China is looking for ways to help fill the power vacuum left by the United States in Afghanistan but is unlikely to send in peacekeeping troops, foreign policy observers said ahead of Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s three-country tour of Central Asia.Th...

Hong Kong’s leader on Sunday conceded three senior security officials who broke the city’s coronavirus social-distancing rules by attending a dinner at a luxury clubhouse “lacked sensitivity”, but urged the public to move on from the scandal,...

China and North Korea pledged greater cooperation in the face of what Pyongyang described as “hostile forces” as the two countries marked the 60th anniversary of their defence treaty on Sunday.North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said the two countrie...

A 90-year-old woman who died after catching Covid-19 was infected with both the Alpha and Beta variants of the coronavirus at the same time, researchers in Belgium said on Sunday, adding that the rare phenomenon may be underestimated.The unvaccinated...

President Xi Jinping might be China’s most powerful man in decades, but he has railed against the country’s vast bureaucracy in internal meetings, according to a recently published book.In January, Xi expressed frustration at a lack of initiative...

India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, has proposed legislation that aims to discourage couples from having more than two children, becoming the second state ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party to make such a proposal. If Uttar Pr...

Hong Kong’s 33-day streak of zero local Covid-19 cases could end on Sunday with the city expecting one infection, likely centred on the Delta variant, while an overnight lockdown at the patient’s estate yielded no other positive results.The lates...

Chip maker TSMC said on Sunday it was in the middle of the contract signing process to buy Covid-19 vaccines from Germany’s BioNTech, part of a drawn out process for Taiwan to access the shot.Taiwan’s government has tried for months to buy the va...

We sometimes overthink and make things seem more complicated than they really are, or are so fixed in our thinking that we overlook opportunities to do things differently – and better. These thoughts came to mind as the latest debate began on how H...

Hong Kong’s leader has said she will not expect her newly promoted deputy to oversee policies on youth, ethnic minorities and poverty alleviation in light of his lack of experience in those areas, but she held high hopes over his ability to curb na...

New World Development kept selling flats at The Pavilia Farm III – including two tower blocks earmarked this week for demolition – on June 20 and 27, days after defects were found, because engineers did not consider them serious enough to warrant...

Ukraine is banking on economic support from China as the two sides agree to work together on infrastructure, but observers say that cooperation will be limited when it comes to critical projects.In a move that caught many diplomacy observers by surpr...

Until recently, the Chinese Cyberspace Administration (CAC), which helps censor China’s internet behind the Great Firewall, had rarely been involved with companies’ plans to go public.By the time the CAC was created in 2011, the path for Chinese ...

Sydney’s virus outbreak means plans for an Australia-Singapore travel bubble have been delayed until at least the end of the year, the Australian trade minister said on Sunday.While opening up the travel corridor remains a priority, the scale of th...

The closure of dozens of LGBT student organisations’ WeChat accounts this week may be the result of a larger Chinese nationalist backlash against perceived Western influences, according to cultural academics.“There is a tendency in China for some...

Rabia Aslam still remembers how she felt when she walked into her university’s orientation for biomedical engineering students four years ago.The Pakistan-born 24-year-old recalled looking around at the faces of her classmates, wondering how many w...

Eight years ago, world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao set his sights on a goal outside the ring: the Philippine presidency. Little did he know that in President Rodrigo Duterte, he would face his toughest opponent yet.He couldn’t do it immediately;...

Our Tokyo Trail series looks at key issues and athletes in the run-up to the 2020 Olympics, which are scheduled for late July. When it comes to representation of the sexes in Hong Kong sports, a look at the Olympics throws up an interesting statisti...

Jasper Law Ting-tak has just been through the toughest week in his 1½ years as the youngest chairman of a Hong Kong district council.The 25-year-old localist politician has taken on the work of eight opposition councillors who are either behind bars...

Thailand is tightening virus containment measures, imposing a ban on gatherings of more than five people and non-essential travel, along with an overnight curfew to quell a worsening Covid-19 outbreak.Restrictions on movements from 9pm to 4am will co...

Cheers erupted on Saturday as a Confederate statue that towered for nearly a century over downtown Charlottesville was carted away by truck from the Virginia city where it had become a flashpoint for racist protests and deadly violence.It was a day o...

To mark the hundredth birthday of the Communist Party of China, about 70 representatives of Hong Kong’s government, political parties, community organisations, business and professional sectors were invited to Beijing to join the celebrations.In ad...

The Chinese military’s use of ageing J-7 jets in a Taiwan fly-past last month has raised questions about why the second-generation fighters were deployed alongside more modern warplanes.Military sources raised the possibility that the planes had be...

Veteran film provocateur Paul Verhoeven hit back on Saturday at Catholics who have condemned his lesbian nun film Benedetta as blasphemous over scenes in which a statue of the Virgin Mary is used as a sex toy.The Basic Instinct and Showgirls director...

The widow of murdered Haitian leader Jovenel Moise, who was critically wounded in the attack that claimed his life, on Saturday issued her first public remarks since the assault, calling on the nation not to “lose its way.”“I am alive, thanks t...

Finance ministers of the G20 countries have agreed on a minimum global tax rate for large companies, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Saturday.Scholz greeted the agreement as a “great historical moment” and said that there had been lou...

Ethiopia’s ruling party has secured an overwhelming majority in a landmark parliamentary poll, the electoral board said Saturday, ensuring a new five-year term for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.The June 21 election marked the first time Abiy faced vote...

Supporters of former South African president Jacob Zuma are protesting his imprisonment, burning trucks, commercial property and blocking major roads in KwaZulu-Natal province. They are demanding that he be released from prison.Zuma started serving a...

Dozens of women cycled topless through central Berlin on Saturday to protest regulations that prevent women from removing their tops in public parks unless they are in specially designated areas.The event, held under the banner “No nipple is free ...

An unopened copy of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda that was made in 1987 has sold at auction for US$870,000.Heritage Auctions in Dallas said the video game sold on Friday.The auction house said it was a rare version that was created during a limite...

Ashleigh Barty won her first Wimbledon title on the 50th anniversary of fellow indigenous Australian Evonne Goolagong Cawley’s maiden crown, beating Karolina Pliskova 6-3, 6-7 (4/7), 6-3 in the final on Saturday.The 25-year-old Australian – who w...

French actress Lea Seydoux may miss the Cannes Film Festival after she tested positive for Covid-19, a spokeswoman for one of her movies said on Saturday.The James Bond star is appearing in no less than four films at the world’s biggest film festiv...

China’s foreign vice-minister Le Yucheng has called on Washington to accept that “American hegemony” is in decline, but insisted it will be difficult to overtake the United States even within a “relatively long period of time”.The US is sti...

Julio Miranda had never felt the threat of the coronavirus too close. With an appointment for his first Covid-19 jab scheduled for mid-July, the 48-year-old house painter was, like many in the vaccine-abundant developed world, eagerly awaiting the en...

In the English versions of China’s diplomatic statements, few words speak as highly of Beijing’s close ties with certain countries as “ironclad”.Diplomats have frequently used the term to describe the “exceptional” relationship between Ch...

China is making sizeable, long-term investments in weapons designed to jam or destroy satellites as the country seeks to rapidly narrow the gap in space technology with the US, according to the top intelligence official for the Pentagon’s Indo-Paci...

A Hong Kong police officer faces a likely disciplinary hearing after leaving her pistol in a shopping centre toilet in Tai Kwok Tsui on Saturday afternoon.A police spokesman confirmed that the force received a report about 50 minutes after the office...

Hong Kong is in danger of falling behind as a global financial centre if it persists with its “zero infections” approach to reopening borders amid the coronavirus pandemic and fails to produce a road map for quarantine-free travel, the city’s b...

Japanese and Western financiers bankroll most overseas coal power plants globally, contrary to the misconception that most new funding comes from public financing entities in China, a Boston University study has found.The study, by the university’s...

Police in India are investigating how dozens of Muslim women were offered for sale in fake “auctions” online without their knowledge, in a case the victims say illustrates growing Islamophobia across the country.Photos of more than 80 women were ...

Within the first half of 2021, the Environment Bureau released several environmental policy documents as either a continuation of existing ones or new road maps focusing on new areas such as the electrification of vehicles.Most of these policies had ...

Hundreds of screaming fans brought Hong Kong’s largest shopping centre to a near standstill on Saturday as they tried to catch a glimpse of the Canto-pop boy band Mirror.Police and security guards struggled to maintain order as the largely female g...

Hong Kong’s homebuyers continued making their beeline for the first waterfront flats built on the city’s former airport runway, as low-cost mortgages combined with signs of an economic recovery and easing Covid-19 outbreaks to lure them back into...

News that the youngest child of Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is taking a bigger role in the family business has fuelled discussions of how the 64-year-old tycoon will eventually carve up his petrochemicals-to-telecoms conglomerate among his t...

A group of Chinese students unable to get visas to pursue advanced science degrees at top US universities are aiming to collectively file a lawsuit against the US government.The students are from eight Chinese universities – the so-called Seven Son...

The group responsible for Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen Square vigil is dismissing its entire staff, while half of its committee members will step down, moves it says are precautions in the face of “fierce and obvious political repression”.In a ...

Hong Kong’s No 2 official on Saturday said the government was still weighing its options for tackling “fake news”, including a law scholars and journalists have warned could stifle press freedom, while the city’s police chief blamed it for st...

Hong Kong’s leader has vowed to “boldly push ahead” with patriotic education, which she called an important policy the city has failed to implement even after its return to Chinese rule, to rectify the moral values of the younger generation.Chi...

Organisers of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games have launched a campaign to stop volunteers selling their uniforms through auction sites, in the latest embarrassing glitch to the Games less than two weeks ahead of the opening ceremony.As well as contraven...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing.Hongkongers have rushed to sign-up for the government’s HK$5,000 (US$644) e-voucher scheme, undeterred by lo...