Death toll in Hong Kong fire rises to 94, hundreds still missing

Erik Long

The fire that destroyed seven high-rise residential buildings in Hong Kong is nearly extinguished, after burning for more than 36 hours. At 9 a.m. Hong Kong time, the Fire Department announced that 94 people had died and 76 were injured.

Those numbers will only continue to rise. The number of missing has not been updated by authorities in 24 hours and still stands at 279. It is now the worst fire in Hong Kong’s history since a warehouse fire in 1948 killed 176 people.

Burned buildings at the scene of the fire that started Wednesday at Wang Fuk Court, a residential estate in the Tai Po district of Hong Kong's New Territories, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025. [AP Photo/Chan Long Hei]

The Wang Fuk Court apartment complex in Tai Po caught fire in the mid-afternoon on Wednesday. The complex was under renovation. Like so much of the rest of Hong Kong its buildings were encased in bamboo scaffolding and green mesh netting. The immediate cause of the fire has not yet been uncovered, but once it began, it tore through the scaffolding and netting that surrounded the structures at breathtaking speed, engulfing seven towers in the conflagration.

Surviving residents report that fire alarms did not go off. The windows were encased in highly flammable styrofoam. A elderly survivor told the press that his home had been entirely dark, the windows covered from the outside with styrofoam. He had glimpsed the fire through a chink in the styrofoam covering his bathroom window and managed to evacuate. Others would not have seen the fire at all.

Prestige Construction and Engineering Company, the firm in charge of building maintenance at the estate, appears to have used illegal, unregulated materials, including styrofoam and flammable mesh. The Hong Kong Labour Department only keeps a record of the past two years infractions by companies on its website, but even in this limited window, Prestige was convicted of two safety offenses on other construction sites in November 2023. They were operating 11 ongoing construction projects at residential estates.

Police arrested two company directors and one consultant from Prestige Construction on suspicion of manslaughter. They seized bidding documents, a list of employees, and computers and mobile phones during a raid on the construction company’s offices.

Flame-resistant mesh costs $HK90 per sheet, flammable mesh, illegal on any building over four stories, costs $HK50. It is probable that illegal cost-cutting measures, designed to save $HK40 (about $US4.50) per sheet, rapidly spread the fire through seven of the eight Wang Fuk towers.

Residents report that they repeatedly complained of infractions. They also allege that Prestige was awarded the contract despite making the least competitive bid which strongly indicates wider corruption and collusion.

The Labour Department reported that they had warned Prestige of fire hazards at Wang Fuk Court a week before the blaze. On three occasions, warnings of labour safety violations were issued since July last year.

This begs the question: why was nothing done? What is the significance of repeated government warnings if, when no changes are made, the only outcome is additional warnings. While details remain murky, it is clear that there was, at a minimum, a great deal of government laxity in corporate oversight and regulation, if not outright complicity in the violations.

Tai Po, located in the northern New Territories of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is a predominantly working class and lower income community, with over 320,000 residents. Many of these residents live in government-subsidized housing estates, such as that of Wang Fuk Court.

The dead are disproportionately the elderly and the very young. A 2021 government census revealed that of the 4,600 residents of the complex around 40 percent were over the age of 65. On an ordinary day the elderly can be seen congregating in the park, playing mahjong in the shade, and gathering for morning tai chi; old women care for their grandchildren, old men fish in the nearby Lam Tsuen river.

According real estate listings, the average size of the floor area of the nearly 2,000 units in the complex, which was constructed in 1983, is 420 to 480 square feet (39 to 44 square metres). These are multi-generational homes. Many house a married couple whose joint income supports everyone, the grandparents, and children.

The grandparents care for the very young until they are old enough to go to school, while both parents are at work. When the senior members of the home are no longer able to sustain this role, a maid—Filipino or Indonesian—is often hired to live in the home, caring for the elderly and infants.

The time of the outbreak of the fire, means that most of those trapped in the units were grandparents and toddlers. The Hong Kong news carried the heart-rending footage yesterday of a working mother learning that her elderly mother-in-law and infant daughter were dead.

At least one Filipino and two Indonesian maids died in the fire. At least eight migrant workers are still missing, according to the Asian Migrants Coordinating Body. The actual numbers are doubtless higher. Facebook posts among the domestic worker community contain appeals to locate those who are missing along with the infants for whom they cared.

Scores of domestic workers are reported as having survived according to their consulates and are now in evacuation shelters. Their visas are contingent upon employment and they will almost certainly be sent home by the Hong Kong government.

Over a thousand residents now reside in evacuation centers and emergency shelters, sleeping on the floor. Many are still frantically inquiring after missing loved ones. There has been an outpouring of support from ordinary people throughout Hong Kong, supplying donations and coordinating aid.

Government aid to the victims has so far been paltry, bordering on insulting. City chief executive John Lee Ka-Chiu pledged that the government would create a $HK300 million ($US39 million) fund to assist the victims, including a cash handout of $HK10,000 to each household. That is the equivalent of one month’s rent for a 300-square foot unit. To move into a unit in Hong Kong requires paying first and last month’s rent, a one-month security deposit, and half a month’s rent to the realtor, three and half times the amount of aid the government is offering.

Each family of victims, Lee added, would be assigned a case worker, and would be provided with two weeks accommodation in a hostel or hotel. The victims have not only lost loved ones, they have lost everything they owned. They wear hand-me-down clothing supplied by community donations. And all the Hong Kong government is giving them is two weeks accommodation and a month’s rent.

The housing crisis is one of the defining social features of Hong Kong, which is consistently one of the most expensive cities in the world. Seven and half million people live in about 80 square kilometers of housing. The hourly minimum wage in Hong Kong is $HK42.1 an hour, having gone up just $HK2.1 in 2025, a rise of about 27 US cents.

The housing crisis in Hong Kong is not the product of overpopulation, but of extreme inequality and real estate speculation.

Hong Kong is home to a significant segment of the world’s mega-rich. The rich live in multi-story homes, sometimes even entire medium-rise buildings dedicated to a single family. A single wealthy family may employ 20 or 30 domestic workers: drivers, nannies, cooks, a crew for the yacht. They live on the Peak, or the finance district of Central, they shop for Gucci and Prada in the malls of Tsim Sha Tsui, the most expensive real estate in the world. Maserati and Lamborghini sports cars are not an uncommon sight on the streets of Hong Kong, a city with a highly efficient public mass transit system, where it is difficult to ever drive more than 60 kilometers an hour.

Meanwhile, 220,000 people live in rented spaces, known as ‘cage homes,’ that are smaller than the standard Hong Kong parking space. The number of such subdivided units is growing, particularly in older, working-class neighborhoods like Sham Shui Po. A small electric fan and a rice cooker at the foot of the bed, stacks of neatly folded clothes and other slight mounds of possessions sit atop the sheets in the windowless rooms. Each bed space is enclosed in a cage that can be locked when the resident is away from “home.”

The average wait time for public rental housing in Hong Kong is five and a half years. The wait time is growing longer, not shorter. People plan their lives around the application process: young people delay marriage, unhappy couples avoid divorce.

The system of public housing in Hong Kong began after another catastrophic fire in the slums of Shek Kip Mei on Christmas Day in 1953 that left 53,000 people homeless. Needing to shelter the working population, and feeling the ideological and political pressure of the victorious Chinese revolution just across the border, the British colonial government created tenement housing, allocating 120 square feet to each unit, with a system of communal restrooms and wash areas. These were homes, but their architecture resembled prisons.

Current subsidized housing rents at about 30 to 40 percent below market rate, but market rate is among the most expensive in the world. It takes an entire month’s income for a family to pay for subsidized housing; they must live, pay school expenses for children, save for college, conduct their lives out of a second or third income.

Grief over such catastrophes turns to anger. As it is for the working class around the globe, the social and economic conditions in Hong Kong are explosive, and outrage is coming to the surface.

Supreme Court uses shadow docket to uphold Trump’s termination of Federal Trade commissioner

John Burton

The Supreme Court is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 17, 2024. [AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, ]

On October 6, the Supreme Court will begin its 2025 term with routine oral arguments in a case turning on whether a Texas trial judge violated the Constitution by prohibiting a criminal defendant from conferring with counsel during a recess in trial testimony. More than 30 other oral arguments will take place before the December recess, mixing relatively mundane procedural, regulatory and taxation issues with so-called “hot button” items, such as the death penalty, voting rights, religion, campaign finance and transgender athletes.

Based on historical averages, roughly 40 or 50 more cases will be accepted, briefed, argued and decided before the current Supreme Court term ends early next summer.

Rather than relying on this traditional “merits docket,” however, the Supreme Court’s six-justice extreme right-wing majority now rules increasingly through “emergency orders” on the “shadow docket,” almost always aligning with the fascistic Republican Party and expanding the executive power wielded by President Donald Trump.

Continuing this trend, on Monday, September 22, the majority filed a summary order that effectively ends the case brought by Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member Rebecca Slaughter challenging her termination by Trump.

Congress established the FTC in 1914 to regulate domestic commerce and protect against monopoly. To give it at least some political independence, the enabling statute limits the removal of commissioners to cases of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” a typical “good cause” provision.

The Supreme Court decided 90 years ago in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that Congress can create agencies such as the FTC and insulate their members from presidential removal unless good cause for firing exists. This principle, important to the checks and balances underlying the overall constitutional framework, has come under recent attack from right-wing Supreme Court justices, who advocate a so-called “unitary executive.”

On March 18, Trump sent terse emails terminating Slaughter and another FTC commissioner, Alvaro Bedoya, prompting Slaughter to write that Trump violated “the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court Precedent … because I have a voice, and he is afraid of what I’ll tell the American people.” Bedoya, who is no longer challenging Trump’s action, added, “The President wants the FTC to be a lap dog for his golfing buddies.”

Ironically, Slaughter was originally nominated by Trump in 2018 to serve as one of the FTC’s seven commissioners. In 2023, Joe Biden renominated her to a second term, which was scheduled to end in 2029.

Citing the statutory language and Humphrey’s executor, last July, Washington D.C. District Judge Loren AliKhan ordered that Slaughter remain on the FTC while the case continues to trial in her court on whether good cause existed for her termination. AliKhan’s decision was affirmed by the D.C. Court of Appeals on September 2.

Within a week, however, Chief Justice John Roberts, an open proponent of the unitary executive, temporarily stayed the order reinstating Slaughter to her position. When the five other far-right justices joined him Monday, Slaughter’s legal position became hopeless, although the Supreme Court is going through the motions of setting her case for oral argument on the merits docket during early December to consider formally whether Humphrey’s Executor should be overruled.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote a two-paragraph dissent, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She wrote:

Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars. Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation’s separation of powers.

Kagan pointed out that Slaughter’s case follows those of Cathy Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, and Gwynne Wilcox, an appointee to the National Labor Relations Board, both of whom, like the FTC commissioners, were fired for no reason by Trump despite congressional statutes restricting removal to good cause.

Both Harris and Wilcox were also reinstated by trial judges, and those orders were affirmed in the D.C. Court of Appeals. Also, both reinstatements were vacated with emergency orders from the right-wing Supreme Court majority, purportedly because “the Government faces greater risk of harm from an order allowing a removed officer to continue exercising the executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being unable to perform her statutory duty.”

Mary Boyle, a Consumer Product Safety Commissioner, protected by a statute providing for removal only on good cause, also fell victim to an emergency order. This time there was a brief explanation from the majority: “The application is squarely controlled by Trump v. Wilcox.”

As noted by Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, the Supreme Court “thus treated a ruling on the shadow docket, not the 90-year-old precedent, as binding on lower courts.”

The shadow docket case being most closely watched now is that of Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump terminated without any due process on concocted “mortgage fraud” allegations posted to a social media account. The Supreme Court’s shadow docket decision, which could profoundly impact international perceptions of the stability of the United States economy, is expected within weeks.

Trump signs executive order approving takeover of TikTok by US investment consortium

Kevin Reed

On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order approving the TikTok divestiture plan, allowing the popular social media app to continue operating in the US under majority ownership by American investors, including tech company Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

The order implements requirements from a bipartisan national security law passed by Congress in 2024 mandating Chinese parent ByteDance to reduce its US ownership to less than 20 percent, with the remaining shares divided among an American investor consortium and ByteDance’s previous stakeholders.

The executive order states:

A plan has been presented to me to undergo a qualified divestiture of TikTok’s United States operations, as outlined in a framework agreement (Framework Agreement).  Under this Framework Agreement, TikTok’s United States application will be operated by a newly established joint venture based in the United States.  It will be majority-owned and controlled by United States persons and will no longer be controlled by any foreign adversary, since ByteDance Ltd. and its affiliates will own less than 20 percent of the entity, with the remainder being held by certain investors (Investor Parties).

The order formalizes the establishment of a new joint venture controlling TikTok’s US assets, including its highly valued recommendation algorithm, and establishes “protections” for American user data.

The idea that the US government and its corporate partners are going to safeguard the data of Americans is an absurdity. As documented by Edward Snowden in 2013, illegal military-intelligence surveillance of the electronic communications and internet activity of the US public, with the support of the telecommunications industry, has been going on for decades.

The TikTok agreement extends the deadline for enforcement of the ban on the platform contained in the original language of the Congressional legislation, moving it from September 16 to December 16, 2025, to allow time for the deal to be finalized with China.

Trump’s directive says the proposed takeover of TikTok upholds Congressional demands for “qualified divestiture,” with most board members being American, and adds that approval by Chinese authorities is required before completion.

The takeover of TikTok’s US operations was triggered by anti-China hysteria whipped up by both parties of US imperialism over the past five years. Presided over by the Trump administration, the deal includes a multibillion-dollar government fee as a condition of the transfer.

The deal amounts to a seizure of the Chinese-based app by the US tech oligarchy. While ByteDance, the Chinese parent company, will retain a stake of just under 20 percent (19.9), the US investors are putting up 45 percent of the investment, about $6 or $7 billion, and the balance of 35 percent will be provided by the former ByteDance investors. The total value of the TikTok’s US assets have been estimated at approximately $14 billion.

The agreement, portions of which were made public last week, would see ownership of TikTok’s technical platform, infrastructure and recommendation algorithm transition to the US consortium.

Cloud and business software giant Oracle (stock market value of $828 billion), private equity giant Silver Lake ($104 billion in assets under management), the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz ($46 billion in committed capital) are taking ownership alongside anticipated additions, such as Fox Corp. and technology magnates Michael Dell and Lachlan Murdoch, as well as the Abu Dhabi-based MGX.

The participation of the wide range of partners in the deal is a measure of the capitalist feeding frenzy underway. All the participants in the project, whether they are part of the technical aspects of the takeover or not, are expecting a significant return on their investment.

The platform’s powerful recommendation algorithm, which is credited with driving the app’s explosive popularity, will be transferred in code form and re-engineered in the US. The US consortium will have exclusive control over retraining and deploying the algorithm for American users. While ByteDance maintains a substantial minority interest, it loses all access and oversight of user data and algorithm modifications in the US.

Although the exact amount and structure of the fee are not public, a major condition of the deal is the unprecedented multibillion-dollar payment to the US government. Among all the new American partners, Oracle’s role is the most technically and politically significant. Already the designated host of TikTok’s US cloud data through Project Texas, Oracle is to become the app’s algorithm overseer and security authority, directly managing the code and its retraining for American users.

This move, the product of months of negotiation and direct White House participation, is portrayed as an answer to “national security” claims and congressional agitation over Chinese access to user data and digital influence.

The specifics of each investor’s financial commitment have also not all been publicly disclosed. However, Oracle’s new stake comes on top of its lucrative data-hosting contract. In leveraging Oracle’s connections—the company’s founder Larry Ellison is a major Trump supporter—the deal provides not just continuity of service but explicit corporate command over the recommendation engine.

The value and investment draw of TikTok lies in its remarkable popularity among American youth and its broad cultural reach. As of 2025, it boasts more than 170 million American users, a user base claimed to have played a role in the 2024 presidential election.

Although he began his 2024 campaign denouncing Chinese ownership of TikTok in xenophobic terms, Trump shifted his position as he began using it to spread his fascist political ideology. The shift underscores the calculated effort to turn what was once a propaganda campaign over “national security” into a massive business opportunity for the American financial oligarchy while also continuing to whip up anti-Chinese sentiments.

Indeed, much of the justification for the transaction is grounded in fear-mongering about foreign manipulation, data theft and hostile influence. These narratives, stoked by both major parties, provided the political cover required to advance what is, ultimately, a theft of a cultural giant by the US financial elite led by the gangster-in-chief in the White House.

If it is finalized, the current deal represents the end point of a years-long effort to ban TikTok that reached a peak in 2020. Trump’s executive orders sought first to shutter the app and then to force its sale to a US buyer. Amid massive public opposition, federal courts repeatedly enjoined these measures, but the bipartisan consensus behind driving Chinese technology out of critical markets only solidified as the Biden administration took office.

Biden’s White House, with the support of Congress and the intelligence agencies, encouraged the campaign of threats, casting TikTok simultaneously as a national security risk and a test case for legislative muscle. In 2024, Congress passed a bill mandating divestiture of any “foreign adversary-controlled” social media company, essentially compelling ByteDance either to sell TikTok or face a nationwide ban.

The measure was signed into law by Biden on April 24, 2024, following overwhelming bipartisan support of 360-58 in the House and 79-18 in the Senate. Every turn of the TikTok saga—from the initial Trump bans to Biden’s legislative maneuvers, to Trump’s orchestrated “solution”—has been justified in the name of anti-communism and extreme American nationalism in the service of capital, global power and technological supremacy. The entire episode is yet another example of the unanimity within the two-party system and complicity of the Democrats with the fascist politics of Donald Trump.

Although no further last-minute interventions are expected from Beijing, as with all business deals involving massive sums of money, nothing is truly certain until all signatures are in place, and the final approval is delivered from both Washington and Beijing.

The TikTok takeover is an example of the process of “decoupling” that has been the subject of debate by the US ruling class as the relationship between the US and China heads for economic and military conflict. At the same time, the Chinese are willing to make the TikTok deal despite its negative financial impact because it allows ByteDance to maintain some level of participation while avoiding a full US ban of the app. By agreeing to relinquish control of the core technical platform and majority ownership, ByteDance retains a commercial interest in TikTok.

Meanwhile, the deal is viewed by Beijing as a concession amid the broader US-China negotiations on tariffs, technology and geopolitical issues and averts, for the time being, a total cutoff from the lucrative US market.

Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme 2026

Application Deadline:

Applicant Deadline: 23rd October 2025
Supervisor Deadline: 6th November 2025
Research Office Deadline: 13th November 2025

Tell Me About The Award:

The Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme is a prestigious, fully funded initiative supported by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, and managed by the Irish Research Council. It provides funding for outstanding research Master’s and PhD candidates across all disciplines.

Which Fields are Eligible?

• All academic disciplines (from Archaeology to Zoology)
• Proposals in new, emerging, or interdisciplinary fields are especially encouraged.

Type:

• Fully Funded Postgraduate Scholarship (Master’s & PhD)

Who can Apply?

• Applicants of all nationalities
• Must be admitted to or affiliated with an eligible Irish higher education institution or research-performing organisation
• No age limit
• Applications must be in English or Irish
• Applicants must not have had more than two previous unsuccessful applications to the programme

How are Applicants Selected?

• Selection is based on academic excellence and research potential
• Independent international peer review process
• Consideration of innovation, interdisciplinarity, and societal impact

Which Countries Are Eligible?
Open to applicants from all countries

Where will the Award be Taken?
Eligible higher education institutions and research-performing organisations in Ireland

How Many Awards?
Hundreds of awards are given annually, though the programme is highly competitive with an average success rate of 18%.

What is the Benefit of the Award?

Up to €34,000 per annum, including:

• €25,000 annual stipend
• Contribution to fees (including non-EU fees) up to €5,750 per year
• Eligible direct research expenses of €3,250 per year
• For non-EU students, an additional €4,000 fee contribution may be available

How Long Will the Award Last?

• 1–4 years, depending on the length of the Master’s or PhD programme

How to Apply:

1. Apply to an eligible Irish higher education institution or research programme.
2. Prepare your research proposal and secure two references.
3. Submit your application via the official online portal before the deadline.
4. Ensure supervisors and the research office complete their parts by their respective deadlines.

Visit the Award Webpage for Details: 

Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme