Global Pulse

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  • India has splurged billions on metro trains. But where are the commuters?

    India has splurged billions on metro trains. But where are the commuters?

    Over the past decade, India has embarked on one of the world’s most ambitious urban transit expansion programs, pouring more than $26 billion into building metro networks across 22 major and mid-sized cities under the national government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. From 2014 to 2025, the total length of operational metro lines across the country surged fourfold, climbing from less than 300 kilometers to over 1,000 kilometers, with average daily ridership also jumping from 3 million to more than 11 million. But these impressive national aggregate figures hide a persistent, troubling trend: the vast majority of new metro corridors are failing to come even close to hitting the ridership projections that were used to justify their construction, according to multiple independent studies and transport experts.

    Take Mumbai’s new fully underground Aqua Line, for example. Opened in 2024, the 33.5-kilometer line connects the historic Cuffe Parade business district to the commercial hub of Bandra-Kurla Complex and the northern suburb’s airport terminals. Planners projected the corridor would ease chronic road congestion in India’s financial capital and carry roughly 1.5 million passengers every single day. But current estimates put actual daily ridership at just 10% of that target. On a recent weekday evening, the train nearly emptied out before its final stop, leaving the terminal looking more like a deserted, outdated Soviet-era infrastructure site than a bustling transit hub in one of the world’s most densely populated cities. “Not a lot of people are using the line. It’s too expensive,” a ticketing agent at the Cuffe Parade terminal told the BBC, summing up a common complaint across the country.

    A 2023 study from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi found that across all new Indian metro corridors, actual ridership hits only 25% to 35% of the original projected numbers. One of the study’s lead authors confirmed that these figures have not improved meaningfully in 2024 and 2025. Independent research from other organizations backs up these findings. The Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a New Delhi-based think tank, reports that ridership in the tier-3 city of Kanpur is just 2% of the original projection, while Chennai’s first phase of metro hit only 37% of its target. Data shared with the BBC by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) shows actual ridership falls between 20% and 50 of projections in western Indian cities Pune and Nagpur. Only Delhi, home to India’s largest and oldest metro network, has reported ridership that slightly exceeds initial projections—but experts note this is a statistical quirk: Delhi now counts interchanges between lines as separate trips, inflating the official total.

    Transport analysts have identified a web of interconnected factors driving the persistent underperformance, starting with flawed demand forecasting. Ashish Verma, a transport expert at the Indian Institute of Science’s Sustainable Transportation Lab in Bengaluru, explains that projecting transit demand is a complex task, and consultants often inflate projected ridership numbers to make new projects appear economically viable to secure approval. Many forecasts also rely on assumptions about service capacity—such as train frequency and total number of coaches—that are never delivered in practice. For example, on Bengaluru’s busiest metro line, peak-hour trains run only every five minutes or more, while a newer line sees trains just once every 25 minutes. By comparison, the world’s busiest metro systems typically run nine-car trains every 90 seconds during peak periods.

    Affordability is a second major barrier to higher ridership, particularly for low-income workers who make up a large share of potential urban commuters. On Mumbai’s Aqua Line, a single trip costs between 10 and 70 rupees ($0.10 to $0.70), while a three-month unlimited pass on the city’s established, overcrowded suburban railway costs just 590 rupees total—far less than the equivalent metro pass. Aditya Rane, senior transport specialist at ITDP, notes that for the lowest-income Indian commuters, the total cost of an integrated metro journey can consume up to 20% of their monthly income, well above the global affordability benchmark of 10% to 15%. In recent years, many Indian metro systems have cut government subsidies to cover construction costs, a move that has hit ridership hard: when Bengaluru raised metro fares in 2024, daily ridership dropped 13% in the following months, according to data collated by Greenpeace. “Even the London Tube, one of the world’s most expensive urban transit systems, still receives heavy government subsidies, because the core goal is to provide sustainable mobility and decongest cities,” Verma points out.

    Poor network planning and a lack of usable last-mile connectivity also keep ridership low. Nandan Dawda, an urban studies fellow at ORF, explains that commuters will only switch from private vehicles or informal transit to metro if waiting and access times are kept to a minimum. A major missing piece across most Indian cities is affordable, reliable feeder bus service that connects residential and employment hubs to metro stations. Transfer times between different metro lines within the same network are also often unacceptably long: at Delhi’s busy Hauz Khas interchange, transferring between two lines can take 15 to 20 minutes. Compounding this is what Dawda calls “institutional disaggregation”: even within a single city, metro lines and local bus networks are often run by separate, siloed agencies that do not coordinate on scheduling, ticketing, or route planning to create a seamless experience for commuters.

    Additional barriers include poorly maintained pedestrian walkways leading to stations and widespread safety concerns, particularly for women commuting after dark. For many residents, the end of a metro journey is only the start of a difficult, unsafe trip home. “If I am coming home after sunset, I cannot rely on the metro,” said Chetna Yadav, a 40-year-old resident of north Delhi. “The station is 15 kilometers from my house, and when I get off at night, it’s almost impossible to get a cab. I’ve been stuck there multiple times.” Even casual tourists struggle: “If I’m a tourist even in Delhi, I can’t drag my suitcase half a kilometer from the station to my hotel because the walkways are in such bad shape,” Verma says.

    Despite these systemic challenges, most transport experts expect Indian metro ridership to continue climbing incrementally in coming years. Chronic traffic gridlock, worsening air pollution, and soaring parking costs have already reached a breaking point in most major Indian cities, and pressure is growing to introduce congestion pricing for private vehicles, which would push more commuters to consider public transit. But experts agree that a dramatic, rapid increase in adoption is unlikely without major systemic reforms. “Metro systems will only see strong ridership growth if cities get three things right: integrated bus connectivity, safe, accessible station access, and unified, affordable ticketing,” Rane says. “Without those changes, India will keep building gleaming new metro lines that look impressive on paper, but continue to fall far short of their original goals.”

  • Robots outrun humans at marathon

    Robots outrun humans at marathon

    In a landmark demonstration of advancing robotics capability that stunned observers, a humanoid robot developed by Chinese consumer technology firm Honor has broken the half-marathon world record previously held by a human elite athlete, capping a dramatic year of progress in the sector at a landmark competition in Beijing on Sunday.

    Named Flash, the Honor-built humanoid crossed the 21-kilometer finish line of the 2026 Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon in a time of 50 minutes 26 seconds. That mark is nearly seven minutes faster than the existing human record of 57 minutes 20 seconds set by Ugandan distance star Jacob Kiplimo in Lisbon, Portugal just one month prior.

    The milestone comes just 12 months after the inaugural edition of the humanoid robot race, where the winning entry crossed the line more than two hours slower, at 2 hours 40 minutes 42 seconds, and only six out of nearly 20 competing teams managed to get their robots across the finish line at all. This year’s event tells a story of explosive growth in the sector: more than 100 teams from 13 Chinese provinces (up from just five in 2025) plus five international teams competed, with a record-high share of participants completing the full course. All three podium positions were claimed by humanoids built by Honor, a company that has pivoted from smartphone manufacturing into humanoid robotics development in only 12 months.

    Du Xiaodi, an Honor engineer who served as Flash’s team coach, noted after the race that the firm has not yet launched commercial humanoid robot sales, and still faces key technical hurdles to overcome, particularly in the development of fully independent high-performance electric motors for the devices. Honor was far from the only competitor: other participating entries came from established Chinese robotics firms including Unitree and Noetix.

    A year ago, one of the most memorable moments of the event came when human engineers ran alongside their robots the entire way, holding laptops to adjust performance and fix navigation errors mid-race. This year, more than 40 percent of competing robots operated fully autonomously. Using on-board sensors, cameras and embedded processing systems, the robots independently perceived their surrounding environment in real time, completing complex tasks including self-localization, course mapping, dynamic path adjustment and obstacle avoidance without any human intervention.

    Organizers also increased the difficulty of this year’s course to put robot adaptive capabilities to a stricter test, adding additional curves, varying elevation and multiple uphill and downhill segments that wind through scenic local landmarks including the E-Town milu deer park and tree-lined urban avenues. All three top-finishing robots successfully navigated the full challenging course entirely on their own.

    The breakthrough performance comes as Beijing positions humanoid robotics as a core strategic future industry, expected to follow the growth trajectories of smartphones and smart connected vehicles to become a key pillar of the city’s innovation economy. Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology Party secretary and director Jiang Guangzhi explained that the city is actively developing real-world testing scenarios to accelerate the growth of this new economic engine.

    To support that goal, Beijing has already built more than 18,000 square meters of dedicated robot testing grounds and data collection centers across the E-Town development zone, Haidian District and Shijingshan District. These facilities generate hundreds of thousands of hours of high-quality performance data annually, providing critical support for technological innovation and iteration for both startups and established industry leaders.

    A city-wide action plan for embodied intelligent technology innovation and industry development sets clear targets for 2027: Beijing aims to build a fully domestic integrated upstream and downstream industry chain for embodied intelligence, achieve breakthroughs in more than 100 core technologies, and cultivate a humanoid and robotics industry cluster with an output value of hundreds of billions of yuan.

    Industry data underscores China’s leading position in the global humanoid robot market right now: global shipments of humanoid robots reached approximately 17,000 units in 2025, with Chinese manufacturers accounting for 14,000 of those units, more than 80 percent of total global supply. Looking ahead, the second World Robot Games is scheduled to open in Beijing this coming August, where the world will get another look at the cutting edge of robotic capability coming out of the country’s fast-growing innovation ecosystem.

  • ‘They told me he was dead’: Children born near army base learn truth about UK soldier dads

    ‘They told me he was dead’: Children born near army base learn truth about UK soldier dads

    For decades, hundreds of children born near the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (Batuk) have grown up without answers about their paternal heritage, many left in poverty, socially ostracized, and told their British military fathers were deceased. Now, an unprecedented cross-border legal and genetic initiative has identified 20 missing fathers, secured paternity confirmation for 12 cases through the UK’s highest Family Court, and unlocked life-changing access to British citizenship and child support for dozens of Kenyan people.

    One of the cases at the center of this breakthrough is nine-year-old Edward, a pseudonym to protect his identity. From early childhood, Edward has faced relentless bullying over his lighter skin tone, with peers taunting him as a “British coloniser” – a reference to the United Kingdom’s 68-year colonial rule of Kenya that ended in 1963. Edward’s mother, Nasibo, a Kenyan woman who entered a relationship with a British contractor stationed at Batuk, was cast out by her family after her partner left Kenya abruptly when she was four months pregnant. She says the man promised to return, gave her an engagement ring before leaving, and never contacted her again. For years, she and Edward have lived in extreme poverty, with no way to trace the man who fathered her son. Now that paternity has been confirmed, Edward is eligible for formal child support payments, though his father has refused to share contact information, forcing legal teams to pursue court action to secure maintenance payments.

    Another story that underscores the years of misinformation surrounding these cases is 18-year-old Yvonne. Orphaned as an infant after her mother’s death, Yvonne was raised by her grandparents and told by Batuk soldiers that her British military father had died. Through genetic matching with her father’s maternal cousin, who had uploaded their DNA to the commercial genealogy platform Ancestry.com, the legal team confirmed Yvonne’s father is alive and currently residing in the UK. After ignoring five court orders to appear for paternity proceedings, he finally attended his hearing, requested a DNA test, and the results confirmed he is Yvonne’s father. Like Edward’s father, he has declined any contact with Yvonne at this time, though extended family members have expressed interest in building a relationship with her.

    Not all outcomes have involved estrangement, however. Twenty-year-old Cathy grew up believing her father, a former British soldier named Phill stationed at Batuk in 2004, was dead. Her mother Maggie told her this after Phill lost contact when his phone was stolen following a deployment change. As a teenager, Cathy tracked Phill down on Facebook, but he did not recognize her name and blocked her messages. Struggling with the loneliness of growing up without a father and lacking answers about her mixed heritage, Cathy made a suicide attempt. Meanwhile, Phill had left the military, struggled with poor mental health, and experienced homelessness after transitioning to civilian life. When paternity was confirmed through the project, Phill called the discovery a “very happy surprise.” He has already begun providing financial support to Cathy and Maggie, and the two are rebuilding their relationship, with Cathy planning to visit the UK in the near future. To date, Phill is the only confirmed father who has voluntarily provided financial support to his Kenyan child.

    The project was launched in 2024 after UK-based solicitor James Netto was approached by families in Nanyuki, the Kenyan market town 185 kilometers north of Nairobi that has hosted Batuk since the base opened in 1964. More than 5,000 British military personnel pass through the training base each year, and the facility has long been mired in controversy over allegations of abuse and misconduct. In December 2024, a two-year Kenyan parliamentary inquiry concluded that British personnel at Batuk operated within a “culture of impunity,” resulting in sexual violence, two murder allegations, widespread environmental damage, and the systemic abandonment of children fathered with local women.

    To address the longstanding issue of unacknowledged paternity, Netto partnered with Kenyan lawyer Kelvin Kubai, who runs the charity Connecting Roots Kenya to support these children, and leading genetics professor Denise Syndercombe Court. The team traveled to Kenya with hundreds of DNA testing kits, collected samples from claimants ranging in age from three to 70 years old, and cross-referenced the results against the nearly 30 million genetic profiles available on commercial genealogy platforms – a large enough dataset to make familial matches even with distant relatives. Netto says the scale and methodology of this project are unprecedented in UK legal history, and the team was stunned by how successful the process was, with matches ranging from distant cousins all the way to direct identification of the fathers themselves. To secure official contact information, the courts ordered UK government agencies including the Ministry of Defence, Department for Work and Pensions, and HM Revenue and Customs to release the identified fathers’ names and addresses.

    Netto says his team has already documented nearly 100 active cases of children born to British soldiers and contractors near Batuk, and he estimates the true number is far higher. In the 12 cases that have received formal paternity confirmation from the UK Family Court, most claimants are now eligible to apply for British citizenship, and all minors and students are eligible for court-ordered child support.

    Rejecting calls for a ban on relationships between British soldiers and local Kenyan women as inherently racist, Kubai argues the only just solution is to hold men accountable when they father children during their deployment. Netto and Kubai plan to bring dozens more cases before the UK High Court over the coming months, continuing their work to connect claimants with their heritage and secure the financial and legal rights they are owed.

    In response to questions about the allegations and the paternity project, the UK Ministry of Defence stated it “deeply regrets those issues and challenges which have arisen in relation to the UK’s defence presence in Kenya” and said it continues to take action to address concerns where possible. It noted that consensual relationships between personnel and local women do not violate MoD policy, and that the ministry does not investigate cases where no criminal allegations have been filed by local authorities. Brigadier Simon Ridgway, commanding officer of the British Army’s Collective Training Group, added that the MoD works with Kenyan children’s services to address paternity claims as they are received. The December 2024 Kenyan parliamentary inquiry has called on the Kenyan government to create formal new systems to hold Batuk soldiers accountable for child support, including mandated DNA testing and long-term psychosocial support for affected children.

  • Why your recycled clothes could end up in this South American desert

    Why your recycled clothes could end up in this South American desert

    Every year, millions of discarded pre-owned garments collected from donation bins across Europe, North America and Asia make their final resting place in one of the harshest landscapes on Earth: Chile’s Atacama Desert. A stark environmental crisis has emerged from the global secondhand clothing trade, which has long benefited the northern Chilean economy but left the arid region choking on unsold textile waste – and now a new private sector initiative is stepping in to address the problem, spurred by landmark regulatory change.

    At the heart of the global secondhand clothing flow is Iquique’s Zona Franca del Iquique, known locally as Zofri. Established in 1975 to drive economic growth in northern Chile’s underdeveloped regions, this duty-free free trade zone allows businesses to import, store and re-export goods without paying customs duties or value-added tax. Over decades, used clothing became one of Zofri’s largest import sectors: official Chilean government data puts annual imports of pre-owned garments at roughly 123,000 tonnes, with shipments arriving in compressed bales via container from across the globe. Once imported, the clothing is sorted, sold locally at low-cost markets or re-exported to other Latin American markets.

    For the local community, the sector delivers tangible economic benefits. Felipe González, Zofri’s general manager, notes that roughly 10% of the region’s local workforce – most of whom are low-skilled women without formal advanced qualifications – find employment in the clothing trade, sorting garments by quality for resale. The lowest-quality unsold stock ends up at La Quebradilla, a sprawling open-air market just 30 minutes uphill from Iquique in Alto Hospicio, where stalls sell everything from t-shirts to dresses starting at just $0.54. Tourists and local residents flock to the market on weekends to hunt for bargains, cementing the trade’s role in the local economy.

    But the boom in secondhand clothing has come at a devastating environmental cost. Unsold garments cannot be deposited in local municipal landfills, which are only permitted to accept household waste rather than commercial import waste. Legitimate disposal options – including exporting the unsold stock, paying taxes to sell the garments outside the free trade zone, or contracting authorized waste management firms – all carry significant costs. For unethical traders, the far cheaper alternative is to illegally burn unsold clothing or dump it in the vast, unpatrolled expanses of the surrounding Atacama Desert. By the largest industry estimates, this illegal dumping totals 39,000 tonnes of textile waste every year.

    Local authorities have struggled to curb the practice. Miguel Painenahuel, who works in Alto Hospicio’s urban planning department, explains that the desert’s wide open terrain and countless accessible access points make it easy for trucks to sneak in and dump waste overnight. While the municipal government conducts patrols and operates surveillance cameras to issue fines to violators, limited resources mean enforcement efforts cannot keep pace with the steady flow of dumped clothing.

    Now, a public-private partnership spurred by new national regulation is working to turn the crisis into a circular economy opportunity. In Iquique, the non-profit CircularTec – the Centro Tecnológico de Economía Circular, which advances sustainable resource reuse – has partnered with veteran local textile importer Bekir Conkur to build Chile’s first large-scale textile recycling facility targeted at this unsold clothing waste.

    Conkur, a Turkish-born entrepreneur who has operated in Chile’s textile trade for more than 15 years and imports 50 containers of secondhand clothing monthly, has invested $7 million in the new facility, currently under construction 20 minutes outside Alto Hospicio. When fully operational in a few months, the water- and chemical-free plant will process unsold garments into raw fibers, which are then converted into felt for use in mattresses, furniture, automotive interior components and building insulation. Conkur projects the facility will have the capacity to process 20 tonnes of textile waste per day, handling a large share of the region’s annual unsold clothing stock.

    The initiative comes in response to a landmark update to Chile’s environmental regulation: last July, the national government added textiles to its existing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Law. The regulation shifts the financial and operational responsibility for end-of-life product management from local governments and the public sector to the brands, retailers and importers that put the clothing on the market. While the specific regulatory details for the textile sector are still being drafted by the government, the rule change has created a clear incentive for private companies to invest in recycling infrastructure, turning waste management into a viable business opportunity.

    Luis Martínez, executive director of CircularTec, emphasized that the goal of the project is far more than just compliance: “We don’t want the Atacama Desert to be famous as a tourist attraction where visitors can see mountains of clothes.” Looking forward, Conkur believes his facility will not only handle waste from across Chile, but could eventually process textile waste from other countries around the world, turning a growing global environmental problem into a sustainable, profitable circular business.

  • The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump’s presidency

    The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump’s presidency

    A joint analysis conducted by the BBC has uncovered a striking, consistent pattern of abnormal, large-scale trading activity across multiple financial and prediction markets that consistently precedes major market-moving policy announcements from U.S. President Donald Trump during his second term, raising urgent alarms among analysts about potential illegal insider trading that could benefit connected insiders at the expense of ordinary investors.

    Market observers have tracked repeated instances of sudden, massive spikes in trading volume just minutes or hours before Trump’s public statements or posts are released, across everything from crude oil futures to broad stock index funds and blockchain-based prediction markets for geopolitical events. The BBC’s cross-referencing of trade timestamp data and public announcement schedules confirms that these sudden trading surges never fail to line up with the direction of market shifts that follow Trump’s revelations.

    One of the most high-profile examples occurred during the U.S.-Iran war. After nine days of conflict, Trump told CBS News that the war was “pretty much very complete,” a statement that sent global oil prices plummeting 25% within a minute of the news being made public via a reporter’s X post at 19:16 GMT. However, market data shows a massive wave of bets on falling oil prices entered the market a full 47 minutes earlier, at 18:29 GMT, netting the early traders millions in profit.

    A second oil market incident unfolded just two days after Trump threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s power infrastructure. When the president unexpectedly posted on Truth Social that Washington had held “VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS” with Tehran aimed at a full cessation of hostilities, U.S. benchmark oil prices dropped 11% immediately after the post. Again, abnormal volumes of bearish oil bets hit the market 14 minutes before Trump’s post went live, an activity one senior oil analyst described as “unquestionably abnormal.”

    Outside of Middle East energy markets, the same pattern emerged in U.S. stock trading following Trump’s 2025 tariff announcement. After enacting sweeping tariffs on nearly all U.S. trading partners that triggered a global market selloff, Trump announced a 90-day pause on the levies for all nations except China. The S&P 500 notched a 9.5% one-day gain, one of the largest in post-WWII history. Data shows that just after 18:00 BST, trading volumes for an S&P 500-tracking fund jumped from a steady hundreds of contracts per minute to more than 10,000, with one group of traders placing more than $2 million in bullish bets even after seven straight days of market losses. Those early trades generated an estimated $20 million in profit. The pattern prompted senior Senate Democrats to send a formal letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) calling for a full investigation into whether administration insiders or allies were profiting at the expense of the general public. Both the SEC and White House declined to comment on the allegations when contacted by the BBC.

    The rise of unregulated blockchain-powered prediction markets, which allow users to bet on geopolitical and policy outcomes, has added a new layer of scrutiny. Notably, Donald Trump Jr. holds an investment stake in major prediction platform Polymarket, serves on its advisory board, and also acts as a strategic advisor to a second leading platform, Kalshi. The BBC has reached out to Trump Jr. for comment, with no response received as of publication.

    In one high-stakes prediction market case, an anonymous account named Burdensome-Mix registered on Polymarket in December 2025, and accumulated a total $32,500 bet that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would be removed from office by the end of January 2026. Just one day after the final bet was placed, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces and ousted, netting the anonymous account a $436,000 payout. Shortly after the win, the account changed its username and has not placed any additional trades. A separate incident in February 2026 saw six newly created Polymarket accounts collectively earn $1.2 million after correctly betting that a U.S. strike on Iran would occur by the end of that month, with five of the six accounts ceasing all activity immediately after cashing out. One remaining account later earned an additional $163,000 for correctly betting on an April 7 U.S.-Iran ceasefire, which was announced on exactly that date.

    In response to growing scrutiny, both Polymarket and Kalshi introduced new anti-insider trading rules in March 2026. Polymarket said in a statement to the BBC that it upholds the highest standards of market integrity and proactively collaborates with regulators and law enforcement. Prediction markets fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which did not respond to requests for comment, though its chair recently reaffirmed the agency has “zero tolerance” for fraud and insider trading. The White House also confirmed it sent an internal email last month warning staff against using non-public information to place bets on prediction markets, while spokesperson Davis Ingle called any unproven claims of administration misconduct “baseless and irresponsible reporting.”

    While illegal insider trading has been on the books for most U.S. market participants since the 1933 Securities Act, and was extended to cover federal government officials in 2012, no official has ever been prosecuted under the 2012 expansion. Financial regulation expert Paul Oudin, a professor at ESSEC Business School, notes that enforcement of these rules remains extremely challenging in practice. “Financial regulators cannot bring a prosecution unless they can definitively identify the source of the leaked information,” Oudin explained. “You can have massive, obvious trading that proves someone had advance knowledge of what Donald Trump was going to announce, but there is still a very strong chance no one will ever face charges.” To date, no U.S. financial regulator has publicly acknowledged or opened formal proceedings around any of these alleged insider trading incidents.

  • Hong Kong fire victims to return to burned homes, grieving losses and grappling with trauma

    Hong Kong fire victims to return to burned homes, grieving losses and grappling with trauma

    Five months after Hong Kong’s deadliest residential fire in decades tore through the Tai Po suburban district’s Wang Fuk Court apartment complex, killing 168 people and displacing thousands, the first wave of surviving residents is preparing to step back into what is left of their fire-scorched homes starting Monday.

    For 78-year-old Keung Mak, the impending visit to the first-floor apartment he shared with his wife Kit Chan for more than 40 years, where they raised their children, brings nothing but heavy grief. Images shared by his social worker already laid bare the full scope of the destruction: the apartment’s ceiling burned through to expose exposed steel rebar, floors heaped with shattered charred tiles, and portions of the structure compromised enough to require temporary reinforcement to avoid collapse. Mak says he never imagined his home of four decades would be reduced to such ruin, and he expects almost none of the family’s cherished personal items to survive. Fishing rods gifted to him by his son, 50-year-old wedding photos, and decades of handwritten letters from their child – all items irreplaceable for their sentimental value – are almost certainly gone, Chan, 74, says. “Not even a single piece of paper will be left,” she added. Under current access rules, only two people can enter the severely damaged unit, so only Mak and their son will visit Monday – a restriction Chan hopes officials will relax to let her see her former home one last time.

    The re-entry process, which will allow residents to retrieve any salvageable belongings, is expected to stretch into early May, with strict limits on group size and time spent inside: most households get up to three hours, with up to four people allowed in, while only one person can enter the most unstable units. The visit will be a uniquely grueling test for elderly residents, who made up more than a third of the 4,600 people who lived in the complex before the blaze. With all elevators knocked out of service by the fire, hundreds of seniors aged 65 and older – more than 1,400 in total have registered to return, according to public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong – have even undertaken targeted fitness training to prepare to climb stairs up to the 31st story of the damaged towers. Blackened, soot-stained building exteriors still stand as a constant, stark reminder of the November tragedy, and few residents hold out hope of recovering any meaningful mementos from their destroyed units.

    Nearly five months on, residents are still waiting for official conclusions from the ongoing public inquiry into the fire’s cause, while they themselves have been scattered across Hong Kong, most housed in temporary government accommodation as they weigh resettlement options. Early findings from the independent inquiry have already revealed damning details: an attorney for the committee confirmed that nearly all fire safety systems in the seven affected buildings failed on the day of the blaze due to preventable human error. Authorities have also confirmed three men were arrested in March on suspicion of looting abandoned units in the weeks after the fire, leaving many residents wary of what they will find when they return.

    For many survivors, the re-entry brings tangled, conflicting emotions. Thirty-nine-year-old Cyrus Ng, whose parents lived in a 10th-floor unit at Wang Fuk Court for more than a decade before he moved out, says he struggled with insomnia, anger and grief in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. While he has found a measure of emotional stability in the months since, he has not come to terms with the tragedy, and remains firm in his demand for full accountability. “We know there are suspicious issues behind this,” Ng said. “I hope we can really find the truth.” Ng’s parents’ unit escaped the worst of the fire damage, so he is both anxious about the emotional toll the visit will take on his elderly parents, and hopeful they will be able to retrieve critical documents, old photos and clothing that hold deep personal meaning. He also shares the widespread concern over potential theft, and plans to document the unit’s condition with photos during his visit to push back against the government’s proposed demolition plan.

    Hong Kong officials have already stated that cost-effective repairs to the seven fire-damaged buildings are unfeasible, and have proposed demolishing the structures and buying back homeownership rights from displaced residents, a plan based on survey data collected from residents. But many survivors have pushed back on the proposal, pointing to inquiry data showing only half of the 1,700 units in the seven buildings suffered any level of damage. Ng believes that at least some of the less damaged structures could be repaired to allow residents to return if they wish, even as his own parents consider accepting the government’s offer of replacement housing elsewhere.

    Even residents of the only complex building that escaped the fire face unresolvable trauma, and hold mixed views on the government’s plan. Stephanie Leung, who lives in the unscathed block, says her family cannot imagine staying in the apartment permanently. Every time they look out at the seven blackened towers where former neighbors and schoolmates lost their lives, the nightmare of the fire comes rushing back. “Whenever I go back, I want to cry,” she said. Leung hopes the government will extend the buyback and demolition option to her block as well, while allowing residents who wish to stay to remain. For all residents, Monday’s first visits back to the ruins are not just a chance to recover belongings – they are another painful step forward in a long, uncertain journey toward recovery that remains far from over.

  • China boosts IP protection for new sectors

    China boosts IP protection for new sectors

    Against the backdrop of a global push to cultivate new economic growth drivers and accelerate technological transformation, China’s top intellectual property regulatory body is ramping up targeted protection measures for intellectual property (IP) in fast-growing emerging sectors ranging from artificial intelligence to big data, as part of the country’s broader strategic framework to advance the development of new quality productive forces. This announcement was made by Shen Changyu, Commissioner of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), in an exclusive interview with China Daily, delivered ahead of World Intellectual Property Day, which falls annually on April 26.

    Shen’s comments come just as the country prepares to launch its annual National Intellectual Property Publicity Week, a seven-day event designed to showcase China’s nationwide IP development achievements and raise public awareness of IP rights.

    As global technological revolutions and industrial upgrading gain momentum, Shen explained that cutting-edge emerging technologies including AI, integrated circuits, biomedicine, quantum technology, 6G communications, and brain-computer interfaces are fundamentally reshaping global economic structures. This rapid evolution has created new, unmet requirements for robust, adaptive IP protection frameworks that can keep pace with innovation.

    According to Shen, CNIPA has already rolled out a series of targeted policy measures over recent years that have delivered tangible progress toward fostering innovation and driving high-quality economic growth. Key priorities moving forward include continued refinement of IP-related legal frameworks, acceleration of trademark and patent examination workflows, and optimization of support services to facilitate IP commercialization across all emerging technology fields.

    Official 2025 data underscores the rapid growth of innovation in these key sectors. Among China’s entire stock of valid invention patents, computer technology and medical technology recorded the fastest year-over-year growth rates, with the total volume of AI-related patents held in China now ranking first globally. By the end of 2025, the number of new trademark registrations linked to AI and other emerging sectors reached 324,300, pushing the total number of valid trademarks in these fields to 4.39 million — a 5.94 percent increase from 2024.

    “These numbers reflect sustained market enthusiasm for trademark development in emerging areas, and demonstrate both growing innovation vitality across China’s tech ecosystem and rising awareness of trademark protection among technology enterprises,” Shen noted.

    To improve both the quality and efficiency of IP examination processes, CNIPA has streamlined administrative procedures and updated core regulatory rules multiple times. Notably, the country’s patent examination guidelines have undergone three revisions — in 2019, 2023, and most recently 2025 — specifically to address the unique challenges posed by AI-related patent applications.

    “The 2025 revision introduces a dedicated standalone section for artificial intelligence and big data for the first time, with a strong emphasis on integrating ethical oversight into the examination process,” Shen explained. “It clarifies that all core technical applications must align with existing legal standards, social morality, and public interest, so we can build strong safety guardrails that support the healthy development of the AI sector.”

    CNIPA is also actively involved in updating higher-level national legislation to address new industry needs. The agency is contributing to revisions of China’s Trademark Law and the Integrated Circuit Layout Design Protection Regulation, efforts designed to respond to public concerns and create clear legal support for the development and protection of core domestic technologies. Last year, the draft Trademark Law revision completed its first reading before the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislative body. The draft targets longstanding issues such as malicious trademark registration and trademark misuse, directly addressing the urgent need for stronger protection of AI-driven innovation, according to Shen.

    In a further practical adjustment to accommodate new sectors, CNIPA has added 890 standardized goods and service classification items specifically for big data, AI, and other emerging industries. “This reform resolves pressing on-the-ground problems, including the lack of corresponding classification categories for trademark registration in new fields and unclear boundaries for IP protection,” Shen said. “By cutting branding costs for businesses and reducing the risk of IP infringement, this move ultimately optimizes both the innovation and business environment, providing solid IP support for the healthy, orderly growth of strategic emerging and future-focused industries.”

    These efficiency-focused reforms have already delivered measurable results. In 2025, China’s average trademark examination period held steady at four months, while the average invention patent review period was cut to 15 months. Both examination timelines are the fastest of any major global economy for IP review processes of this scale, Shen added.

    Commissioner Shen also highlighted the critical economic role of IP commercialization, noting that it serves as the key bridge between raw innovation and real-world industrial application, making it a core priority for developing new quality productive forces. In 2025 alone, CNIPA accredited 65 new specialized centers dedicated to supporting IP commercialization, 48 of which focus specifically on emerging industries. These centers are designed to promote synergistic development between IP creation and industrial growth.

    Over the course of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), CNIPA delivered specialized public IP services — including IP search and analysis, industry navigation, infringement early warning, overseas IP rights protection, and targeted training — to more than 50,000 domestic enterprises across the country.

    On the international stage, China has actively pursued multilateral and bilateral exchanges and cooperation on emerging IP governance issues. By working closely with the World Intellectual Property Organization and foreign IP offices to coordinate global AI governance frameworks, China aims to ensure its perspective is heard and its influence expands in the global IP landscape, Shen said.

    Looking ahead to the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), Shen confirmed that CNIPA will continue to center its work on addressing core innovation challenges in emerging fields. The agency will continuously refine IP-related legal and regulatory frameworks while proactively tracking evolving global industry trends to keep pace with rapid technological change.

  • Art on trial – a sculptor’s arrest highlights new extremes for censorship in China

    Art on trial – a sculptor’s arrest highlights new extremes for censorship in China

    ### Background: The Gao Brothers’ Decades of Provocative Artistic Practice
    Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang, the sibling contemporary art duo, first rose to public attention in China’s domestic art circle during the 1990s and early 2000s, eventually building a global reputation for bold, satirical works that challenge the political legacy of their home country. For the brothers, the legacy of Mao Zedong – founder of the People’s Republic of China, whose rule oversaw decades of traumatic upheaval including the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution that killed tens of millions – has been a persistent thematic core. Their own family bore direct trauma from that era: their father was labeled a class enemy during the Cultural Revolution and detained in an extrajudicial facility, a personal grievance that has shaped their creative output.

    Among their most controversial works are two pieces created for exhibition in 2009: *The Execution of Christ*, a bronze sculpture that depicts Jesus Christ at gunpoint, with every member of the firing squad sculpted in the likeness of Mao, and *Mao’s Guilt*, a life-sized statue of the former leader kneeling in a pose of supposed contrition. For most of their decades-long career, these works did not draw severe official punishment. That landscape shifted dramatically after 2012, when Xi Jinping took power and began a widespread contraction of space for independent creative expression across China’s cultural sectors. In 2021, Beijing strengthened criminal statutes banning insult to the country’s “revolutionary heroes and martyrs,” a category that places Mao above all other figures as an untouchable symbol of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s legitimacy. Soon after the amendment passed, Gao Zhen – who by that point had already relocated to New York as a permanent resident, leaving his brother based in China – left the country for the U.S. in 2022.

    ### The 2024 Arrest and Secret Trial
    Fifteen years after the controversial sculptures were first exhibited, the long-simmering legal reckoning arrived. While visiting family in Beijing in mid-2024, 69-year-old Gao Zhen was taken into custody directly from his suburban studio. In the immediate aftermath of his arrest, Chinese authorities seized all of his stored artworks and imposed an exit ban on his wife and 7-year-old son, barring them from leaving the country. Last month, Gao was tried behind closed doors on charges of “insulting revolutionary heroes and martyrs” – a criminal offense that carries a maximum penalty of three years imprisonment.

    The trial has received almost no uncensored coverage within China, where most domestic state-aligned media have framed Gao as a fraud who “caters to Western political interests” by producing work that defames revered national figures. But Gao Qiang, the younger brother who remains connected to the case, says the trial sends an unambiguous warning to all creators in China and beyond. “Even if a work was made 15 years ago, it can still be turned into a crime if today’s political climate changes,” he told the BBC in an interview, adding that the prosecution of his brother is part of a broad, accelerating crackdown on dissident expression that touches visual arts, cinema, music, literature and digital online content.

    China’s central government has not issued any public comment on Gao’s case or the trial. But independent China analysts say the case exposes a growing pattern of increasingly extreme political control by the CCP, which now polices expression both retroactively – prosecuting work created years or decades earlier under new legal standards – and transnationally, targeting creators even when they reside outside of China’s borders.

    ### Broader Context: The Deepening Crackdown on Creative Dissent
    Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ian Johnson, who has spent decades documenting political repression in China, argues that the current era represents “probably the darkest period of time in decades” for artistic and expressive freedom under CCP rule. “In the half-century since the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, this is the most prolonged crackdown that we’ve seen – far eclipsing the period after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989,” Johnson notes, adding that the CCP is now less willing than ever to tolerate even mild criticism of its top leaders.

    Many observers link the CCP’s growing boldness in cracking down on dissent to shifting global political norms. As democratic standards erode across much of the world, analysts say Beijing has calculated that it can pursue aggressive repression without meaningful pushback from Western nations that have increasingly stepped back from defending global human rights standards. This month, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights joined a growing coalition of international advocacy groups to call for Gao’s immediate release, noting that his case “raises concerns with regard to retroactive application of criminal law and use of criminal sanctions to punish artistic expression.”

    Beyond threats to expressive freedom, grave concerns have emerged over Gao Zhen’s physical health while in custody. Gao lives with multiple chronic conditions, including lumbar spine disease, arthritis, degenerative eye problems, and chronic urticaria, an inflammatory skin condition that causes persistent painful rashes. According to Gao Qiang, his brother has met with his legal counsel while confined to a wheelchair on multiple occasions, has frequently been too unwell to get out of bed, and has shown visible signs of malnutrition. Repeated requests from his legal team to grant him medical bail have all been rejected by authorities, leaving his younger brother warning that the risks to his life are “grave.”

    For the CCP, the sensitivity around criticism of Mao stems from the ideological foundations of the party’s rule. While the party officially acknowledges some of Mao’s mistakes, it maintains his status as a sacred founding figure, and any public challenge to his legacy is seen as an implicit challenge to the CCP’s own right to rule. That dynamic has led to a steady stream of artists, writers and activists being targeted for violating unwritten rules around discussing national leaders: high-profile cases include Ai Weiwei, the internationally renowned artist detained on “economic crime” charges in 2011 after voicing support for pro-democracy protests, and Liu Xiaobo, a human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died in custody in 2017 after being imprisoned for organizing a pro-democracy manifesto.

    In recent years, the CCP’s dragnet for dissident expression has expanded far beyond China’s own borders. “Artists and writers have long been in the Chinese government’s crosshairs – but the authorities are now extending that reach beyond physical borders,” explains Sophie Richardson, spokesperson for the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders. Beyond punitive measures like exit bans for family members of exiled creators, Richardson says Beijing now regularly pressures foreign cultural institutions to censor works critical of the CCP, part of a global campaign to curtail independent artistic expression.

    ### The Unprecedented Nature of Gao’s Case
    Gao Zhen’s prosecution is notable even in the context of the CCP’s ongoing crackdown because of its retroactive application: the works in question were created and exhibited 15 years ago, years before the strengthened legal statute under which he is now prosecuted. What is more, observers note that Gao never directly called for the overthrow of the CCP or openly criticized current leader Xi Jinping, placing him outside the category of “classic dissidents.”

    “Even if he’s not a classic dissident, the Party is now so sensitive toward history that it felt it had to detain and try him,” Johnson explains.

    That growing boldness is felt acutely by exiled dissident artists already living outside China. Badiucao, a Shanghai-born artist based in Melbourne who has built a global reputation for works critical of the CCP and Xi Jinping, says the arrest of Gao Zhen demonstrates that the CCP no longer hesitates to wield power openly even when it draws international attention. “It is really determined to wield power without hesitation, compared with old times,” he says, adding that the shift is rooted in global political changes. “I do not feel safe every day, because now I know the Chinese government do not care about international reputation anymore.”

    Beijing’s decision to hold Gao’s trial entirely behind closed doors, barring even family members and foreign diplomats from attending, exposes the regime’s discomfort with public scrutiny, according to Gao Qiang. “If exposed to public view, the legal weakness, political vindictiveness, and symbolic nature of the prosecution would become impossible to hide,” he says. Badiucao echoes that analysis, noting that an open trial would paradoxically bring global attention to the very works Beijing is trying to suppress: “That’s the paradox when you’re trying an artist. Because at the end of the day, the reason why we create art is we want it spreading one way or another. A public trial is almost like a national or international show in MoMA: now the whole world will know which work is particularly offensive to what leader.”

    Despite Beijing’s efforts to sidelined the case, Gao Qiang is calling on the global community to keep attention on his brother’s prosecution. “This is about far more than the fate of one Chinese artist – it is a test of freedom of expression, historical memory, and the most basic boundaries of the rule of law,” he says. If the international community responds to Gao’s prosecution with silence, he warns, it will set a dangerous global precedent: “that a state may retroactively redefine the meaning of art and turn satire, reflection, and memory themselves into crimes. Gao Zhen is under threat today; tomorrow it could be any writer, filmmaker, musician, or critic.”

  • Gallagher tight-lipped on CGT reform after reports of return to Keating-era discount

    Gallagher tight-lipped on CGT reform after reports of return to Keating-era discount

    As the countdown to Australia’s May 12 federal budget ticks onward, speculation over potential reforms to the nation’s capital gains tax (CGT) framework has intensified, leaving Finance Minister Katy Gallagher dodging repeated questions about the Albanese government’s exact plans. Recent media reports have shifted public expectations, indicating Treasurer Jim Chalmers is not pushing for a full scrapping of the current 50% CGT discount — a signature policy of the 1999 Howard government — but rather a scaled-back adjustment that would revert the system to an inflation-adjusted model last used during the Keating era.

    The current flat 50% discount applies to nominal capital gains, meaning it reduces tax on the full stated increase in an asset’s value regardless of whether that gain is eroded by inflation. By contrast, the Keating-era model would only tax gains that represent a real increase in value after accounting for rising consumer prices, a structure that changes how tax burdens are calculated for asset holders.

    Calls for a full repeal of the existing discount have grown in recent months, driven by a Greens-led Senate inquiry that published its findings in March. The inquiry concluded the current CGT concession skews Australia’s housing market toward property investors, puts home ownership further out of reach for young and low-income Australians, disproportionately delivers tax savings to the nation’s wealthiest households, and distorts investment flows away from productive sectors of the economy. Analysis from the Parliamentary Budget Office, commissioned for the inquiry, found the discount will cost the federal budget a staggering $247 billion in foregone revenue over the next decade.

    These findings have dovetailed with Chalmers’ public framing of the upcoming May budget, which the Treasurer has repeatedly said will center on addressing intergenerational inequity — a policy priority that has fueled widespread speculation the government would eliminate the Howard-era CGT settings entirely. But when pressed on the government’s deliberations during an interview with ABC’s Radio National on Monday, Gallagher declined to offer any details ahead of the budget’s official release.

    “The budget will be released in that second week of May, and that will have all the decisions the government has made,” Gallagher told reporters. “I mean, I think the Treasurer and PM have made it clear our tax policies haven’t changed. I think we’ve made it clear we want to focus on intergenerational equity. And so, you know, we’ve been clear about that, but the announcements around that will be made in the budget.”

    As of Monday, the government has not confirmed whether the revised inflation-adjusted model reported by Nine Newspapers will be included in the final budget, leaving policymakers, investors and householders waiting for formal details when the budget is delivered in just a few weeks.

  • Shanghai flower show goes viral

    Shanghai flower show goes viral

    One of China’s most anticipated annual floral events, the 2026 Shanghai International Flower Show, has quickly become a viral online sensation, drawing thousands of visitors and widespread social media attention just days after its official launch. The event’s Pudong branch kicked off on April 18 at Taikoo Li Qiantan, a popular commercial and leisure complex located along the banks of the Huangpu River. Visitors to the Qiantan venue are greeted with immersive displays that blend creative floral design with urban riverside scenery: striking animal-shaped botanical installations stand alongside layered riverside floral arrangements, creating an endless sea of blooms that stretches along the waterfront. This visually stunning transformation has turned the Qiantan district into one of the most sought-after travel and photography hotspots in the city, with thousands of user-generated photos and videos spreading rapidly across Chinese social media platforms. Unlike previous iterations that centered on a single main venue, the 2026 festival has expanded to a citywide scale, with designated viewing areas and pop-up floral displays installed across multiple Shanghai districts. The event will run through May 10, giving both local residents and domestic tourists more than three weeks to explore the blooming installations across the city. Through this citywide expansion, the annual flower show has turned the entire metropolis of Shanghai into an open-air romantic garden, blending natural beauty with urban life to create a one-of-a-kind seasonal experience for all attendees.