Three men who conspired to extort HK$100 million (US$12.9 million) from a Hong Kong business tycoon by threatening to release a video of his partially naked wife have been jailed for between 26 and 32 months.The three accused, including two men who p...

The former mayor of Busan, South Korea’s second largest city, was on Tuesday sentenced to three years in prison for sexually harassing two female employees in a blow to President Moon Jae-in’s ruling Democratic Party ahead of next year’s presid...

The head of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission has denied claims that he is being forced by the US government to favour the theory that the pandemic started from a laboratory leak in Wuhan.Jeffrey Sachs, a professor of economics at Columbia University in...

Hong Kong police will deploy about 7,000 officers across the city on Thursday as it marks both 24 years since its return to Chinese sovereignty and the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party, according to force insiders.While current intelligence d...

Hong Kong has set itself a new target to reach the same standards of air quality as major international cities such as Tokyo and Paris by 2035.Unveiling the Clean Air Plan for Hong Kong 2035 on Tuesday, Secretary for Environment Wong Kam-sing said th...

King Mswati III of eSwatini, Africa’s last absolute monarchy, has allegedly fled his country as pro-democracy protests turned violent, according to the South African Broadcasting Corp.But eSwatini government spokesman Sabelo Dlamini denied the king...

More than one quarter of Americans qualify as having right-wing authoritarian political beliefs, according to new polling by Morning Consult. The study used authoritarian researcher Bob Altemeyer's definition and scoring system of right-wing authori...

A fire that broke out early Tuesday morning at a scrap metal recycling site in Hong Kong’s Kwai Tsing district left some local residents complaining of a “scorching smell” as smoke drifted through their neighbourhoods over the course of five ho...

Criminal probes into former US president Donald Trump are heating up. The signs are everywhere.Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jnr empanelled a grand jury that will reportedly be used for an investigation into whether Trump fudged his persona...

Hong Kong’s ban on passenger arrivals from Britain has plunged scores of travellers into limbo, forcing some to cut short their stays in the country and others to cancel plans to return home.Health officials this week returned Britain to the city�...

A report released today calls on China to address its role in corruption and conflict linked to the jade trade in Myanmar.The campaign group Global Witness estimates that up to 90 per cent of Myanmar’s jade is being smuggled out of the country, alm...

US President Joe Biden will not attend the Summer Olympics in Tokyo this year, the White House said, but his wife may attend for the opening ceremony.“The president is not planning to attend the games … [but] he will certainly be rooting for the ...

Children caught in conflict are being taught to commit war crimes before they can count, the US ambassador to the United Nations said, pointing to the deadliest attack in Burkina Faso in years, with more than 130 civilians killed by an armed group co...

President Xi Jinping presented 29 party members with medals on Tuesday as part of China’s celebrations to commemorate 100 years of the Communist Party.Xi, who is also party chief, called on his fellow members to keep their spirits high while facing...

A passenger who tried to break into a plane cockpit last week had recently been under the influence of methamphetamine before he jumped from the moving plane in Los Angeles, authorities said.Luis Antonio Victoria Dominguez of La Paz, Mexico, broke hi...

New York prosecutors investigating former US president Donald Trump’s business practices were likely to issue one or more criminal indictments this week – but not against Trump himself, according to people involved in the case.Ronald Fischetti, a...

Google took down two Google Maps documents on Monday that had listed the names and addresses of hundreds of Thai activists who were accused by royalists of opposing the monarchy, the technology company said. Thai royalist activist Songklod “Pukem�...

The Spanish consulate in Shanghai is calling on the city’s health authorities to clarify quarantine rules for inbound travellers after a number of people vaccinated for the coronavirus were subjected to several days of hospital tests on arrival.“...

China’s progress toward issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) will have a huge impact on how quickly advanced economies follow suit, former top Japanese financial regulator Toshihide Endo told Reuters.Central banks have accelerated efforts...

Noting how difficult it could be for some peers to hold a bag while using walking aids, three Hong Kong teenagers decided to do something about it – designing a pouch that can be attached to a walking frame, and winning a local award in the process...

Pro-Iranian militias exchanged fire with a US-led coalition in eastern Syria Monday, a war monitor and the coalition said, in an escalation after deadly US air strikes in Iraq and Syria the previous night.US forces “were attacked by multiple rocket...

Self-censorship may become the “new normal”, scholars and writers have warned, after a Hong Kong news outlet citing national security law fears pre-emptively purged thousands of comment pieces from its website.Scores of the articles touched upon ...

Fear, misinformation and chronic mistrust of the state in a conflict zone is undercutting vaccination efforts in Thailand’s insurgency-hit “Deep South”, activists say, as coronavirus cases spike in a region previously spared the worst of the pa...

China’s economic growth is on course to lose steam in the coming quarter amid Beijing’s increasingly tight credit controls and the slow recovery in consumption, which may drag down growth next year, according to reports from the World Bank and US...

Indonesia’s Covid-19 surge is on the edge of a “catastrophe” as the more infectious Delta variant dominates transmission and chokes hospitals, the Red Cross said on Tuesday, amid reports the country was set to impose a hard lockdown.Indonesia h...

China as expected blocked Canada’s first request to establish a World Trade Organization (WTO) panel to investigate Beijing’s restrictions placed on imports of Canadian canola seeds.China suspended imports of canola seeds from Richardson Internat...

In the second instalment of a three-part series produced with support from the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas, Forkast.News looks at how countries in Asia and along the New Silk Road may adopt the digital yuan or create their own d...

US military helicopters flying low over Tokyo have spurred a torrent of complaints from residents of the Japanese capital in recent years, with one observer warning of a “public-relations nightmare” for Washington if an accident should occur. Be...

Japan’s deputy defence minister on Monday warned of the growing threat posed by Chinese and Russian collaboration and said it was necessary to “wake up” to Beijing’s pressure on Taiwan and protect the island “as a democratic country.”Spea...

The Covid-19 vaccine developed by Chinese company Sinovac is safe and effective for children as young as three, early stage human trials have found, as China seeks to expand immunisation coverage.The vaccine, which gained World Health Organization em...

As China marks a century since the founding of the Communist Party, this series looks at the past, present and future of the country’s political system. Here, Jun Mai looks at the foundations on which each generation of the party leadership has sou...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Hannah Roberts on politico.eu on June 28, 2021.The United States is a much more important ally for Italy than China, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio ...

A US judge on Monday dismissed the blockbuster antitrust action against Facebook filed last year by federal and state regulators, saying officials failed to “plausibly” establish that the social network had created a monopoly.Judge James Boasberg...

It’s no secret by now that 2020 was a good year for online education. Helped by widening lockdowns, China’s educational technology (edtech) market has grown 118 per cent from US$22 billion in 2018 to US$48 billion in 2020.Such growth is impressiv...

Boris Johnson’s government is preparing to lift all remaining coronavirus restrictions for England on July 19, despite the Delta variant sending infections soaring to their highest daily rate since January.In his first statement to members of Parli...

Rescuers pulled an eleventh body from the rubble of a collapsed Florida condominium on Monday, as officials vowed to keep searching for any possible survivors five days after the 12-storey building fell without warning as residents slept.Crews were u...

China’s swift and sweeping crackdown on bitcoin mining has pushed owners of small hydroelectric power plants to offload their assets now that demand for cheap power is drying up.The number of advertisements on Xianyu, a popular second-hand e-commer...

A mixed schedule of jabs where a shot of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine is given four weeks after an AstraZeneca shot will produce better immune responses than giving another dose of AstraZeneca, an Oxford study said on Monday.The study, called Com-COV,...

The Biden administration’s ban on products from a Chinese company in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region over alleged human rights abuses is expected to complicate solar supply chains and create new challenges for US companies trying to cut exposu...

Indonesia and the United States have started the construction of a new US$3.5 million maritime training centre at the strategic meeting point of the South China Sea and Malacca Strait, reaffirming Washington’s status as Indonesia’s top defence pa...

Researchers at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have developed a blood test that can detect Alzheimer’s disease in as little as two days with more than 96 per cent accuracy, allowing early detection and screening of dementia for the f...

Tanzania is negotiating with Chinese investors to revive stalled multibillion-dollar projects, days after President Samia Suluhu Hassan talked by telephone to her Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.Hassan announced at the weekend that the East African na...

Beijing and Moscow have moved to consolidate ties by renewing a 20-year-old friendship treaty, weeks after the Russian and US leaders met in what was seen as part of efforts by Washington to drive a wedge between them.Chinese President Xi Jinping and...

Police enforcing Hong Kong’s national security law have a watch list of residents under investigation for allegedly violating the Beijing-imposed legislation to be intercepted and arrested if they attempt to flee the city, sources have told the Pos...

The operator of Hong Kong’s first traditional Chinese medicine hospital is confident the supply of locally trained practitioners will be enough to meet the demands of the institution slated to open in 2025.Construction of the nine-storey facility i...

China has moved one step closer to generating the brightest X-ray on Earth with the installation of an electron gun at a hi-tech facility on the outskirts of the capital on Monday, according to state broadcaster CCTV.The gun was mounted at the High E...

Danielle Anderson was working in what has become the world’s most notorious laboratory just weeks before the first known cases of Covid-19 emerged in China. Now the Australian virologist has shared her story for the first time.An expert in bat-born...

Only 44 per cent of China watchers said they would travel to the country once pandemic restrictions are lifted, according to a survey by US-based online magazine ChinaFile.The magazine, published by the Asia Society’s Centre on US-China Relations, ...

Washington’s effort to bring manufacturing from China to the US – so called reshoring – is nothing but “empty talk” and the US will become increasingly dependent on the world’s second largest economy for the foreseeable future, according ...

Chinese biotechnology and health care companies have become a steady source of initial public offerings in Hong Kong, accounting for more new listings than any other sector in the first six months of 2021 and making up half of the 10 deals that attra...