A 190-meter long cargo ship sank off Hong Kong Wednesday in a powerful typhoon that generated towering waves and forced much of the city to shut down, after leaving six dead in the Philippines.

The 21 crew of the bulk carrier Trans Summer abandoned ship as the vessel tipped on its side and sank 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Hong Kong, triggering a rescue that saw them plucked from the heavy seas by two helicopter teams and a passing ship.

Tycoon Li Ka-shing has retained the top spot as Hong Kong's richest man, Forbes magazine said Thursday, as the city's red-hot property market boosted wealth among the super-rich despite a global slowdown.

The 84-year-old Li, nicknamed "Superman" for his business prowess, added a whopping U.S.$8 billion to his wealth last year and is now estimated to be worth $30 billion, Forbes said as it announced Hong Kong's top 50 rich list.

Macau's gambling revenue jumped 13.5 percent to a record $38 billion in 2012, official figures showed Wednesday, despite the pace of growth in the world's largest gaming hub slowing from a year earlier.

Gaming revenue rose to 304.14 billion patacas from 267.87 billion patacas in 2011, according to statistics posted on the official Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau website.

In a nondescript building around the corner from the world's biggest casino, students at the Macau Polytechnic Institute are in class. Huddled at a long table topped with green felt, they pay close attention as their instructor writes a series of diagrams and numbers on a whiteboard.

But this isn't a regular math lesson. The students sitting around the roulette table are getting schooled on how to quickly calculate payoffs for the casino game by glancing at how the chips are placed. Elsewhere in the room, the biggest mock casino in Asia, other students are playing practice hands of blackjack or learning how to run a craps table.

Macau police said Monday they had arrested 150 people during raids on casinos and hotels after a spate of murders raised fears of a return to the gaming hub's violent past.

Police questioned nearly 1,300 people and detained 150 in an operation codenamed "Thunderbolt 2012" conducted across the semi-autonomous Chinese city late Friday, police spokesman Chong Su-pong said.

Faded and forgotten Western brands are being dusted off and brought back to life by companies in Asia targeting the burgeoning number of people looking for labels to match new middle class lifestyles.

Asians have been buying or licensing fashion names — many of them European with long and rich histories including royal connections or haute couture origins — that have fallen out of favor back home, as they seek to lure the region's newly affluent.