Even as the Philippines’ Supreme Court began hearing petitions on Tuesday against an anti-terrorism law that seeks – among other things – to root out communist rebels, a host of Filipinos have already been marked out as such, in a deadly form o...

Hong Kong’s High Court has granted extra time for Apple Daily to check whether police wrongly seized any materials in a high-profile operation last summer, which saw the newspaper’s founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying and his associates arrested under th...

The number of shopping scams in Hong Kong for 2020 tripled from the previous year, with con artists duping mask buyers out of more than HK$74 million (US$9.5 million).Revealing the figures on Tuesday, Commissioner of Police Chris Tang Ping-keung said...

Beijing has appointed a veteran police officer with experience overseas to serve as the main contact person between mainland Chinese and Hong Kong police.Chen Feng, 52, appeared in public for the first time on Sunday as head of the police liaison dep...

Malaysia’s government on Tuesday extended a lockdown and broad movement restrictions by two weeks, as the Southeast Asian nation grapples with a surge in coronavirus infections that has pushed the cumulative total past 200,000 cases.The lockdown, w...

Hong Kong retail sales plunged by a record 24.3 per cent year on year for 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic dampened consumer sentiment and kept big-spending tourists away.Provisional figures released by the Census and Statistics Department on Tuesda...

Singapore parliamentarians are debating legislation that, if passed, will limit the scenarios in which law enforcement agencies can access data obtained by the government’s coronavirus contact-tracing app.The development comes as the minister in ch...

India increased its defence spending by about 1 per cent, throwing the timing of its military modernisation programme into doubt while it faces a protracted stand-off with China along their disputed Himalayan border.Overall, military spending increas...

The Chinese embassy in Manila has defended Beijing’s controversial coastguard law as “domestic legislation” and said China would continue to seek a negotiated resolution with the Philippines over their disputes in the South China Sea.“China C...

Hong Kong’s statutory minimum wage will be frozen at HK$37.50 (US$4.84) an hour, the government has announced, citing a struggling economy battered by the coronavirus pandemic.The pay level remained unchanged for the first time since the index’s ...

Two Australian media companies have been ordered to pay billionaire Chinese-Australian businessman Chau Chak Wing A$590,000 (US$450,000) after a court found he had been defamed by a media investigation into alleged Chinese interference in Australian ...

Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday denied any suggestion she was trying to influence the judiciary, following reports she met with the city’s top judge ahead of a bail hearing for detained media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying.Chief Executive Carrie Lam Ch...

Police have arrested a tutor on suspicion of sending photos and video clips containing child pornography to two primary schoolgirls he taught at a private teaching centre in Hong Kong.The 39-year-old man was arrested on Monday after the parents of th...

A team of investigators led by the World Health Organization (WHO) arrived on Tuesday at an animal health facility in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in the search for clues about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.The independent team has alread...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Matthew Choi on politico.com on February 1, 2021.US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday offered a deeply personal account of the Capitol insurr...

China’s expansion of its oil and gas pipeline network is putting it on a “collision course” with its ambitious target to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, according to a report published on Tuesday, while simultaneously raising the possibility o...

Vibrant red lanterns line an alley in Wuhan, China, but customers only trickle in. Around the corner, Gong Linhua recalled earlier years when her store was packed and the street outside was brimming with snack carts.“This is the first time in 20 ye...

Myanmar’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party called for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other detained leaders on Tuesday, a day after the military staged a lightning coup, ousting her from power.“Release all detainees including the pr...

The deadliest month yet of the coronavirus outbreak in the US drew to a close with certain signs of progress: Covid-19 cases and hospitalisations are plummeting, while vaccinations are picking up speed.The question is whether the US can stay ahead of...

Trade Minister Dan Tehan has denied Australia is “playing the victim” in its relationship with China amid their ongoing trade dispute.Tehan was responding to an editorial on Monday in China’s nationalist tabloid, the Global Times, that said Aus...

China’s most senior foreign policy official Yang Jiechi said the US under Donald Trump had followed “misguided policies” and called on the new administration to change course – even as comments from President Joe Biden’s advisers echo his p...

A US billionaire who made a fortune in tech and fighter jets is buying an entire SpaceX flight and plans to take three people with him to circle the globe this year.Besides fulfilling his dream of flying in space, Jared Isaacman announced Monday that...

Just days after India marked a year since its first reported Covid-19 case, the country seems to be hurtling into the light after a long spell inside a dark tunnel. Some hospitals in the capital, New Delhi, have no coronavirus patients. Markets are f...

Jack Palladino, the flamboyant private investigator whose clients ranged from presidents and corporate whistle-blowers to scandal-plagued celebrities, Hollywood moguls and sometimes suspected drug traffickers, died on Monday at age 76.Palladino suffe...

Hong Kong officials have warned they are prepared to seek court approval for breaking into flats under Covid-19 lockdown where occupants refuse to be tested, after the city’s leader decried the number of households failing to answer the door during...

After an election last November, Myanmar’s army chief had faced imminent retirement, as well as the sidelining of the army’s favoured political party and foreign calls for him to be tried for war crimes against Rohingya Muslims.On Monday, Senior ...

US Vice-President Kamala Harris spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday, marking her first call to a foreign leader since entering the White House.During the call, Harris offered assurances that the Biden administration would “d...

Members of ethnic minority communities in Hong Kong who only hold a British National (Overseas) passport faced a fresh hurdle in going abroad after the government said it no longer recognised the document for travel or identification.Said to be in th...

Dozens of influential representatives from the scientific, civil rights and Asian-American communities released a letter on Monday urging the US Congress to take steps to end racial profiling and halt unreasonable investigations into researchers and ...

The future of Hong Kong investments in Myanmar was uncertain following a military coup on Monday, but its impact on the city’s economy would be limited, business groups and industry watchers have said.About 200 Hong Kong companies have invested in ...

Early in the pandemic, some speculated that couples isolated together during lockdowns might produce a year-end baby boom. The opposite occurred.Five US states have provided monthly birth data through December – Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii...

A major winter storm that has already dropped more than a foot of snow across the Northeastern United States and killed an elderly Pennsylvania woman was expected to pound inland areas with potential blizzard conditions on Tuesday.The storm cancelled...

The question of how Hong Kong’s chief executive should be chosen has again been in the spotlight, along with wider concerns about the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and uncertainty over the city’s political future. While some h...

Chinese President Xi Jinping has said intellectual property protection occupies a central position in China’s new development strategy and promised that the state will strengthen its support for businesses operating overseas.He also said Beijing wi...

Pro-independence lawmakers in Taiwan have repeated calls to change the emblem and flag and revise the constitution to remove references to unification with mainland China.At a session of the legislature on Monday, members of the ruling Democratic Pro...

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif sketched out a path on Monday to overcome the US-Iran impasse over who goes first in returning to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, saying the EU foreign policy chief could “choreograph” the moves.“There ...

Rocker Marilyn Manson was dropped by his record label after actress Evan Rachel Wood accused her ex-fiancé of sexual and other physical abuse, alleging she was “manipulated into submission” during their relationship.Manson called the allegations...

US President Joe Biden insisted Monday that Myanmar’s military relinquish the power it had seized during a coup, and warned he could take “appropriate action” if it didn’t, including reimposing sanctions that had been rolled back since the na...

Chinese researchers say they have identified a number of “strategically important” deep sea mineral deposits as part of a decade-long survey of the world’s sea floors.The researchers conducted a series of government-funded surveys from 2011 to ...

A pair of Nasa astronauts ventured out on their second spacewalk in under a week on Monday to complete a four-year effort to modernise the International Space Station’s power grid.Over the weekend, flight controllers in Houston used the station’s...

The bloodless coup that ended Myanmar’s decade of civilian rule and set back its fledgling democracy has sparked fears of human rights violations and political instability that will be a test for President Joe Biden’s new administration in the Un...

A Moscow court on Monday ordered the wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to pay a fine of 20,000 roubles (US$265) for violating protest regulations after she attended a demonstration in the Russian capital to demand his release.Tens of t...

Hong Kong’s top judges have cast doubt on prosecutors’ interpretation of a key provision in the national security law in considering the bail application by media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying.But three members on the panel of five at the Court of F...

Twitter on Monday blocked scores of accounts and tweets in India at the government’s request, including those of a prominent news magazine and farmers staging mass protests in the capital.An IT ministry source said the government had directed the s...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sharply criticised China over its actions in Hong Kong, saying it acted “egregiously” to undermine the city, and that the US should accept people fleeing the crackdown there.“If they’re the victims of repr...

Covid-19 has exposed global deficiencies in the response to dangerous infectious diseases and the international system will need to be strengthened to raise alerts and deal with future outbreaks, according to Helen Clark, co-head of an international ...

Britain on Monday made a formal request to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) trade pact, the first accession application by a member outside the 11 participating Pacific countries.UK Secretary of S...

China’s internet watchdog announced new details for its plan to crack down on “self-media”, social media accounts run by independent content producers, which analysts interpret as targeting political content and comes after authorities targeted...

Complaints about corruption in Hong Kong dropped to a 40-year low last year, but advisers to the city’s anti-graft watchdog have urged vigilance, attributing the dip to the Covid-19 pandemic and possible new ways to avoid detection.The city recorde...

China’s energy regulator has come under rare fire from a team of central government inspectors over the agency’s lax enforcement of environmental standards.A central environment inspection group, comprising officials from the Ministry of Ecology ...