World

Hong Kong’s Cabbies, Long Scorned and Frustrated, Face the End of an Era

Published

12 months ago

January 5, 2025

Hong Kong’s Cabbies, Long Scorned and Frustrated, Face the End of an Era

The air is laced with cigarette smoke and Cantonese profanities as half a dozen taxi drivers hang out by their fire-engine-red cabs on a quiet corner of the gritty Prince Edward neighborhood of Hong Kong.

It is the afternoon handover, when day shift drivers pass their taxis to those working the night shift. They are surrendering wads of cash to a taxi agent, a matriarchal figure who collects rent for the vehicles, manages their schedules and dispenses unsolicited advice about exercising more and quitting smoking. The drivers wave her off.

There may be no harder task in this city of more than seven million than trying to change a taxi driver’s habits. Often grumpy and rushing to the next fare, cabbies in Hong Kong have been doing things their way for decades, reflecting the fast-paced, frenetic culture that has long energized the city.

But taxi drivers are under pressure to get with the times. Their passengers are fed up with being driven recklessly, treated curtly and, in many cases, having to settle fares with cash — one of the strangest idiosyncrasies about life in Hong Kong. The practice is so ingrained that airport staff often have to alert tourists at taxi ranks that they need to carry bills.

The government, both because of the complaints and to revitalize tourism, has tried to rein in taxi drivers. Officials ran a campaign over the summer urging drivers to be more polite. They imposed a point system in which bad behavior by drivers — such as overcharging or refusing passengers — would be tracked and could result in the loss of licenses.

In early December, the government proposed requiring all taxis to install systems to allow them to accept credit cards and digital payments by the end of 2025, and to add surveillance cameras by the end of 2026.

Predictably, many taxi drivers have opposed the idea of closer supervision.

“Would you want to be monitored all the time?” said Lau Bing-kwan, a 75-year-old cabby with thinning strands of white hair who accepts only cash. “The government is barking too many orders.”

Hold On to Your Seats

The new controls, if put in place, would signal the end of an era for an industry that has long been an anomaly in Hong Kong’s world-class transportation system. Every day, millions of people commute safely on sleek subways and air-conditioned double-decker buses that run reliably.

Riding in a taxi, by comparison, can be an adventure. Step into one of Hong Kong’s signature four-door Toyota Crown Comfort cabs and you will most likely be (what is the opposite of greeted?) by a man in his 60s or older with a phalanx of cellphones mounted along his dashboard — used sometimes for GPS navigation and other times to track horse racing results. Pleasantries will not be exchanged. Expect the gas pedal to be floored.

You will then reflexively grab a handle and try not to slide off the midnight-blue vinyl seats as you zip and turn through the city’s notoriously narrow streets. Lastly, before you arrive at your destination, you will ready your small bills and coins to avoid aggravating the driver with a time-consuming exit.

“When they drop you off, you have to kind of rush,” said Sylvia He, a professor of urban studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who, like many residents of this city, feels conditioned to walk on eggshells around a cabby. “I don’t want to delay their next order.”

To many cabbies, the impatience and brusqueness is a reflection of their harsh reality: when scraping by in a business with shrinking financial rewards, no time can be wasted on social niceties. Lau Man-hung, a 63-year-old driver, for instance, skips meals and bathroom breaks just to stay behind the wheel long enough to take home about $2,500 a month, barely enough to get by in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

“Some customers are too mafan,” said Mr. Lau using a Cantonese word that means causing trouble and annoyance. “They like to complain about which route to take. They tell you to go faster.”

An Industry’s Fragile Economics

Driving a cab used to be a decent way to make a living. But business has gotten tougher, made worse by the fallout of mainland China’s economic slowdown. The city has had trouble reviving its allure with tourists, while its bars and nightclubs, once teeming with crowds squeezed into narrow alleyways, now draw fewer revelers.

Even before the downturn, some owners of taxi licenses were struggling. Taxi licenses are limited by the government and traded on a loosely regulated market. Some owners suffered huge losses after a speculative bubble drove prices up to nearly $1 million for one license a decade ago, then burst.

Today, licenses are worth about two-thirds of their decade-ago high. Many businesses and drivers who own licenses are focused more on recouping losses than on improving service.

Tin Shing Motors, a family-owned company, manages drivers and sells taxi license mortgages and taxicab insurance. Chris Chan, a 47-year-old third-generation member of the company, says Tin Shing is saddled with mortgages bought when licenses were worth much more.

To chip away at that debt, Mr. Chan needs to rent out his taxis as much as possible. But he struggles to find drivers. Many cabbies have aged out, and young people have largely stayed away from the grueling work. Profit margins have dwindled, he added, especially with the cost of insurance almost doubling in recent years. Uber, despite operating in a gray area in Hong Kong, has also taken a chunk of customers away.

“It’s harder and harder to make money,” Mr. Chan said.

At the bottom are the drivers, about half of whom are 60 and older. Many cannot afford to retire. They have to make about $14 an hour to break even after paying for gas and the rent of their vehicles. To them, cash in hand is better than waiting days for electronic payments to clear.

A Blue-Collar Job Professionalizes

Tension between the public and taxi drivers plays out with mutual finger pointing. When the government introduced the courtesy campaign last year, a driver told a television reporter that it was the passengers who were rude.

In many ways, Hong Kong’s taxi drivers embody the high-stress, no-frills culture of the city’s working class. Their gruffness is no different from the service one gets at a cha chaan teng, the ubiquitous local cafes that fuel the masses with egg sandwiches, instant noodles and saccharine-sweet milk tea. Servers are curt, but fast.

“People tend to have one bad experience and remember it for the rest of their life,” said Hung Wing-tat, a retired professor who has studied the taxi industry. “Consequently, there is an impression among the public that all taxi drivers are bad when most of them just want to earn a living. They don’t want any trouble.”

Indeed, there are cabbies like Joe Fong, 45, who sees no value in antagonizing his customers and has tried to adapt to his passengers’ needs.

“Why fight?” Mr. Fong said. “We need each other. You need a ride and I need your money.”

Mr. Fong maximizes his income by splitting his time between driving a private car for Uber and a cab for a taxi fleet called Alliance. Mr. Fong has five cellphones affixed to his dashboard. He welcomes electronic payments, and he did not raise an eyebrow when Alliance installed cameras in all their taxis last year.

“I’m not like those old guys,” said Mr. Fong, who drives one of Hong Kong’s newer hybrid taxis made by Toyota, which look like a cross between a London cab and a PT Cruiser. “The world has changed. You have to accept it.”

Olivia Wang contributed reporting.

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World

To Give FIFA’s Roblox Deal Context, Look at YouTube

Published

2 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

To Give FIFA’s Roblox Deal Context, Look at YouTube

Corporate boardrooms are trying to wrap their heads around how to leverage mobile-focused video game behemoth Roblox for their own gain, similar to how they were once forced to adapt to the rise of YouTube.

Like YouTube, Roblox diverges from the entertainment status quo. Both are driven by a sprawling network of content creators, many of whom begin as independent developers with little technical knowledge, and their audiences skew young. YouTube gives people tools to publish videos and an app in which users can watch them; Roblox gives people tools to build video games and an app in which users can play them.

Because of how Roblox games originate, they do not look as polished as those from big-budget studios on Xbox or PlayStation consoles. The graphics are rudimentary, and the games are most often played via mobile devices. Yet Roblox’s offerings, which are mostly free to play but often sell in-game cosmetic items and power-ups, can still be wildly popular, amassing more than 100 million daily active players. As Sportico has reported, mobile gaming is significantly larger than console usage globally.

Roblox’s grittier feel—akin to the appeal of an at-home YouTube vlog—is an asset. That said, it’s a trait that poses a challenge for brands, which feel a need to get involved but must do so in a way that comes off as organic within the raw aesthetics of the platform.

Enter the middlemen. Companies such as Gamefam connect native Roblox games and their creators with brands, reminiscent of the multi-channel networks (MCNs) that proliferated YouTube in the early 2010s and signed video makers to content partnerships.

The middlemen assume development and commercial responsibilities upon gaining a game’s rights. They implement corporate markings while ensuring a title still resonates with users.

On Friday, Gamefam announced the release of FIFA Super Soccer—a rebrand of a popular game it already owned, Super League Soccer. FIFA Super Soccer is one of many Roblox titles Gamefam has acquired from independent creators. As part of its adaptation, it added licensed properties related to FIFA, teams and some of FIFA’s brand partners, such as Adidas.

Screenshot of “FIFA Super Soccer” on Roblox

In this case, Gamefam has maintained a working relationship with the game maker, Mats Watte, whose original creation did not feature any intellectual property from soccer organizations. Gamefam did not disclose the financial terms of its licensing pact with FIFA that led to the rebranding.

“I was just in a meeting earlier today, and we were talking about, well, this is kind of like a [multi-channel network],” Ricardo Briceno, chief business officer of Gamefam, told Sportico in a video interview ahead of the FIFA Super Soccer announcement. “But it’s also a dirty word these days. So we’re not quite an MCN because it’s not just aggregating, because we also are operating and, like developing and doing things. But I don’t think it’s a bad example. It’s a good connection there.”

Many of YouTube’s multi-channel networks, perhaps most infamously Machinima, ultimately developed negative reputations. Independent creators came to resent the deals they signed, which they considered predatory because of lopsided revenue-sharing terms and long-term restrictions that barred them from working elsewhere.

There are some differences between MCNs and third-party Roblox development companies. For starters, the game, not the creator, is the main product on Roblox. Rather than set a perpetual quota for influencer content production, as was often the case with YouTube MCNs that would burn out video makers, Roblox’s middlemen generally obtain a game that already exists and then handle further development themselves.

Watte, the person who created the game that has morphed into FIFA Super Soccer, is a college student at King’s College London, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has developed games since he was a kid. Watte has spoken positively in public posts about his experiences with Gamefam. When Gamefam helped FIFA integrate Club World Cup branding into what was then called Super League Soccer for a prior agreement, Watte wrote, “Thank you to Gamefam and FIFA for trusting us with this opportunity, and to everyone on my team for making this happen in such a short span of time.”

A spokesperson representing Gamefam declined to specify whether Watte received an upfront payment for FIFA Super Soccer, whether he gets a cut of future revenue related to the title, or whether his role as “Creative Director for FIFA Super Soccer” means he is a full-time, salaried employee.

“We partnered with the game creator to put the backing of a professional studio behind Super League Soccer,” the spokesperson wrote. “In partnership with the original game creator, Gamefam now runs the game in full and provides our live operations capabilities and brand activation expertise. The numbers continue to get better and better as we work together.”

FIFA has a rich history in video games for consoles made by major studios, and until 2022, it maintained a long-term partnership with Electronic Arts. Its breakup with EA removed FIFA from the title of EA’s hit soccer video game franchise. Afterward, FIFA president Gianni Infantino declared that “when [children play] a football simulation game, they play FIFA, it cannot be named something else.” Ahead of the men’s FIFA World Cup next summer, Infantino has been hellbent on besting EA.

FIFA worked with the studio Mythical Games on a separate, non-Roblox project that led to the release of FIFA Rivals in the Apple and Android app stores. It also has a licensing and esports deal with Konami’s eFootball, which is playable on mobile and console.

None of those endeavors, or the new FIFA Super Soccer title sponsorship, carry the same reach of EA Sports’ renamed soccer franchise EA Sports FC. Still, when taken together, they are formidable.

Overall, Roblox has a $60 billion market cap and 111.8 million average daily active users, according to a Sept. 4 financial report. Before it rebranded from Super League Soccer last week, FIFA Super Soccer averaged 1.5 million daily gameplay sessions with a duration of 11 minutes, per Gamefam, though this metric included when the same people opened the game more than once in a 24-hour period.

In the immediate wake of Friday’s name change, FIFA Super Soccer rose into the top 70 for concurrent Roblox users at 21,000, according to a spokesperson. Gamefam works with other sports organizations, including the NFL, on titles that have also made this leaderboard.

As Briceno discusses Roblox integrations with clients who ask how Gamefam’s services can lead to real-world revenue returns, he’s reminded of his own marketing work at previous career stops.

Early in a 12-year tenure at Mattel Inc., Briceno was on the other side, only YouTube was the multimedia puzzle his company was trying to solve.

“We were thinking, we’ve got to get hot,” Briceno said. “Does it drive sales? We know that TV commercials drive sales, but what are we going to do with YouTube, I don’t know if we can measure and blah, blah, blah, and all these things were happening. We said we got to invest in this, this is where the kids are. It just makes logical sense.

“It takes a while until you’re able to generate the data points and the proof points and figure out how to do it in the right way that actually drives scale or sales. … Now we are going through that process on Roblox, and we’ve seen a lot of those early data points, so it just validates what you would think is common sense.”

World

Russian general killed by car bomb, third senior military leader killed this year

Published

3 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

Russian general killed by car bomb, third senior military leader killed this year

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A Russian general was killed in a car bombing in Moscow on Monday, with investigators saying they suspect Ukrainian intelligence may have been behind the attack.

The bombing targeted Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, and he died from his injuries. He was the third senior Russian military officer to be killed in a bombing this year.

“Investigators are pursuing numerous lines of inquiry regarding the murder. One of these is that the crime was orchestrated by Ukrainian intelligence services,” said Svetlana Petrenko, the spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that President Vladimir Putin had been immediately informed about Sarvarov’s killing.

PUTIN REJECTS KEY PARTS OF US PEACE PLAN AS KREMLIN OFFICIAL WARNS EUROPE FACES NEW WAR RISK: REPORT

This undated image provided by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, shows Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, who was killed Monday morning after an explosive device detonated under his car in southern Moscow. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

Sarvarov had previously fought in Chechnya and taken part in Moscow’s military campaign in Syria, according to Russia’s defense ministry.

Ukrainian forces have yet to take responsibility for the attack.

Prior to Sarvarov, Russia lost the head of its nuclear, biological and chemical protection force, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, in a similar bombing earlier this year. Ukrainian forces took responsibility for that attack.

PUTIN DERIDES EUROPEAN LEADERS AS HE INSISTS RUSSIA’S WAR GOALS IN UKRAINE WILL BE MET BY FORCE OR DIPLOMACY

Policemen secure the area near the scene where Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, was killed by an explosive device placed under his car in Moscow, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. (AP Photo)

Russian military officer Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik was also killed by a car bombing in Moscow in April.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in the aftermath of that attack that he had received reports about the successful “liquidation” of Russian military leaders, though he did not mention Moskalik directly.

The Monday bombing comes as Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. remain in peace talks. Russian officials said they were proceeding “constructively” on Sunday, even as missiles rained down on Ukraine’s port city of Odesa.

Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to a journalist’s question during his annual news conference and call-in show at Gostinny Dvor, in Moscow, on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. (Alexander Kazakov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Putin also noted on Friday that the nation’s “troops are advancing,” and expressed confidence that Russia would achieve its goals by military force if Ukraine does not accept its peace terms.

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“The goals of the special military operation will undoubtedly be achieved. We would prefer to accomplish this and address the root causes of the conflict through diplomatic means,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Anders Hagstrom is a reporter with Fox News Digital covering national politics and major breaking news events. Send tips to Anders.Hagstrom@Fox.com, or on X: @Hagstrom_Anders.

World

Germany charges ex-Syrian prison guard over Assad-era abuses

Published

5 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

Germany charges ex-Syrian prison guard over Assad-era abuses

Prosecutors accuse the official, named as Fahad A, of torturing dozens of prisoners in jail run by Syrian intelligence.

Published On 22 Dec 2025

German prosecutors have charged a former Syrian security official with crimes against humanity, accusing him of torturing dozens of prisoners at a Damascus jail while ex-President Bashar al-Assad was in power.

Germany’s Federal Public Prosecutor General’s office announced the indictment on Monday, alleging the ex-prison guard, named only as Fahad A, took part in more than 100 interrogations between 2011 and 2012 in which prisoners were “subjected to severe physical abuse”.

Universal jurisdiction

In Germany, prosecutors have ⁠used universal jurisdiction laws to seek trials for suspects in crimes against humanity committed anywhere in the world.

Based on ‌these laws, several people suspected of war crimes during the Syrian conflict have been arrested in the last ‍few years in Germany, which is home to about one million Syrians.

In June, a court in Frankfurt handed a life sentence to a Syrian doctor convicted of carrying out acts of torture as part of al-Assad’s crackdown on dissent.

The doctor, Alaa Mousa, was accused of torturing patients at military hospitals in Damascus and Homs, where political prisoners were regularly brought for supposed treatment.

Witnesses described Mousa pouring flammable liquid on a prisoner’s wounds before setting them alight and kicking the man in the face, shattering his teeth. In another incident, the doctor was accused of injecting a detainee with a fatal substance for refusing to be beaten.

One former prisoner described the Damascus hospital where he was held as a “slaughterhouse”.

Presiding judge, Christoph Koller, said the verdict underscored the “brutality of Assad’s dictatorial, unjust regime”.