Didi Chuxing’s mini program on two of China’s most used mobile applications, WeChat and Alipay, is no longer available for new users after Beijing orders it to halt new account registrations.On Wednesday, the ride-hailing giant’s mini program d...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Lara Seligman on politico.com on July 6, 2021.The United States may need the help of an old foe in extricating itself from America’s longest war: Vladimir...

Bollywood icon Dilip Kumar, hailed as the “Tragedy King” and one of Hindi cinema’s greatest actors, died on Wednesday in a Mumbai hospital after a prolonged illness. He was 98.The “Tragedy King” title came from Kumar’s numerous serious ro...

The US has appointed a new top representative to Taiwan, in the Biden administration’s latest move to strengthen ties with Taipei amid increasing pressure from Beijing.Sandra Oudkirk is the incoming director of the American Institute in Taiwan’s ...

Elsie Cheung Hoi-sze, who is among the few female business leaders in Hong Kong’s media industry, is stepping down as chief operating officer of the South China Morning Post, having helped the newspaper go digital and global over the past decade.�...

Britain’s government is facing growing criticism over how it awarded contracts for virus-related goods and services during the pandemic, its detractors alleging a “chumocracy” in which politically connected companies got priority.“I think in ...

Chinese customs said they have busted two recent cases of Hong Kong drivers trying to smuggle computer chips into mainland China via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, as demand for semiconductors soars amid a global shortage.Customs officers found a...

Chinese and German defence ministers have exchanged views ahead of the expected sailing of a German frigate through the disputed South China Sea next month.The German defence ministry said that during Tuesday’s video call, minister Annegret Kramp-K...

North Korea is facing a food shortage of around 860,000 tonnes this year, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation forecast, warning the country could experience a “harsh lean period” as early as next month.The impoverished country, which is...

The wife of the Belgian ambassador to South Korea got into a scuffle with a street cleaner on Monday, just months after she created a stir by hitting a shopkeeper and a saleswoman.Police said Xiang Xueqiu, the spouse of Ambassador Peter Lescouhier, f...

Hong Kong anti-triad police are searching for three assailants who knifed a 51-year-old man in Sham Shui Po before fleeing in a Mercedes-Benz around daybreak on Wednesday.The victim suffered deep cuts to both legs in the attack, which took place outs...

Renewed virus restrictions across Asia have weakened consumer spending, but inflation may keep ticking higher in some of the region’s biggest economies.China’s consumer prices will climb an estimated 80 basis points next year, the most in Asia, f...

When local residents start using a new park in Bhopal for their morning walk, they may not know that they are treading on the remains of the 6,000 people who were cremated at the nearby crematorium during India’s second wave of coronavirus infectio...

The widow of John McAfee, the founder of the antivirus software McAfee, says that she “does not accept” that her husband died by suicide last month. “The investigation into John's death is still ongoing but I will share what information I can,...

Iran has begun the process of producing enriched uranium metal, the UN atomic watchdog said, a move that could help it develop a nuclear weapon and that three European powers said threatened talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.Iran’s steps, ...

The Pentagon said Tuesday it has scrapped a massive US$10 billion cloud computing contract, sidestepping a bitter dispute between Amazon and Microsoft over allegations of political bias that swayed the bidding.A defence Department statement said the ...

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams won the Democratic nomination for New York mayor on Tuesday, positioning the former police captain who stressed enhancing public safety to become the next leader of America’s largest city.Updated vote tallies p...

Implementation of a five-point consensus reached by Asean to deal with the crisis in Myanmar would be expedited, Singapore’s foreign minister said, as the UN rights chief warned of a post-coup “human rights catastrophe” that was driving the tro...

Retired Chinese military personnel would be a top priority for conscription in wartime, according to draft regulatory changes released by the Ministry of Veterans Affairs on the weekend.The proposed changes to the country’s conscription regulations...

The market for electric vehicles (EVs) is projected to explode over the next 10 years as they become an increasingly important technology for the global clean-energy transition. By 2030, roughly 26 million EVs are expected to be sold worldwide, compa...

A bill to regulate rent at about 110,000 subdivided flats in Hong Kong, home to some of the city’s poorest residents, will be presented to the legislature next week and is expected to take effect as early as the end of the year.The Landlord and Ten...

Indonesians have found a new authority on all things Covid-19 – a doctor in the United States who lives more than 16,000km away from the Southeast Asian nation, which is currently in the grip of the fast-spreading Delta variant.Dr Faheem Younus, th...

China’s leader put the emphasis on cooperation in talks with his French and German counterparts on Monday, but observers say the effort to counter pressure from the US may not do much to improve ties with Europe.In the video call with German Chance...

Singapore is not counting people who took Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac vaccine in its national count, according to the Ministry of Health.Only people who have taken Moderna and Pfizer shots are reflected in the overall vaccination numbers, a spokesm...

A local government in western China has reduced the fines given to a farmer who broke China’s draconian child laws by having eight children.The fines were reduced from 2.6 million yuan (US$402,370) to 90,000 yuan (US$13,928) after years of negotiat...

Losca Kwok considers herself a durian fan – especially as she is able to finish an entire fruit in one sitting. Of late, the 30-year-old credit officer has been indulging in the pungent, custard-like texture of durian more than once a week as Hong ...

He Xiaopeng’s muse for creating one of modern China’s most consequential – and successful, he hopes – technology products was an unlikely source: the line of American toys rooted in Japanese anime culture that first became popular while he wa...

Hong Kong is expected to extend most social-distancing measures due to expire at the end of Wednesday for another two weeks because officials consider the Covid-19 situation “unstable”, the Post has learned.The rules would remain broadly in place...

Rescuers on Tuesday combed through the debris of a deadly condo tower collapse in Florida as Tropical Storm Elsa threatened to complicate the delicate search mission with strong winds and heavy rain.The death toll from the June 24 disaster in Surfsid...

China’s announcement of new rules for companies looking to raise capital on overseas exchanges puts future deals in jeopardy as Beijing shows more interest in the financial decoupling that America’s China hawks have been pushing, analysts said.Th...

The musical drama Annette, starring Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver, had its world premiere on the French Riviera on Tuesday as the Cannes Film Festival made a glitzy in-person return after a pandemic hiatus.Both Cotillard and Driver attended the op...

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued new emergency measures to fight gun violence on Tuesday, as he made it easier for shooting victims to sue gun manufacturers.Cuomo declared gun violence a “disaster emergency,” against a backdrop of rising cri...

US pop star Britney Spears’ court-appointed lawyer in her contentious conservatorship resigned on Tuesday, a day after her longtime manager quit saying the singer planned to retire and no longer needed his services.Lawyer Samuel Ingham, who has bee...

The US has been “missing in action” in Asia and needs to step up its game especially in Southeast Asia to show Chinese hardliners that the world’s largest economic and military power is not in free fall, said a senior US official Monday.“Ideo...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Tuesday, stressing the need for all parties to commit to an immediate and indefinite ceasefire in the northern Tigray region, the State Department said.The conflict in...

As the summer heat began to bear down on Hong Kong in the early hours of May 21, four men loaded ice-cold styrofoam boxes onto two speedboats off a pier in the small fishing village of Lau Fau Shan in the city’s northwest.Their suspected destinatio...

Hong Kong-based Esquel Group, one of the world’s largest shirtmakers, sued the US government on Tuesday, a year after a subsidiary was prohibited from buying US supplies over allegations it maintained ties to forced labour in China.Amid a push to p...

One of the Netherlands’ best known crime reporters was shot Tuesday evening in a brazen attack in downtown Amsterdam and was fighting for his life in a hospital, the Dutch capital’s mayor said.Peter R. de Vries, who is widely lauded for fearless ...

The Taliban on Wednesday launched their first assault on a provincial capital in Afghanistan since waging a major offensive against Afghan forces, as the pull-out of US troops from the country nears completion.Fierce fighting has erupted in the weste...

An Inuk leader who has served as a Canadian diplomat was named the country’s first Indigenous representative of the crown on Tuesday – an announcement that comes in the wake of a scandal over the nation’s long mistreatment of indigenous people....

Customs officials in Thailand made their biggest seizure of heroin this year, about 315kg (694lb) worth up to 944 million baht (US$29 million), bringing the total confiscated so far this year to two tons, officials said on Tuesday.They did not say wh...

A five-year-old Chinese private equity fund is emerging as a front runner in acquiring semiconductor operations across Asia and Europe, and in some cases relocating the assets to China in line with Beijing’s desire for greater self-sufficiency in c...

A 19-year-old British man was convicted on Tuesday of murdering two sisters as they celebrated a birthday in a London park, a crime driven by the deluded belief that the killings would help him win a lottery jackpot.A jury at London’s Central Crimi...

In a speech marking 100 years of the Communist Party on July 1, President Xi Jinping warned that hostile foreign powers would “have their heads cracked and bleeding”.The threatening words were ostensibly aimed at the United States and its allies,...

When will China overtake the United States to become the world’s biggest economy? Few questions are more consequential, whether it is for executives wondering where long-term profits will come from, investors weighing the US dollar’s status as gl...

France’s government said on Tuesday it may refer Russia to the World Trade Organization (WTO) over Moscow’s plans to force champagne producers to add the designation “sparkling wine” to their products sold in Russia.Moscow has adopted legisla...

Belgium’s Africa Museum, once a celebration of the country’s colonial rule, will begin a multi-year process of returning stolen art to Democratic Republic of Congo, the Belgian government said on Tuesday.From the late 19th century to 1960, thousa...

Chinese President Xi Jinping told an international political summit on Tuesday that China’s modernisation had proven itself as a viable alternative to the Western system of governance and Beijing was willing to share its experiences with other coun...

The Spanish government on Tuesday approved a law to define all non-consensual sex as rape, part of a legislative overhaul that toughens penalties for sexual harassment and mandates more support systems for victims.It approved the bill five years afte...

When Hafiza Sheikh was growing up in Mumbai, she celebrated Holi and Diwali with her Hindu neighbours and shared her Eid delicacies with them on the Muslim religious holiday.But now her daughter never takes non-vegetarian food to her elite school out...