Twelve pilot whales were found stranded in tidal flats in eastern China on Tuesday morning, with two of the whales already suspected to be dead.Rescue efforts from local government officials, fishermen and volunteers started quickly after the discove...

A Hong Kong teenager who was one of 12 fugitives intercepted by the Chinese coastguard while attempting to flee to Taiwan last summer has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a firebomb attack on a local police station during 2019’s social unres...

An American lawyer has been jailed for four months and two weeks for assaulting a Hong Kong police officer at a railway station in late 2019.In sentencing 37-year-old Samuel Phillip Bickett, a former Asia-Pacific compliance director at Bank of Americ...

Taro Aso, Japan’s deputy prime minister, on Tuesday appeared to walk back comments he had made the previous day suggesting that Japan’s military would be deployed to assist the United States in the event mainland Chinese forces invaded Taiwan. S...

Hong Kong’s leader has vowed to implement new laws and spur government departments to do more to combat what she characterised as the lingering risks to national security posed by “foreign forces” and social media.Chief Executive Carrie Lam Che...

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson revealed plans to lift most of England’s coronavirus restrictions, including face masks and social distancing from July 19, urging personal responsibility rather than government edict.His announcement on Monday came ...

A South Korean two-star army general has been arrested for sexually harassing a female subordinate, officials said on Tuesday, in the latest high-profile sex crime to rock the country’s military.The case comes just a month after the country’s air...

The United States conducted 36 reconnaissance flights over the South China Sea in June, half the number from May, a Beijing-based think tank said, saying the US had temporarily shifted focus to the East China Sea.In a monthly summary, the South China...

Hong Kong police have foiled an alleged terrorist plot, using the national security law to arrest nine members of a pro-independence group suspected of planning to use powerful explosives to bomb the city’s courts, transport networks and streets th...

The application process for the Hong Kong government’s HK$5,000 (US$644) consumption voucher scheme has been made easier amid surging interest in the programme, with more than 3.2 million residents having signed up as of 8am on Tuesday.Following th...

A passenger plane with 28 people on board crashed into the sea on Tuesday off Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula as it was preparing to land, RIA news agency reported on Tuesday.The plane, an Antonov AN-26 twin-engined turboprop, was en route...

Former US president Donald Trump and his wife Melania often eat alone at a “roped-off table” in the centre of a Mar-a-Lago patio restaurant when she is there, a forthcoming book by journalist Michael Wolff says.The Trumps are “looked at, somewh...

Several cities in the Philippine capital region have halted their first-dose vaccination programmes as supply from the national government runs out.Makati City, home to the nation’s main financial district, said the scheduled inoculation of frontli...

Hong Kong’s leader has moved to allay the fears of American tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo over a planned anti-doxxing law, saying the legislation’s implementation will prove its effectiveness and ease their concerns.Chie...

The US left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after ...

The Tokyo Olympics are less than three weeks away. And the pressure is on for the International Olympic Committee (IOC).Japan was just coming out of its fourth Covid-19 wave with about 1,400 new cases every day, but numbers are now rising again. This...

Mexico’s state-owned oil company said Monday that a bizarre chain of events, including a lightning storm and a simultaneous gas pipeline leak, set off a strange sub-aquatic fireball seen last week in the Gulf of Mexico.Petroleos Mexicanos said an i...

A consortium led by the Jiangsu government is taking a stake in Suning.com, the retail arm of billionaire Zhang Jindong’s Suning Group, marking the latest move in China’s effort to bail out its heavily indebted conglomerates.Suning.com announced ...

Hong Kong’s leader has appointed her recently promoted deputy John Lee Ka-chiu as chairman and three pro-Beijing figures as members of a powerful new vetting committee established to ensure candidates in the city’s coming elections pose no threat...

Richard Donner, the filmmaker best known for his effortless mix of action and comedy in the Lethal Weapon series, Superman and The Goonies, died on Monday in Los Angeles at age 91, his family said.Steven Spielberg, who was executive producer and has ...

China’s antitrust regulator is set to formally block Tencent Holdings’ plan to merge the country’s top two video game streaming sites, Huya and Douyu, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.Tencent has failed to come up with suffici...

In the last month, Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has undertaken two highly-publicised visits to inaugurate 63 new bridges and 12 roads across seven states which border China.One of the bridges, on the Leh-Loma road which connects the largest ...

Teresa Lam Wan-ki, who has learned to live with her mental health condition, is eager to lend a helping hand to young people struggling along like she did, and stay by their side.“Situations may vary, but love and company always matters,” the 22-...

China’s ancient port city of Quanzhou will be assessed for world heritage status when representatives of a Unesco body meet in the country’s southeast later this month.The city of Fuzhou, about 180km from Quanzhou, will host the World Heritage Co...

A man in China who received an outpouring of national sympathy after the shocking death of his family has become the object of scorn after he announced he had fallen in love and was starting a new family.Lin Shengbin lost his wife and three kids in 2...

Ninety-two per cent of Hong Kong pupils were allocated to one of their top three selected schools, a five-year high satisfaction rate that principals attributed partly to more families emigrating overseas.The Education Bureau on Monday said 52,055 el...

The centenary of the Chinese Communist Party on July 1 was billed as a major national event for China and a personal milestone for President Xi Jinping. His speech deified the Communist Party for its contribution to enabling China to acquire comprehe...

Philippine authorities have retrieved a black box from an air force plane that crashed at the weekend, killing more than 50 people, military chief Cirilito Sobejana said on Tuesday.The pilot in command, who had several years of experience flying a C-...

A man in Austria was bitten by a 1.6-metre (5.25-foot) python during an early-morning visit to the toilet at his home on Monday, police said.The reptile, which apparently escaped from a neighbour’s flat and may have slithered through the drains, wa...

One of two operators of Hong Kong’s “cruises to nowhere” has postponed its launch date and will not set sail until October 5, three months behind schedule, with a lawmaker calling for flexibility on terms and conditions of tickets sold.Royal Ca...

Despite food-safety concerns sparked by a viral video of a cabbage-processing plant in China, many restaurants in South Korea still use lower-priced kimchi imported from the neighbouring country, according to a new survey.The poll of 1,000 eateries w...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing.The Hong Kong Observatory issued the No 1 typhoon warning signal at 4.15am on Tuesday, with two tropical cyclo...

French prosecutors said on Monday they are investigating claims that a Saudi prince kept seven employees in a state of modern-day slavery at a flat he owned outside Paris.The inquiry for human trafficking was opened after the women, most from the Phi...

Divers have reported a rare sighting of hundreds of endangered seahorses in a polluted lagoon in western Greece and warn they could be lost if the area is not cleaned up.“We see hundreds here and if they remain we have hope,” said diver Vasilis M...

For 36-year-old driver Ping, who depends on Didi Chuxing’s app to find clients, the ride-hailing giant is a company too big to fail.“There are more than 20,000 Didi drivers in Beijing alone. If it collapses, traffic will come to a standstill. Any...

The death toll climbed to 28 on Monday in the collapse of a Florida condo tower, where search work resumed after the dangerously unstable remaining portion of the building was brought down with explosives ahead of a coming tropical storm, officials s...

The United States celebrated Independence Day with parades, barbecues and fireworks, but in violence-plagued Chicago, 88 people were shot, 14 of them fatally.The holiday weekend violence comes after increased media and police attention to the problem...

As America celebrates its birthday amid a steady decline in coronavirus infections, let’s give Florida governor Ron DeSantis some credit for his foresight during the pandemic.He was portrayed as a villain a year ago for allowing restaurants and bar...

A large fire that broke out in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Azerbaijan, not far from a natural gas field, was caused by an eruption by a “mud volcano,” authorities said.Azerbaijani media quoted the state oil and gas company SOCAR as saying th...

About 150 pupils are missing after armed men raided a boarding school in Nigeria’s Kaduna state, a parent and an administrator said on Monday, and police said they were in hot pursuit alongside military personnel.The attack on the Bethel Baptist Hi...

China’s space programme could one day save the world, with massive rockets travelling for years to defend the planet from huge asteroids capable of wiping out entire cities, according to the government.This saviour role is unexpected given these ar...

A protest against a planned LGBT march in the Georgian capital turned violent on Monday as demonstrators attacked and injured some 20 journalists covering the event.Organisers of the Tbilisi March For Dignity that was to take place in the evening can...

Bitcoin mining has become easier and more profitable, as the pool of miners competing to create tokens shrinks following China’s strict crackdown on the country's cryptocurrency operations.The level of difficulty for mining bitcoin plunged by 28 pe...

There has been a flurry of significant developments in the great power triangle of the United States, Russia and China during the past month. On June 16, Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden held a summit in Geneva.Some observe...

Three more bodies were found in the debris of a partially collapsed US condominium on Monday, bringing the total confirmed dead to 27, after the remaining parts of the Florida building were demolished overnight.The bodies were found after suspended s...

A regional internet industry group with Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yahoo among its members has warned the tech giants could stop offering services in Hong Kong if a proposed anti-doxxing law goes ahead in the form proposed.The Singapore-based Asia...

Philippine soldiers on Monday continued to search for the black box and data recorder of a C-130 Hercules transport plane which crashed on July 4 in the country’s worst military air disaster since World War II.The crash has so far killed 49 soldier...

The leaders of China, France and Germany threw their support behind an EU-China investment agreement on Monday, despite the deal’s failure to gain widespread backing in Europe, according to a Chinese summary of a video call between the three countr...

A total of 130 Hong Kong students attained a perfect score in the International Baccalaureate (IB) exams this year, more than double the number last year.In 2020, 55 pupils from the city scored a perfect 45 points, including those who received a grad...

The coronavirus pandemic is entering a critical phase as the most transmissible variant yet hits dozens of countries, driving new surges and making vaccination more urgent. Now the key question is how well the vaccines work.A handful of vaccines have...