When WhatsApp announced an update to its privacy terms earlier this month, many among its 2 billion users worldwide raced to download rival apps Signal and Telegram, including those in Asia’s second- and third-largest countries, India and Indonesia...

Police have uncovered a HK$39.6 million haul of ketamine smuggled into Hong Kong disguised as skincare cream at an industrial unit, leading to the arrest of a local man in one of two anti-narcotics operations on the same day this week.Acting chief in...

Hong Kong’s annual Lunar New Year night parade will be replaced with an online shopping portal, organisers have announced, as social-distancing rules amid the ongoing fourth wave of coronavirus infections prompt more muted celebrations to welcome t...

Scientists were reporting early signs that some recent mutations of the virus that causes Covid-19 may modestly curb the effectiveness of two current vaccines, although they stress that the shots still protect against the disease.Coronavirus cases ha...

Xinjiang’s exports to the United States more than doubled last year, despite increasing pressure on US companies to cut ties with the western Chinese region.Shipments rose by 116 per cent in 2020 compared to 2019, analysis of Chinese customs data s...

China more than doubled its construction of new wind and solar power plants in 2020 from a year earlier, government data showed, reflecting Beijing’s pledge to cut fossil fuel dependence and bring carbon emissions to a peak within a decade.China, t...

Police have arrested three people accused of stealing credit cards at a public sports facility in Hong Kong and using them to rack up HK$500,000 (US$64,500) in bills on shopping sprees over the past six months.The two men and one woman had been opera...

At least four Trump appointed officials were fired, told to resign or placed on administrative leave on Joe Biden’s first day as US president.One of them, former president’s Donald Trump’s hand-picked chief of US international broadcasting quit...

Japanese exports gained in December for the first time in just over two years, with shipments to China climbing even as the coronavirus pandemic resurged in other key markets, while South Korea’s early trade data showed exports continued to rise in...

Hong Kong is mulling plans to order all arriving aircrews to quarantine in a hotel for two weeks in response to a recent coronavirus outbreak, a move that would end a long-standing exemption and present the embattled aviation industry with a fresh cr...

Chinese rescuers drilled deep into the ground on Thursday in an increasingly desperate bid to save 21 miners trapped for almost two weeks, with one confirmed dead and still no signs of life from over half of the missing workers, state media reported....

The family of a French-Irish teenager will challenge an inquest ruling that she died by misadventure after vanishing in the Malaysian jungle while on holiday, their lawyer said on Thursday.The body of Nora Quoirin, a 15-year-old with learning difficu...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Tyler Pager on politico.com on January 20, 2021.Joe Biden bounced down Pennsylvania Avenue on Wednesday afternoon, revelling in the opportunity to greet the...

An emotional Lady Gaga performed a dramatic version of the US national anthem, Garth Brooks sang a cappella, and Tom Hanks hosted a star-studded nighttime celebration to cap President Joe Biden’s inauguration.Grammy winner Lady Gaga wore a huge dov...

Hong Kong recorded 70 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday as an outbreak in the old, densely populated Yau Tsim Mong district continued to worsen, with a coronavirus case also uncovered in a home for the elderly in a designated testing area.Around half of...

Trash collected from Mount Everest is set to be transformed into art and displayed in a nearby gallery in Nepal, to highlight the need to save the world’s tallest mountain from turning into a dumping site.Used oxygen bottles, torn tents, ropes, bro...

When the quest for a coronavirus vaccine began, China invested big in what it saw as the safest bet – inactivated vaccines.State-owned Sinopharm and private company Sinovac worked with government-affiliated labs to work around the clock to design i...

Leaders from around the world congratulated newly sworn-in US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, expressing cautious optimism over future relations after four years of tumult under Donald Trump.Biden’s first call to a foreign lea...

More than 15 million people have had Covid-19 vaccines in China as the country prepares for the Lunar New Year, the National Health Commission said on Wednesday, with authorities forecasting a 40 per cent drop in holiday traffic compared with 2019.Pl...

Indonesian investigators probing the January 9 crash of a Sriwijaya Air flight are looking at the possibility that a malfunctioning automatic throttle could have led to the pilots losing control, according to a person familiar with the investigation....

As Hong Kong struggles to contain its fourth wave of coronavirus infections, many have pinned their hopes on the coming vaccination scheme for a return to normality.These wishes took a step closer to reality on Monday after a government advisory pane...

Outgoing US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai said potential Chinese espionage and threats to US telecommunications networks and internet freedom are the biggest national security issue that regulators will face in the next fo...

US President Joe Biden referenced a conversation with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, when both were vice-presidents, during one of his first official acts in his new role on Wednesday.“I was asked a long time ago when I was with Xi Jinping, an...

After the storming of Capitol Hill, an avalanche of disapproval on all fronts may lead many to believe that Donald Trump will live out his days at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, with Trumpism buried once and for all. Nothing, however, could be further from the...

A day after a court in Thailand handed a record four-decade jail sentence to a former government official for insulting the monarchy, one of the kingdom’s ministries said it had filed a criminal complaint against banned opposition politician Thanat...

The city of Beijing will develop new “trillion yuan” hi-tech manufacturing clusters and strengthen its capabilities in areas such as artificial intelligence and quantum communication research, according to its new five-year action plan to be a gl...

Hong Kong is poised to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine before the end of the week as a Kwai Chung warehouse has been selected to store the vials, overcoming a key logistical concern in the scheme to administer the first million doses.Sec...

The new mobile payments service launched by tech unicorn ByteDance on its video-sharing platform Douyin, the sister app of TikTok, brings a major challenger in a market long dominated by Ant Group’s Alipay and Tencent Holdings’ WeChat Pay, indust...

North Korea is reportedly imposing stiff fines or prison for anyone caught enjoying South Korean entertainment or copying the way South Koreans speak as leader Kim Jong-un steps up a war on outside influences and calls for better home-grown entertain...

Olympic Games hopeful and former unbeaten boxing professional Rex Tso Sing-yu says he has no plans on retiring from the ring, even if he doesn’t win a ticket to Tokyo.“I’m not going to quit. I’m going to keep going. I will still continue to t...

At least four doctors began a hunger strike on Wednesday as a protest against the substandard working conditions that Peru’s medical workers say they have faced in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.The hunger strike in Peru’s capital, Lima, is th...

Chinese companies raised a record US$281.6 billion from stock markets worldwide last year – but none of it was from Australia.China buys about a third of Australia’s annual exports and is its biggest trading partner. The Australia Stock Exchange ...

Dozens of British music stars including Elton John, Ed Sheeran and conductor Simon Rattle say musicians have been “shamefully failed” by the British government, which has left them facing post-Brexit restrictions on touring in the European Union....

China’s prize-winning female body builder Gui Yuna is showing the world just what disabled people like her can achieve. The fiercely determined 37-year-old can already lay claim to being an Olympian, a world-record holder, a prize-winning bodybuild...

A Chinese former human rights lawyer and an outspoken critic of Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to stand trial soon on the elevated charge of “subversion of state power” after being accused of a lesser offence six months ago, legal sour...

Two Florida men, including a self-described organiser for the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, were arrested on Wednesday for taking part in the siege of the US Capitol earlier this month, authorities said.Joseph Biggs, 37, was arrested in ce...

Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on Wednesday, taking on the daunting task of trying to heal a nation that has been battered over the last year by a pandemic, economic malaise, political violence and incessant attacks...

Residents of a tiny Indian village surrounded by rice paddies flocked to a Hindu temple, setting off firecrackers and praying and as they watched Kamala Harris, who has strong roots in the village, take her oath of office and become the US vice-presi...

Three Muslim groups refused on Wednesday to back an anti-extremism charter pushed by French officials following a spate of jihadist-inspired attacks, dealing a blow to a flagship initiative of President Emmanuel Macron’s government.The charter reje...

Beijing announced sanctions against a slew of recently departed Trump administration officials over their positions on China on Thursday, barring them from entering or doing business with the country.Among those sanctioned were former secretary of st...

European Union envoys on Thursday struck a preliminary agreement on having antigen tests for Covid-19 carried out in any member country recognised by all 27 countries in the bloc, diplomats said.The move, to be followed with a written procedure and d...

Undeterred by the strong Australian dollar, Chinese buyers are snapping up Australian wool after Beijing lifted this year’s wool import quota – a rare positive sign amid frayed relations between the two countries.The development sparked hopes in ...

Germany is set to be the first country to ban mass culling of male chicks in the poultry industry, the government said on Wednesday after approving a draft law ending the controversial practice.The measure passed by the cabinet envisages a ban on mas...

Amanda Gorman, the youngest poet in US history to mark the transition of presidential power, offered a hopeful vision for a deeply divided country on Wednesday with her poem The Hill We Climb.Gorman, 22, a Los Angeles resident, joined the ranks of pr...

The carcass of a huge whale has been recovered from the waters off southern Italy, the coastguard said Wednesday, calling it “probably one of the largest” ever found in the Mediterranean.The dead mammal was spotted in the sea on Sunday near the p...

Chile on Wednesday became the latest country to give emergency approval to China’s CoronaVac vaccine as it battles the coronavirus pandemic which has claimed more than 17,500 lives in the country to date.CoronaVac was developed by China’s Sinovac...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Lara Seligman and Bryan Bender on politico.com on January 20, 2021.The Pentagon blocked members of US President Joe Biden’s incoming administration from g...

At least four soldiers were killed and five wounded when their vehicle was blown up by a bomb in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on Wednesday, officials said.The incident took place in the afternoon while the soldiers, from Pakistan’...

The year began with lockdowns and varying degrees of restrictions on movements across the world as the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated with new, fast-spreading variants being discovered. Financial markets, however, began with new records.The pandemic i...

Lawyers for a British newspaper group that Meghan Markle is suing for publishing a private letter to her estranged father called on Tuesday for a full trial to “shed light” on the case.The Duchess of Sussex launched legal action against Associate...