Hundreds of flights have been cancelled and part of a city locked down in southern China as the coastal province of Guangdong tries to stamp out transmission of the highly infectious Delta variant of the coronavirus.Guangdong’s health commission re...

Congratulations poured in for ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi Saturday on winning Iran’s presidential election as his rivals conceded even before official results were announced. The other three candidates in the race all congratulated him for his...

Alanna Sethi had just moved to Hong Kong from Britain when the coronavirus pandemic hit. Social distancing quickly became part of daily life and classes at the Australian International School, where she had just enrolled, shifted online. Sethi soon ...

India on Saturday mourned the loss of track legend Milkha Singh, who overcame childhood tragedy to seek Olympic glory, after he died aged 91 following a long battle with Covid-19. Singh, a four-time Asian Games gold medallist who was dubbed the ‘F...

Just under a third of the more than 300 adverse events reviewed by Hong Kong health authorities following Covid-19 vaccinations so far could be linked to the jabs, a top government adviser has revealed, though few have involved serious side effects.W...

Taiwan’s recent spike in Covid-19 cases has triggered a new wave of public dissatisfaction against the government of President Tsai Ing-wen, threatening to undermine the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s chances in next year’s local governm...

Two senior executives of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily tabloid charged with colluding with foreign forces have been remanded in custody after the city’s top magistrate deemed the pair a threat to national security.Editor-in-chief Ryan Law Wai-kwong and...

High in the foothills of the Himalayas, on a lake ringed by Mughal-era gardens, Imtiyaz Ahmad and two other Kashmiri men were hard at work earlier this month cleaning a sumptuous cedar-wood houseboat. In happier times, Young Beauty Star was a popula...

In a case that highlighted the financial strain for many people in China’s megacities, a Friday news report revealed that 39 tenants were renting a 90-square metre (969 square feet) flat in Shanghai. According to Kankanews, a local media outlet in...

The Australian government said on Saturday it was lodging a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization over China’s imposition of anti-dumping duties on Australian wine exports, escalating further the trade stand-off with Beijing. “The g...

Hong Kong’s long-awaited HK$5,000 consumption voucher scheme will open for registration from July 4, and is expected to give a strong boost to many businesses amid the coronavirus pandemic. Residents will receive the digital vouchers in two or thr...

Owen Ching is eager to get vaccinated against Covid-19, but cannot afford a medical check-up to find out if he is fit for the jabs. Since losing his job as a restaurant manager last year, the 38-year-old Hongkonger has relied on support from NGOs and...

In the third instalment of a four-part series on China’s antitrust crackdown on technology companies, Masha Borak looks at the ride-hailing industry and its dominant operator Didi-Chuxing. The first instalment on streaming music is here and the se...

When a Singaporean woman of Indian descent was struck by a flying kick from an ethnic Chinese man spouting racial slurs last month, the attack was so alarming that it prompted Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to call it a moment of national embarrassme...

A man arrested for stabbing a 94-year-old Asian-American woman in San Francisco in an unprovoked attack has been charged with attempted murder, the city’s top prosecutor announced on Friday. Daniel Cauich, 35, was also charged with battery causing...

When Cao Tingdong, a poet in the Qing dynasty (1636-1912), wrote The Surviving Poems by 100 Song dynasty Poets, he had no idea it would end up travelling halfway across the globe. The poet, born in 1700, loved poetry when he was young and was keen o...

A major Hong Kong study has found “substantially higher” levels of antibodies in people vaccinated against Covid-19 with BioNTech jabs, compared with those who received the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine.The presence of antibodies is a sign that th...

A European collector has bought a 17th century copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa painting for €2.9 million (US$3.4 million), a record for a Mona Lisa reproduction, in an auction at Christie’s in Paris on Friday.Known as the “Hekking Mona ...

The former White House doctor who gave a glowing report in 2018 about former US President Donald Trump’s cognitive abilities is calling on President Joe Biden to take the same test.US Representative Ronny Jackson led a group of 14 Republicans who s...

China’s space ambitions are starting to take shape after it sent three astronauts into orbit to complete work on its first space station. It marks a new phase in the country’s space race with rival the United States, but analysts say China still ...

Roman Catholic bishops in the United States agreed on Friday to draft a statement on the meaning of holy communion which could potentially be used to deny the sacred rite to US President Joe Biden because of his position on abortion.Biden, 78, a devo...

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday called for a stop to the flow of arms to Myanmar and urged the military to respect November election results and release political detainees, including leader Aung San Suu Kyi.The General Assembly adopted...

Move over Paul the Octopus, Thailand has a new claimant to the football forecasting crown: Boy the “psychic” lion, who has so far correctly called four Euro 2020 matches.Boy, a five-year-old white lion who lives at a zoo in northeast Thailand, ma...

At least four people have drowned after a boat carrying migrants capsized near the coast of the Spanish island of Lanzarote.Spanish rescue services on Friday said the bodies of two women and one man were recovered during the night.One of the victims...

We criticise more than praise. Good news is no news. Fiery or flowery rhetoric cannot disguise the fact that most politicians have not delivered what they promised. Hence, we should praise those leaders who look dull but have performed spectacularly...

The Palestinian Authority is calling off an agreement whereby Israel would transfer 1 million doses of coronavirus vaccines to it in exchange for a similar number later this year.The PA says the doses, which Israel began shipping to the occupied West...

A “huge number” of poorer countries have had to suspend their coronavirus vaccination programmes due to a lack of doses, the World Health Organization said Friday.The shortages often mean people who have received one dose of Covid-19 vaccine have...

The tense state of relations between Beijing and Washington is not conducive to their leaders holding talks, Chinese observers said after a suggestion from the White House that a meeting could be on the cards.White House national security adviser Jak...

A young wild boar showed pig-headed determination on Friday to cross Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, boarding two separate MTR trains and giving railway staff the runaround to complete the journey to the New Territories.The piglet passenger strayed i...

Hong Kong’s Apple Daily has published at least 17 commentaries by founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying since 2019, with at least four touching on foreign sanctions, a Post study has found.The newspaper’s content is at the heart of the controversy over the...

The Delta variant of Covid-19, first identified in India, is becoming the globally dominant variant of the disease, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist said on Friday.Soumya Swaminathan also voiced disappointment in the failure of CureV...

The UN General Assembly unanimously elected Antonio Guterres to a second term as secretary general on Friday, giving him another five years at the helm of the 193-member organisation at a time a deeply divided world faces numerous conflicts, the grow...

China’s top spy catcher has urged the country’s intelligence officers to step up their efforts to hunt down foreign agents and insiders who collude with “anti-China” forces.Dong Jingwei, the vice-minister of state security, made the comments ...

A little-known government agency led by Vice-Premier Liu He, a trusted aide to President Xi Jinping, is emerging as the command centre for the most important battle in Beijing’s technology war against the United States: achieving chip autonomy by f...

The European Union has recommended that member states lift Covid-19 travel restrictions so vaccinated arrivals from Hong Kong and Macau can visit the bloc for leisure and business purposes, without requiring the cities to offer similar arrangements f...

Intellectually disabled people in Hong Kong are more confined and spend less time outdoors amid the Covid-19 pandemic compared with others worldwide, a new study has found.Their carers also struggle with lack of guidance and support, with no knowledg...

A close political aide of Hong Kong’s leader will take over as head of the authority managing the city’s troubled arts hub for a three-year term starting October 15.Betty Fung Ching Suk-yee, 56, had been seconded by the government to the West ...

One of China’s leading nuclear scientists, Zhang Zhijian, has died after falling from a building, Harbin Engineering University has announced.Zhang, who was vice-president at the university, was found dead on Thursday.In a post on Chinese social me...

Vietnamese citizens are being lured into migrating to Cambodia, sometimes illegally, with attractive but often fraudulent offers to work in casinos and online gaming establishments, Vietnamese officials have warned. The Vietnamese embassy in Cambodi...

The Kremlin on Friday blamed a surge in Covid-19 cases on reluctance to get vaccinated due to “nihilism” after a record 9,000 new infections in the capital city fanned fears of a third wave.Russia reported 17,262 new coronavirus infections nation...

A man has been jailed for six months for obstructing police by exposing a reconnaissance operation for flushing out protesters from Polytechnic University at the height of Hong Kong’s social unrest in 2019.Kowloon City Court heard police were scout...

The British government on Friday apologised for failing rape victims, acknowledging that swingeing cuts to the legal system in recent years contributed to plunging conviction rates.“The first thing I need to say is sorry,” said Justice Secretary ...

Europe is gradually reopening to vaccinated travellers as coronavirus restrictions ease, but in some African nations such as Morocco recipients of jabs not recognised by the EU are facing disappointment.“It seems very much as if a vaccine has becom...

An outspoken Chinese diplomat has taken aim at the military focus of the EU and French Indo-Pacific strategies, but praised France and Germany for not being swayed by “anti-Chinese voices”.Lu Shaye, China’s ambassador to France, suggested Europ...

Yokohama resident Nana Kimura remembers rolling her eyes when her sports-mad husband admitted two years ago that he had paid 150,000 yen (US$1,360) for three tickets to the women’s 100-metres final at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.With less than fi...

Cathay Pacific plans to add substantially more flights by the autumn marking the start of its ambitious comeback from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, and the airline said on Friday it was on track to lose less money in the first half of 2021...

As the capital prepares to host the Winter Olympics, Beijing has become the first Chinese city to inoculate more than 70 per cent of its population.Some 17.9 million adults in Beijing had received at least one Covid-19 vaccine shot by noon on Wednesd...

The principal of a government-subsidised Hong Kong primary school has been arrested on suspicion of corruption after several internal exam papers were believed to have been leaked to a local tutoring centre.In a statement on Friday, the Independent C...

A World Bank-led project declined to award a contract to lay sensitive undersea communications cables after Pacific island governments heeded US warnings that participation of a Chinese company posed a security threat, two sources told Reuters.The fo...

Taiwan has stepped up its efforts to secure Covid-19 vaccines by allowing Foxconn billionaire Terry Gou and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to negotiate on behalf of the government with BioNTech.Gou, who wants to make the purchase thro...