A rare celestial alignment on Wednesday will give Hongkongers front-row seats to a phenomenon known as a “super blood moon” when Asia experiences its first visible total lunar eclipse in almost three years.The eclipse will start at 6.56pm, peak a...

The death of a Hong Kong man who fell from scaffolding outside a local shopping mall in the early days of 2019’s anti-government protests was ruled a result of misadventure by an inquest jury on Tuesday.Marco Leung Ling-kit, 35 – better known as ...

In a square in front of a Communist Party memorial hall at Xibaipo in northern China, row upon row of party members stood, raised their fists and chanted the party oath in unison.“I will never betray the party,” they called out, facing statues of...

Obese pigs in China are being blamed for worsening a sudden rout in the country’s pork prices.Since late last year, farmers have been fattening hogs to almost double their normal weight – roughly the size of a pygmy hippo or a female polar bear �...

Covid-19 vaccinations will be arranged for visitors to Hong Kong from mainland China and asylum seekers who are already in the city, the government has announced, extending the local jabs programme to non-residents for the first time.In another attem...

Belarusian critics of Alexander Lukashenko who have fled to neighbouring countries have come to the terrifying conclusion that nowhere is safe for them and the authoritarian ruler will stop at little to get to them.Nine months into her exile, opposit...

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has seen her approval rating drop below 50 per cent for the first time in a year as the island grapples with a worsening Covid-19 outbreak.Health authorities reported more than 500 new cases for a fourth day on Tuesda...

A powerful cyclone is set to slam into India on Wednesday, the second in less than two weeks, with authorities gearing up for relief operations at a time when the nation is facing the world’s worst outbreak of Covid-19.Cyclone Yaas, equivalent to a...

Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday insisted her abrupt reversal of Covid-19 rules suspending quarantine-free travel for large numbers of city residents returning from mainland China was not driven by outside pressure, describing it as merely a policy tw...

Italian mob boss Rocco Morabito has been arrested in northeast Brazil, police said, almost two years after his escape from a prison in Uruguay where he was awaiting extradition to Italy.Morabito, considered a “capo” or captain of the ‘Ndranghet...

Researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology have found a new branch in the family tree of bat coronaviruses.The viruses, described in a preprint paper released last Friday, are more distantly related to the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 t...

New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, who has drawn fire for not voting in city elections and for having a second home upstate, was mocked as a “tourist” by some people on social media on Monday for naming Times Square as his favourite sub...

Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK has said it will delete from its archive and online platform a section of a television programme showing June 4 vigil organisers commemorating the Tiananmen Square crackdown on the grounds the feature was irrelevant ...

Three factory estates in Hong Kong will be redeveloped to provide more than 4,000 new public flats over the next decade, the Housing Authority has announced.The plan stems from Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s call in her 2019 policy ad...

Under a peeling sun, two Thai grandmothers pan for gold along the Mekong River, sifting both through its muddy shale banks and their own memories of happier times for a waterway which has been changed forever by upstream hydropower dams.By the time t...

Two years ago, Guangzhou student Lily bought a box of soy milk close to its expiration date at one-third of its original price.She was ecstatic with the deal and shared it with a friend, but the friend said eating food near the expiration date was a ...

Officials in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong have ordered a swift and “scientific” investigation to address public fears about a swaying landmark skyscraper in Shenzhen.The orders come as tenants in the SEG Plaza worry about the future...

Singapore’s economy grew for the first time after three consecutive quarters of contraction, in a sign the city state is recovering from last year’s pandemic-induced recession.But with tighter social distancing measures having been introduced thi...

Hong Kong authorities have adopted mainland China’s definition of Covid-19 risk levels for a travel scheme that exempts returning residents from quarantine, after a speedy reversal on such arrangements caused confusion at the weekend.Questions were...

An American editor of a news site in military-ruled Myanmar was detained on Monday as he attempted to take a flight out of the country, his news organisation said, the fourth foreign journalist held since a coup in February.Danny Fenster, 37, the man...

The Scottish government is facing a new legal challenge over its February rejection of a motion to investigate former US President Donald Trump’s all-cash purchases of two golf courses, reviving an effort to force Trump to disclose how he financed ...

Just two months before the Olympic Games, set to kick off in Japan on July 23, the US State Department has issued a travel advisory warning Americans away from the country as coronavirus cases escalate.The State Department issued its highest possible...

The European Union agreed on Monday to impose sanctions against Belarus, including banning its airlines from using the airspace and airports of the 27-nation bloc, amid fury over the forced diversion of a passenger jet to arrest an opposition journal...

A growing number of China’s Generation Z, born between 1995 and 2010, are embracing a “laying flat” attitude about work and life as they throw in the towel in the face of tough competition and opt for a simple, frugal and lonely life.It is hard...

China’s next-generation Xian H-20 strategic bomber may have adopted a stealthy flying wing design that can help it strike targets in the second island chain and beyond, an analyst said after images of the aircraft’s design were published.The late...

Just when the world needs to pull together to beat the pandemic, trade tensions seem to be breaking out again. Surprisingly, it’s not a resumption of friction between the US and China, but a souring of relations between the European Union and China...

Arrested Belarusian opposition blogger Roman Protasevich, who was aboard the diverted Ryanair flight, said he is cooperating with authorities and “confessing” to charges of organising protests in a video circulated by state TV channels on Monday....

Two light rail trains collided in a tunnel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, injuring more than 200 people, in the first major crash for the 23-year-old metro system.Pictures on social media after the Monday-night collision showed bloodied passengers, some ...

Israeli forces shot dead a knife attacker in Jerusalem on Monday, police said, as a ceasefire holds in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza ahead of a visit by Washington’s top diplomat.US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken left Washington around noon l...

A reporter with a pro-Beijing newspaper in Hong Kong has lost his bid to delay his trial over providing a false statement when accessing a government database on car ownership until an appeal in a similar case is decided.Principal Magistrate Ivy Chui...

An activist who has played a leading role in anti-racism demonstrations in Britain was in critical condition in a London hospital on Monday after being shot.The Taking the Initiative Party said Sasha Johnson, who played a leading role in Black Lives ...

Max Mosley, the former head of Formula One’s governing body, has died at the age of 81 after suffering from cancer, his family said on Monday.“The family of Max Mosley can confirm that he died last night after a long battle with cancer. They ask ...

Scientists have for the first time managed to partially restore the sight of a blind patient by altering his cells, according to the results of a groundbreaking study published on Monday.The technique known as optogenetics, which has been developed i...

The head of a civil-rights group behind some of Hong Kong’s biggest protests told the District Court on Monday that he and his co-defendants, including media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, would not be on trial for organising an unauthorised rally two...

International pressure against China over its Xinjiang policies has gained traction in recent months, with China criticised over the treatment of Uygur Muslims in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. China has denied allegations of forced labour and det...

Hong Kong education authorities have issued new guidelines telling schools to complete investigations into complaints against teachers within a month, with rules so detailed educators said they were a form of “micromanagement” that would only inc...

Israel’s battle with Gaza militants and unprecedented intercommunal violence at home have further complicated efforts to form a government, raising the spectre of yet another general election, experts say.That could be a political boon to Prime Min...

HSBC has no plans to launch a cryptocurrency trading desk or offer the digital coins as an investment to customers, because they are too volatile and lack transparency, its chief executive Noel Quinn told Reuters. Europe’s largest bank’s stance ...

European leaders threatened on Monday to limit international air traffic over Belarus and possibly restrict its ground transport, after a Ryanair passenger plane was forced to land in an incident denounced by Western countries as “state piracy”.W...

China has insisted that “isolated incidents” will not affect its cooperation with Central and Eastern European countries after Lithuania decided to quit Beijing’s mechanism for engaging with the region.On Monday, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao...

Hong Kong’s first postcolonial leader said on Monday residents who moved to Britain “lacked foresight” and that he believed “the best was yet to come” for the city and mainland China.Tung Chee-hwa, a vice-chairman of the nation’s top poli...

The US Navy’s speedy littoral combat ships had propulsion failures. The gun on its stealthy destroyer is a dud because of expensive ammo. Its newest aircraft carrier had problems with the system that launches aircraft.On top of that, embarrassing p...

Hong Kong universities have a high international standing in terms of research, the higher education sector’s funding body has concluded, after its latest assessment showed 70 per cent of some 16,000 studies were ranked as world-leading or excellen...

A large-scale survey of nearly 30,000 Hong Kong families has found that children were more prone to problems such as hyperactivity and inattention during the months of school closures brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.The University of Hong Kong (H...

Travel agent associations in India and Thailand – which are battling surges in Covid-19 infections of varying degrees – as well as the tourism department of Vietnam have warned the public against operators advertising overseas tours to get vaccin...

China has stepped up efforts to curb skyrocketing raw material costs that pose a threat to economic recovery, summoning representatives of its metal industry at the weekend to warn them against any moves that would bid up prices.The National Developm...

The Covid-19 pandemic is being perpetuated by a “scandalous inequity” in vaccine distribution, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday as he set new targets for protecting people in the poorest countries.WHO director genera...

Beijing’s top office overseeing Hong Kong affairs will be expanded to create two new departments covering national security and propaganda, a move some observers say signals the central government’s determination to win the “ideological battle�...

China warned the United States and South Korea against “playing with fire” on Monday, after Taiwan was mentioned in a joint statement by the two allies. “China has taken notice of the US-Korea joint statement and we express concern,” Chinese...

The catering unit of Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways began serving the city’s largest Covid-19 quarantine centre on Monday, taking over from a previous vendor fired for a food safety blunder that left dozens ill.The airline on Monday ...