A former Hong Kong lawmaker has been fined HK$2,500 (US$322) for violating aviation law by flying in controlled airspace a balloon tied to a banner calling for the release of “political prisoners”.Tsang Kin-shing, 65, appeared at Eastern Court on...

A missing Belarusian activist has been found hanged in a park in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, police said on Tuesday, adding they had opened a murder probe.Vitaly Shishov, 26, headed the Belarusian House in Ukraine, an NGO helping his compatriots flee...

Ebrahim Raisi, an ultraconservative cleric and protégé of Iran’s supreme leader, was sworn in as president on Tuesday as a new security crisis swirled in the vital shipping routes of the Persian Gulf and doubts build over the survival of the trou...

A report against video gaming by a newspaper managed by the Xinhua News Agency was deleted from the publication’s website and on its WeChat account at noon on Tuesday, a move that one regulatory source said was made because its attack against the i...

North Korea appears willing to take steps to improve inter-Korean relations if the South calls off joint military drills with the United States, the head of Seoul’s spy agency said on Tuesday.Park Jie-won, head of the National Intelligence Service,...

The eastern city of Yangzhou in Jiangsu province has recorded the highest daily number of coronavirus infections in mainland China as the Delta variant spreads across the country.On Monday, Yangzhou reported 40 confirmed local cases and the neighbour...

An elderly Hongkonger escaped serious injury on Tuesday when an eight-metre-long branch fell from a tree and landed on his back at a popular Mong Kok bird garden.Emergency services were called to the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden just after 8.15am when ...

Beijing says it will not consider a port call request from a German warship to stop at Shanghai until Berlin clarifies its intentions in sending the frigate through the South China Sea.The warship Bayern began its mission to the Indo-Pacific region o...

A newspaper affiliated with China’s official news agency, Xinhua, has published a report calling online gaming “spiritual opium” that is harming the country’s teenagers and singled out Tencent Holdings, China’s largest video game operator, ...

Barack Obama is planning a big bash with hundreds of guests to celebrate his 60th birthday this week.But the former US president has come under fire – mainly from the Republican camp – for throwing a large party amid a resurgence of coronavirus c...

An estimated 4.7 million fewer girls were expected to be born globally in the next 10 years because of sex-selective practices in countries with a cultural preference for male offspring, a trend that could undermine social cohesion in the long term, ...

Listening to the chatter among China traders, the central bank is moving ever closer to another round of easing.Investors are boosting wagers on lower borrowing costs in both the rates and derivatives markets after a key factory gauge fell in July an...

The number of death sentences in Saudi Arabia has risen again after the country relinquished its G20 presidency, according to Amnesty International.Between January and July this year, 40 people were executed in the kingdom, according to a report publ...

The United States will raise concerns about China’s human rights record and “coercion” in the South China Sea during ministerial meetings with Southeast Asian countries this week, yet will not force countries in the region to pick sides in the ...

China’s government quietly issued new procurement guidelines in May that require up to 100% local content on hundreds of items including X-ray machines and magnetic resonance imaging equipment, erecting fresh barriers for foreign suppliers, three U...

China and India resumed their marathon negotiations over the weekend on disengaging from the military stand-off along their disputed border over the weekend, but appeared to make little progress. The frontline military commanders from both sides met...

A Chinese actor has apologised for dancing on the Great Wall after a video of the incident outraged some people in China who claimed it was disrespectful to the World Heritage Site.Yin Xiaotian was with a team to shoot a video of them dancing on a se...

A top computer scientist has been appointed to the Chinese education ministry’s top job and is expected to take up the portfolio.Huai Jinpeng, 58, is the new Communist Party secretary of the Ministry of Education, according to a statement on Monday...

First it was a charge against a teenage rapper, next the threat of defamation suits against celebrities trolling the Thai government over its stalling vaccine roll-out, then finally a ban on all media reporting “false messages” over the coronavir...

According to Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, the authors of Why Nations Fail, countries need inclusive institutions so people have incentives and opportunities to study, work, invest and innovate.The most essential inclusive institutions are gener...

Hong Kong’s revamped quarantine rules for inbound travellers will come as a “relief” to domestic workers stuck overseas, but there are still hurdles to solving a local labour shortage, such as authorities’ reluctance to recognise foreign vacc...

Keen sailor Ikuko Nagano had hoped to escort tourists to Fujisawa for the regattas; expat teacher Jordan Michels had wanted an Olympic volunteering pin like those her father and grandfather got for Atlanta 1996; translator Emma Parker had been willin...

When Shenzhen-based legal professional Thomas Chen starts his 30-minute commute each morning, the first thing he does is plug in his Airpods so he can listen to his favourite streaming music app.A user of NetEase Cloud Music for years, Chen last year...

When the representatives of several after-school tutoring giants were called in for a meeting with China’s Ministry of Education in March, they were told that their teaching materials and content would be treated as publications – subject to adva...

South Korea said on Monday no decision has yet been made on its joint military exercises with the United States but they should not create tension, after North Korea warned the South against holding the exercises amid signs of a thaw in relations.Sou...

China has been trying to forge closer ties with Mongolia, holding a series of high-level exchanges between Beijing and Ulaanbaatar in recent weeks as US engagement in the region grows.The latest effort was a foreign ministerial level meeting in Tianj...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Maeve Sheehey on politico.com on August 2, 2021.The United States on Monday hit the Joe Biden administration’s goal of administering at least one Covid-19...

Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham revealed on Monday that he has tested positive for Covid-19 despite being vaccinated, has flu-like symptoms and will be self-quarantining for 10 days.The announcement on the heels of a weekend gathering of senator...

News from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week that people vaccinated for Covid-19 can spread the illness presented America’s hardcore anti-vaccination crowd with another dilemma.The finding should silence the millions ...

A sculpture of a giant angular figure made from the wreckage of last summer’s Beirut port blast was unveiled at the site on Monday, drawing support from some but also stoking anger among other Lebanese who believe justice should come before memoria...

Iran will respond promptly to any threat against its security, the foreign ministry said on Monday, after the United States, Israel and Britain blamed Tehran for an attack on an Israeli-managed tanker off the coast of Oman.Tehran has denied any invol...

The US and British embassies in Kabul said on Monday the insurgent Taliban may have committed war crimes in southern Afghanistan by carrying out revenge murders of civilians, a charge denied by the insurgents.Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban negotiating tea...

Thousands more Afghans who may be targets of Taliban violence due to their US affiliations will have the opportunity to resettle as refugees in the United States under a new programme announced by the State Department on Monday.Reuters first reported...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that he wanted to get the travel industry moving again with a simple, easy-to-use system to allow for trips abroad without importing new variants of the coronavirus.“We need to get people, get the...

Germany dispatched a frigate to the Indo-Pacific region on Monday for the first time in almost 20 years, in a move that could put strain on Berlin’s delicate relationship with Beijing.The “Bayern” sailed from Wilhelmshaven harbour with more tha...

The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is renegotiating a lapsed agreement with its Chinese counterpart to jointly conduct law enforcement operations at sea, even as it deploys more American-flagged cutters to the western Pacific in light of China’s ...

Hong Kong police have detained more than 800 people and seized records detailing over HK$3.6 billion (US$463 million) worth of bets in a series of operations against illegal bookmaking activities involving this year’s Euro 2020 football tournament....

The wife of a German academic charged with spying for China has been indicted herself, with federal prosecutors on Monday saying she assisted her husband in sharing information with Chinese secret services.According to prosecutors in Karlsruhe, Germa...

Chinese policymakers will soon release guidelines for defining “important data”, classifying it into eight categories based on their impact on national security, a top researcher at a state-owned cybersecurity think tank has revealed.Data to face...

China and the US have been at loggerheads on almost all fronts, but with tensions continuing into the Joe Biden presidency, where is the relationship heading? After US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman’s visit to Tianjin last week, and the Wa...

Su Bingtian on Sunday did what no Chinese runner had done before, as he sprinted to secure a place in the 100m men’s final at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.The 32-year-old clocked a blistering 9.83 seconds to become the first Chinese and only Asian ru...

Indonesia’s foreign minister on Monday urged Myanmar to approve the appointment of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) special envoy and said little progress had been made on a plan to promote talks between Myanmar’s rival sides.Six...

China is launching an investigation into catastrophic floods in the central province of Henan, a disaster that provincial authorities said on Monday had claimed 302 lives, or three times the death toll reported last week.The Henan government said tha...

Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s swift countermoves, after recently coming under pressure on multiple fronts, suggest he plans to hunker down to stay in power rather than step aside to clear up the country’s pandemic-time political mor...

The United States has sent weapons experts to Taiwan in the last two years to support tests of US Patriot missiles sold to the island, according to a slip-up in an official financial report.The report released by the island’s National Audit Office ...

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 raised the No 3 typhoon signal on Tuesday afternoon as a tropical cyclone moved clos...

Indonesia’s first gold medallists at the Tokyo Olympics, badminton champions Greysia Polii and Apriyani Rahayu, can expect to be handsomely rewarded for uplifting a nation battered by the Covid-19 pandemic.Greysia and Apriyani won their women’s d...

China’s semiconductor industry expansion efforts may raise the risks of overcapacity and investment inefficiency, hurting the country’s goal to become self-sufficient in this hi-tech field, according to a report from credit rating agency Moody’...

Tokyo is experiencing a record surge in Covid-19 cases during the Olympic Games as the more infectious Delta variant rips through Japan, though contagion among those linked to the event appears to be relatively contained so far.To date, organisers ha...