coast Guard's Type 056 corvette "3104" collide as they harass Philippine Coast Guard vessel BRP Suluan 10.5 nautical miles east of Panatag Shoal. Tape made from forward of the funnel of BRP Suluan, giving indication how close the CCG vessel was chasing.

The PRC government is using companies with expertise in AI to monitor and manipulate public opinion, giving it a new weapon in information warfare, according to current and former U.S. officials and documents unearthed by researchers. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/u... @julianbarnes.bsky.social/NYT

Wild story from rural 🇫🇷France: A 🇨🇳Chinese national, Dong H., formerly with the Chinese Academy of Space Technology, was found to have installed a 5-7m antenna in a garden in a restricted area near Aussaguel Teleport, a radioelectric site near Toulouse that sends signals all over the world. 👉

China has begun the construction of a giant hydropower project at the earthquake-prone edge of the Tibetan plateau, a spectacular engineering feat that is part of Beijing’s enduring mission to become self-sufficient in critical areas such as energy 🎁 link: www.wsj.com/world/china/...

Four Al Jazeera staff, including reporter Anas Al Sharif, were killed in an Israeli attack on a tent for journalists outside the main gate of Gaza's al-Shifa hospital aje.io/onll19

Liu Jianchao, a senior Chinese diplomat widely seen as a potential foreign minister, has been taken away by authorities for questioning, Chun Han Wong and Lingling Wei report www.wsj.com/world/china/...

The North London derby has nothing on the Tripoli derby. Even without fans and played more than 1,000 miles from home it properly kicked off between al Ahli SC and Al Ittihad. The brawl stopped play in Milan last week for about 30 minutes.

Exclusive: Thai gallery removes China-focused artworks after 'pressure' from Beijing reut.rs/4lkBXIW

Previous testing of the ☢️ Burevestnik (“Skyfall”) missile went badly: “On August 8, 2019, a nuclear propulsion source exploded during recovery from the seabed outside Nenoksa. Several of Rosatom's experts on site died of radioactive sickness shortly after the explosion.”

Here's a story about a Form 4 St. Paul's student that won 8 awards for creating an AI medical app, including a Hong Kong ICT Award (from the Digital Policy office). Turns out the app was written by a US-based software company commissioned by her mother www.scmp.com/news/hong-ko...

Terrifying. One of my first reporting jobs was in Port Angeles, and can't remember covering a forest fire. The Olympic Peninsula has some of the wettest spots in the continental U.S.

China has announced that from next month, Tibetan will no longer be a subject in the annual National College Entrance Examination (高考 gaokao), China's most important test for high school students. According to the announcement (www.scio.gov.cn/live/2025/36...):

A summer camp run by grandmas is teaching 8-to-14-year-olds "lost skills" like how to cook a new dish, sewing, embroidering and more

Not Ukrainian, but… Philippines New Filipino naval drone (USV) packed with explosives. Info here -> www.hisutton.com/Philippines-...

More than 80,000 parts that are used in U.S. Defense Department weapons systems are made with critical minerals now subject to Chinese export controls www.wsj.com/world/asia/c...

The Society for Protection of the Harbour disbands two months after LegCo approved changes to the Protection of the Harbour Ordinance to allow for projects involving small-scale reclamation works www.scmp.com/news/hong-ko...

The Piprahwa relics won’t be going up for sale again. news.artnet.com/art-world/bu...