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5 days ago | 
ejinsight.com | Mark O'Neill |Kevin Ng
Hong Kong Ballet’s final programme this season was the premiere of a new production of the classic “Giselle” at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. This new production of “Giselle” is staged by the artistic director Septime Webre and Charla Genn. The choreographic text is mostly faithful to Petipa’s productions of this classic for the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg in the late 19th century. However it is a pity that the mime scene of Giselle’s mother in Act 1 foretelling her death has been excised.
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1 week ago | 
ejinsight.com | Mark O'Neill |Kevin Ng
Foreign direct investment (FDI) into China this year will fall for a second year because of worsening ties with the United States and Europe and increasingly difficult conditions for foreign companies. In 2024, FDI fell 27.1 per cent in yuan terms, the sharpest decline since the 2008 global financial crisis. In the first quarter of 2025, it fell 10.8 per cent from the same period last year to US$36.9 billion.
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2 weeks ago | 
ejinsight.com | Mark O'Neill |Kevin Ng
Britain shrinks to mid-size nationIn the summer of 1925, London hosted the British Empire Exhibition at the newly built Wembley Stadium, with space for 125,000 people. It later became the national football stadium. At a cost of 12 million pounds, it was the largest exhibition ever staged in the world and attracted 27 million visitors. Of the 58 territories in the Empire, 56 took part. Britain had the largest Empire on earth.
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3 weeks ago | 
ejinsight.com | Mark O'Neill |Kevin Ng
Hong Kong people who emigrated to Britain with a BNO passport are alarmed by the new immigration policy outlined on Monday by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Most alarming is a new requirement that migrants must live and work for 10 years in the UK before they can apply for citizenship, double the five that was the requirement before May 12.
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3 weeks ago | 
ejinsight.com | Mark O'Neill |Kevin Ng
On Monday, more than 230 people packed into the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) for an emotional farewell to David Webb, the city’s most prominent activist investor, whose website has defended retail investors for 27 years. Diagnosed with an aggressive metastic prostate cancer, Webb gave what is likely to be his final appearance at the FCC. He was given a standing ovation at the start and end of his presentation.
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3 weeks ago | 
ejinsight.com | Mark O'Neill |Kevin Ng
On May 7, 150 people crowded into St John’s Cathedral in Garden Road to say goodbye to a polymath and pioneer of English-language education who lived in the city for 42 years. Dr Verner Bickley arrived in Hong Kong in 1983 as Founding Director of the Institute of Language in Education and lived here ever since. He died on February 9, aged 98.
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1 month ago | 
ejinsight.com | Mark O'Neill |Kevin Ng |Brian Wong
President Xi Jinping will be guest of honour at the giant May 9 military parade in Moscow to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe. He will see soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army, North Korea and Vietnam march with those from Russia, along with tanks, missiles and other military hardware. He may meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. He may also see Ukrainian suicide drones attack the parade. On April 30, President Volodymyr Zelensky threatened an attack.
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1 month ago | 
ejinsight.com | Mark O'Neill |Kevin Ng |Brian Wong
October 29, 1929 was “Black Tuesday”, the day the New York Stock Market crashed. On June 17, 1930, U.S. President Herbert Hoover passed the Hawley-Smoot Act, imposing tariffs on 20,000 imported goods. These two events helped to set off the Great Depression of the 1930s that devastated the U.S. and Europe, and created the conditions for World War Two.
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1 month ago | 
ejinsight.com | Mark O'Neill |Kevin Ng |Brian Wong
“I export 80 per cent of my output to the United States. What am I going to do?” Liang Lin manages a shoe factory in Foshan. “I cannot afford to pay my workers, so I have let most of them go home.”Across the world, in Westport on the west coast of Ireland, the 1,500 workers in an American firm that produces the world’s entire supply of Botox are also full of fear and anxiety. President Donald Trump has demanded that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry move their plants back home.
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1 month ago | 
ejinsight.com | Mark O'Neill |Kevin Ng |Brian Wong
Founded in 1962, The Australian Ballet is a major international ballet company and has 79 dancers in total. It has toured China eight times already, the last tour was in 2015, but it still has not toured Hong Kong yet. Based in Melbourne, The Australian Ballet is the resident ballet company of the Arts Centre Melbourne as well as the Sydney Opera House. Opened by Queen Elizabeth in 1973, the Sydney Opera House is a masterpiece of 20th century architecture.
