China is planning to carry out more than 40 rocket launches this year, the highest ever total, as it continues to expand its ambitions in space.The planned launches include the core module of China’s first space station, according to the China Aero...

A lawyer for the Hong Kong Police Force has urged an inquest to rule the car park fall of a student near a protest two years ago an accident, pointing to a “relatively high” possibility he jumped down the multistorey building by mistake.Summarisi...

In a country where everything from the food you eat to the clothes you wear can be political, India’s Covid-19 vaccine was always going to spark controversy. So it was on Sunday, when the drug regulator announced the approval of two vaccines for e...

China’s biggest port operator has moved to consolidate its foothold in Djibouti after it agreed a financing deal with the East African nation to turn its Port of Djibouti into an international business hub.China Merchants Group signed the US$350 mi...

Tokyo’s annual New Year tuna auction ended Tuesday without the usual jaw-dropping bidding war, with the country’s “Tuna King” holding back on gunning for the top fish, citing the pandemic woes affecting the restaurant industry.The most expens...

Hong Kong public hospital officials are weighing whether to test day-ward patients for Covid-19 after an outbreak at a facility in Kwai Chung, as the city faces more than 30 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday.To date, the city has recorded 9,017 confir...

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has offered political asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a move that could anger the United States, which is seeking his extradition.Celebrating a decision by a British judge on Monday to deny a ...

A gang of robbers stole bitcoin valued at more than HK$3 million from a trader on Monday, luring him to meet for the transaction and then kicking him out of the car on a Hong Kong hillside.The robbers fled with HK$3 million (US$387,000) in cash that ...

In his first order of the new year to the country’s armed forces, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed the need for “full-time combat readiness” and said the People’s Liberation Army must use frontline frictions to polish troop capabilities....

After China’s banking and insurance regulator claimed US financial sanctions have no “legal effect” in Hong Kong or China, analysts have warned that financial institutions might still face penalties if found providing services to sanctioned ent...

About 65 people were evacuated from an industrial building in Hong Kong on Tuesday when a warehouse burst into flames.Two women aged 34 and 52 and an 11-year-old boy complained of feeling unwell after inhaling smoke, and they were sent to Tuen Mun Ho...

The new coronavirus strain that emerged in South Africa is even more problematic than a mutated form that prompted new lockdowns across much of Britain, health authorities said on Monday.“I’m incredibly worried about the South African variant,”...

Japan and the United States have welcomed planned naval deployments this year by major European countries to Indo-Pacific waters, as China’s rapid military modernisation and maritime and territorial ambitions prompt moves to increase deterrence.Wit...

“Move over Mukesh Ambani, China’s Zhong Shanshan is now the richest Asian with a net worth of US$77.8 billion,” tweeted an Indian business daily.“Zhong Shanshan dethrones Ambani as Asia’s richest,” went another. Meanwhile a cheeky Indian ...

Hong Kong’s judiciary is prepared to consider calls for reforms, but they cannot be on the basis that one is unhappy with the court’s rulings, the city’s outgoing chief justice has said.Geoffrey Ma Tao-li’s departing remarks on Tuesday came o...

A Mexican fisherman has died after his vessel collided with a boat of the US conservation group Sea Shepherd in a sanctuary for the endangered vaquita porpoise, an official said Monday.The fisherman was hospitalised on December 31 in the northwestern...

For more than 20 years, Christian Zheng Sheng College has helped teenagers in Hong Kong struggling with drug addiction, but it has always endured a struggle of its own: finding a permanent home.Housed in a makeshift campus on the remote, roadless Chi...

Indonesia’s ride-hailing and payments giant Gojek is in advanced discussions about merging with local e-commerce pioneer Tokopedia, ahead of a planned initial public offering of the combined entity, according to people with knowledge of the matter....

Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday said a new service that would notify car owners when their personal details had been accessed from a Transport Department database would neither affect the work of journalists nor media freedom, adding the move was aim...

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) said it would no longer delist three of China’s biggest telecommunications companies to comply with a November 2020 executive order by outgoing US President Donald Trump, in a surprise policy U-turn before the fir...

More than 200 employees and contractors at Google parent Alphabet in the United States and Canada have formed a trade union to promote workplace equity and ethical business practices, the group’s elected leaders said on Monday.The “Alphabet Worke...

Hong Kong’s leader revealed on Tuesday that the government planned to improve contact tracing of Covid-19 infections by pouring more manpower into the effort, admitting it could have done a better job on this front.Speaking ahead of her weekly Exec...

Vietnam, one of the world’s five remaining communist states, is about to get new leadership. The biggest moves will emerge from a secretive, twice-a-decade meeting – the National Party Congress – which gets under way in Hanoi in late January.Fr...

The race in China to develop coronavirus vaccines pushed researchers to near exhaustion and involved giving experimental shots to a state leader, according to a state agency’s account.In the account released on Saturday, the State-owned Assets Supe...

Thailand has taken steps to secure even more doses of Covid-19 vaccine after a dramatic rise of coronavirus cases in mid-December plunged the country into another partial lockdown, yet questions remain around when an inoculation campaign can begin �...

The National Palace Museum in Taipei is no stranger to controversy, uncertainty or change. Today, it finds itself confronting these again following reports that it could be downgraded to fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture and that...

Hong Kong leaders must tackle students’ pent-up resentment against the government and frustration over the coronavirus pandemic, experts have said, warning that anger could explode again into social unrest.They raised the alarm after an unpublished...

With mounting desperation, Donald Trump declared on Monday night he would “fight like hell” to hold on to the presidency and appealed to Republican lawmakers to reverse his election loss to Joe Biden when they convene this week to confirm the Ele...

Hong Kong car owners will be told if their personal details have been accessed on a government database under a new service launched two months after a journalist was prosecuted for making a false statement while searching for such information for ne...

All four of China’s major coal-price indices have stopped being updated after a concurrence of factors sent the price of coal surging in recent weeks – signalling that the government has stepped in to cool the overheated coal market.The factors s...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Quint Forgey on politico.com on January 4, 2021.Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said on Monday that it was unlikely his office would open an i...

Voters in the US state of Georgia will cast ballots on Tuesday in two run-off elections that will determine which political party controls the US Senate for the next two years.But the results may be even more consequential: Democrat Joe Biden is set ...

A Chinese shipbuilder has stepped up construction of two new-generation aircraft carriers, while the People’s Liberation Army is accelerating its training programme to meet the needs of the hi-tech warships when they launch.Two independent military...

Boris Johnson has imposed a third coronavirus lockdown across England, shutting schools and ordering the public to stay at home, amid dire warnings that the National Health Service is being pushed to breaking point.The full emergency lockdown will st...

A deal reportedly offered by US authorities to Meng Wanzhou could be a trap, in which an admission of wrongdoing could be used against the Huawei Technologies Co. executive “again and again”, according to one of Canada’s leading extradition exp...

The EU’s drugs watchdog held off authorising Moderna’s coronavirus jab on Monday despite bringing forward a special meeting, as criticism mounts of the bloc’s slow vaccine roll-out.The Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency (EMA) said it wou...

Recent news reveals a tragedy apparently triggered by homework. A 43-year-old mother who was helping her seven-year-old son with his homework broke down emotionally and tried to kill her son. He squirmed free, but his mother locked herself in her roo...

Saudi Arabia will open its land, air and sea borders with Qatar on Monday evening, a Gulf official said, dramatically easing a years-long diplomatic rift on the eve of a summit of regional leaders.The step comes as part of efforts to resolve the disp...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Jacqueline Feldscher on politico.com on January 4, 2021.The DC National Guard has been activated to respond to protests expected this week in the US capital...

The sparkling wine was just starting to chill on New Year’s Eve when we received 2020’s final jab against China by the Trump administration.With extreme diplomatic eloquence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assailed Chinese authorities for the way...

Iran started the process of enriching uranium to 20 per cent, a key acceleration in its nuclear programme, hours after the US abandoned its plan to pull an aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf.The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency w...

Chinese electric-car maker Xpeng Motors has attempted to allay concerns that the popularity of rival Tesla’s new locally-built Model Y sport utility vehicle (SUV) could damage its prospects.He Xiaopeng, founder and chief executive of the Shenzhen-b...

A radical Indonesian cleric linked to the deadly Bali bombings will be released from prison this week, authorities said on Monday, after an earlier bid to free him early was axed following a public uproar.Abu Bakar Bashir, 82, once synonymous with mi...

This is the latest story in our series on the Covid-19 pandemic, a year after the first cases were reported in the mainland city of Wuhan. It explores how the city’s residents helped each other survive the world’s first and largest lockdown in th...

Veteran Cantonese opera singer and prolific TVB actress Lee Heung-kam died on Monday aged 88.Family members rushed Lee to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Yau Ma Tei in the morning after she lost consciousness but she died in the afternoon.Lee, at one tim...

Pro-Beijing heavyweight Tam Yiu-chung has doubled down on calls to reform Hong Kong’s judiciary, expressing regret that “judicial independence” has been misinterpreted as “an independent judicial kingdom”.Tam, the city’s sole deputy to th...

Hang Seng Bank said on Monday that it would appoint independent director Irene Lee Yun Lien as its chairman later this year, the first woman to serve in the role in the bank’s history.The Hong Kong lender said Raymond Ch’ien Kuo Fung would retire...

A 16-year-old student has been given a suspended jail sentence for forging a Hong Kong identity card after complaining his photo on the genuine item was “too ugly”.Fanling Court on Monday jailed Liu Can for three months, but suspended that senten...

Fast, the world’s largest radio telescope, will open to non-Chinese scientists later this year for a wide range of projects, including the search for alien civilisations.Researchers interested in using the 500 metre (640 feet) wide telescope in the...

A university student who asked for jail time over correctional training for his involvement in an illegal protest in Hong Kong had his request rejected on Monday by a magistrate, who found it necessary to raise the youth’s legal awareness through c...