Hong Kong

The top seeds defend their Asian Games squash titles, becoming the first players to qualify for the Los Angeles Games.

Malaysia’s Eain Yow Ng and Sivasangari Subramaniam have made history by becoming the first squash players to qualify for the Summer Olympics after winning gold medals at the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan.

The defending champions won the men’s and women’s finals on Sunday and earned a ticket to the 2028 Los Angeles Games, where squash will make its Olympic debut.

Squash is among a handful of sports at Aichi-Nagoya where a gold medal serves as automatic qualification for the next Olympics.

Both Eain and Sivasangari successfully defended their titles without dropping a single game in their campaigns. Their victories gave Malaysia its fifth and sixth gold medals.

World number 18 Eain thrashed India’s Abhay Singh 11-9, 11-5, 11-5 in 33 minutes at the Nagoya Kinjo Futo Arena and became the first Malaysian to qualify for the Olympics.

World number five Sivasangari joined her compatriot soon after when she made quick work of the women’s final against India’s Anahat Singh.

She demolished Singh, ranked 17th in the world, 11-4, 11-4, 11-7 in just 23 minutes to clinch gold.

Earlier, Singh, the world junior champion, produced a stellar comeback in the semifinals from two sets down to overpower Japan’s Satomi Watanabe (9-11, 11-13, 12-10, 11-6, 11-3) on Saturday.

“I think it is the best win of my career,” Singh, 18, said after the match. “She’s number six in the world, and that’s the highest win I’ve ever had in my squash career.”

She made history even before Sunday’s match began when her semifinal victory made her the first Indian woman to reach the singles final at the Asian Games.

Earlier in the day, Pakistan picked up two more bronze medals at the games as third seed Noor Zaman toppled compatriot Ashab Irfan 3-0 in the bronze medal match. Watanabe took a 3-1 win over Hong Kong’s Sin Yuk Chan.

Selected by Beijing in 1996, Tung Chee-hwa’s tenure shaped post-handover Hong Kong during a turbulent political era.

Hong Kong has given a state funeral to Tung Chee-hwa, its first post-colonial leader, only the third time the city has granted such an honour since Britain returned it to Chinese rule in 1997.

Senior Chinese and Hong Kong officials bid farewell to Tung at the Hong Kong Funeral Home in North Point on Sunday, a day after a public vigil that drew dozens of political and business figures.

Tung, Hong Kong’s first chief executive, died on September 8 at the age of 89.

Members of the public could pay their respects by signing condolence books at three community halls until Sunday noon.

The funeral committee, made up of 87 members, was chaired by Shi Taifeng, a senior Chinese Communist Party Politburo member and vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the top political advisory body, underlining the level of official backing from Beijing.

Shi attended the funeral alongside Xia Baolong, Beijing’s top official for Hong Kong and Macau affairs; current chief executive John Lee; former chief executives Leung Chun-ying, Carrie Lam and Donald Tsang; and other political and business figures, reported government-funded Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK).

Lee and Leung were among the pallbearers who carried Tung’s coffin, draped in China’s national flag, from the hall to a hearse, which headed to Cape Collinson Crematorium.

A shipping tycoon with little political experience, Tung was selected in 1996 by a Beijing-appointed committee to become Hong Kong’s first leader after the 1997 handover from Britain.

Tung led the city through the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2003 SARS outbreak, and mass protests that year forced him to shelve proposed national security legislation.

He was re-elected unopposed in 2002 but resigned in 2005, midway through his second term, citing poor health, in a move widely seen as driven by Beijing’s loss of confidence in him.

He went on to serve as a vice chairman of the CPPCC until 2023.

Two business leaders, industrialist Ann Tse-kai and tycoon Henry Fok, who both served as vice chairs of the CPPCC, were given state funerals in 2000 and 2006, respectively.

Chinese state media described Tung as a “renowned patriot”, while his successor, Tsang, called him “an easy-going, gentle and refined man with a broad-minded outlook and far-reaching vision”.

Critics recalled his tenure as marked by governance struggles and public discontent that never fully recovered after the financial crisis.