Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday bash is going to be spectacular. It will be spread over three weeks, involve 50 million “thank you” postcards, and have Modi’s image splashed on hoardings, food rations for the poor, and buildings all o...

Hong Kong’s unemployment rate has reached its lowest level since the coronavirus pandemic began, with the local economy buoyed by the government’s multibillion-dollar e-voucher scheme.Figures from the Census and Statistics Department released on ...

Kei Komuro, the partner of Japan’s Princess Mako, plans to soon return to Japan from the United States to prepare for their marriage, sources familiar with the situation said on Thursday, despite public unease over a money dispute involving his mot...

A suspected Hong Kong triad member critically injured in a knife attack slammed his car into four other vehicles as he attempted to navigate the more than 2km to a hospital in the early hours of Thursday.The 30-year-old man, believed to be part of th...

Trading restrictions were placed on nine onshore bonds sold by China Evergrande Group’s flagship property unit, after a local credit rating agency slashed the debts’ creditworthiness, deepening the woes for the world’s most indebted real estate...

India’s hottest chilli, the bhut jolokia, is 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce and can induce breathing difficulties in diners. In 2007, it was declared the spiciest chilli in the world, a title it held for four years. In July it was exported to ...

The Online Citizen, one of Singapore’s oldest independent political news websites, went offline on Thursday, hours ahead of a government-imposed deadline for it to suspend operations for failing to fully declare its funding sources after a long dis...

A man with a physics doctorate who tried to call for medical attention for a Hong Kong protester shot by police during the civil unrest in 2019 has admitted taking part in an unlawful assembly.Yau Wang-tat, who obtained a PhD in applied physics at Po...

President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that dozens of people in his inner circle at the Kremlin had tested positive for coronavirus, which has affected over seven million people in the badly-hit country.Earlier this week, the 68-year-old Putin said h...

Japan’s largest military drill in nearly 30 years is primarily an exercise in transporting heavy weapons and materiel to the country’s southwest, regarded as the most likely site of a clash with a neighbouring nation, in what analysts say is a mu...

Indonesia is in talks with the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as six drug companies to become a global hub for manufacturing vaccines, it revealed on Thursday.Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said Indonesia would kick-start the initiative...

China’s top cyberspace watchdog has ordered internet platforms to weed out and censor “unhealthy” content in its latest squeeze on Big Tech.Guidelines issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) on Wednesday emphasised that online pl...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing.Hail was seen in Hong Kong for the first time in five years on Thursday, as severe thunderstorms expected to l...

Seven commuters were injured when a Hong Kong ferry carrying 212 passengers and crew slammed into a public pier on Thursday.The Sea Spirit, a catamaran operated by Hong Kong and Kowloon Ferry Limited, rammed into a pillar of Central Public Pier 6 as ...

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will not cooperate with the International Criminal Court’s probe into the country’s “war on drugs”, his lawyer said on Thursday, insisting the tribunal does not have jurisdiction in the country.ICC judges ...

More Hong Kong pupils will be able to go back to school after education authorities on Thursday adopted new guidance on Covid-19 jabs.The government’s scientific advisers recommended on Wednesday that adolescents take just one dose of coronaviru...

The top United States military officer on Wednesday defended phone calls he made to his Chinese counterpart in the turbulent final months of Donald Trump’s presidency, saying the conversations were intended to convey “reassurance” to the Chines...

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday extended an “open invitation” for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, after announcing a series of hi-tech military purchases spurred by Beijing’s growing strength and joining a new a...

France is frustrated at being left out of a new security alliance between the United States, Britain and Australia, describing it as a regrettable move that will push Europe to be more autonomous in its strategic planning.The “Aukus” alliance ann...

A Chinese firm has been given a contract to help build a Russian floating nuclear power plant in the first commission of its kind as the two countries step up their cooperation in the sector.China’s Wison (Nantong) Heavy Industries Co won a bid to ...

Dr Anthony Fauci has debunked Nicki Minaj’s controversial comments about the Covid-19 vaccine.The United States’ authority on infectious diseases is the latest medical expert to call out “misinformation” found in the hip hop star’s public r...

TikTok’s lead data privacy regulator in the European Union has opened two inquiries into the Chinese-owned short-video platform related to the processing of children’s personal data and transfers of personal data to China.Ireland’s Data Protect...

Roughly one out of every seven young urban workers in China remains unemployed, as Beijing’s regulatory crackdowns on key industries are adding further pressure on the nation’s weak jobs sector amid more signs of a broad economic slowdown, accord...

France’s president announced the death of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara’s leader, calling Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi’s killing “a major success” for the French military after more than eight years fighting extremists in the Sahel.Fren...

Three people are dead and 59 injured after a magnitude 6 earthquake shook Lu county in China’s southwestern province of Sichuan at 4.33am on Thursday, according to the China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC). The local authorities said 6,904 reside...

Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed Liz Truss as foreign minister on Wednesday, only the second woman to hold the position in Britain.The daughter of a left-wing professor and a nurse, Truss was a member of the centrist Liberal Democrats at univer...

Covid-19 infections in China’s southeastern province of Fujian have topped 200 as 48 new cases were added to a rapidly expanding outbreak of the Delta variant on Wednesday.The latest cases were spread across three coastal cities which have been the...

EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit research group based in New York that studies the spread of viruses from animals to humans, has been the subject of intense scrutiny since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.Much of this has been due to its long-...

The turmoil in Afghanistan could improve Iran’s prospects of joining a China-backed security grouping but international sanctions on Tehran could mean continued caution from Beijing, according to observers.Iran has failed in its repeated efforts to...

Citibank sold a shop in Hong Kong’s Central business district at a profit of HK$320 million (US$41.1 million) last month, according to Land Registry records.The shop, Unit A on the ground floor of Wheelock House, was acquired by Shiny Profit Limite...

The conventional wisdom is that the Hong Kong people have been totally disenfranchised in their own city and the wealthy elite from Beijing are in control. But a closer look tells a very different story.For a start, it’s certainly not the case that...

SpaceX’s first private flight blasted off Wednesday night with two contest winners, a health care worker and their rich sponsor, the most ambitious leap yet in space tourism.It was the first time a rocket streaked toward orbit with an all-amateur c...

In the second of our three-part series on the Election Committee polls this Sunday, the Post looks at the near-total wipeout of opposition members in the powerful body, portending the future of the legislative elections. Read part one here.Tiny Macau...

The state of Utah did not do enough to make sure a remote highway was safe before a tour bus crashed, killing four people from China and injuring two dozen more in 2019, family and survivors said in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday.The lawsuit alleges stat...

The missiles fired by North Korea on Wednesday were a test of a new “railway-borne missile system” designed as a potential counter-strike to any forces that threaten the country, state news agency KCNA reported on Thursday.The missiles flew 800km...

China has ordered its companies that broke laws and environmental standards in the Democratic Republic of Congo to cease operating and leave the country – at a time when the African nation’s government is aiming to renegotiate “infrastructure f...

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding is doubling down and escalating its community group buying operations through a new brand called Taocaicai, as competition in this growing retail market segment intensifies amid Beijing’s tightened reg...

The US, Britain and Australia have forged a “historic” security alliance to strengthen military capabilities in the Pacific, allowing them to share advanced defence technologies and giving Australian forces nuclear submarine technology. The move,...

North Korea’s second round of missile launches in several days has brought into sharp relief the limited policy options for reining in weapons programmes that are considered among the region’s most pressing security concerns.Pyongyang on Wednesda...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Lara Seligman and Daniel Lippman on politico.com on September 15, 2021.Claims in an upcoming book that a frantic Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley m...

Friction between pragmatists and ideologues in the Taliban leadership has intensified since the group formed a hard-line cabinet last week that is more in line with their harsh rule in the 1990s than their recent promises of inclusiveness, said two A...

There is something rotten in Denmark. Well, in the US. Let’s leave the Danes out of this. What’s wrong? The 45th president of the United States was banished from the internet by Twitter. Even Senator Bernie Sanders, no supporter of Donald Trump, ...

Star Olympic gymnast Simone Biles denounced the FBI for turning “a blind eye” to the sexual abuse she and other young athletes suffered at the hands of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar in emotionally powerful testimony before a Senate pa...

The key defendant in the 2015 Paris attacks trial said on Wednesday the coordinated killings were in retaliation for French air strikes on the Islamic State group, calling the deaths of 130 innocent people “nothing personal” as he acknowledged hi...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday appointed a new-look cabinet to revamp his Brexiteer government after controversies over Covid-19, Afghanistan and taxes, demoting his under-fire foreign secretary.Dominic Raab was moved to the lesser...

As families worldwide send their children back to school, one region stands out regarding the mood of both students and parents. Families in East Asia face the new academic year with more calm and less fear about the pandemic disrupting education tha...

The European Union will move forward with a ban on forced labour products, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen confirmed on Wednesday, a move widely seen as being directed at China.Speaking at her second annual state-of-the-union addre...

President Xi Jinping officially opened the National Games of China in the northwestern city of Xian, in a key test of the country’s Covid-19 defences in the countdown to next year’s Winter Olympics in Beijing.A colourful opening ceremony on Wedne...

International Criminal Court judges on Wednesday authorised an investigation into the Philippines’ deadly “war on drugs” campaign, saying the crackdown “cannot be seen as a legitimate law enforcement operation”.The court’s former prosecut...

Ahead of a virtual leaders meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on Thursday, Russia and India appear poised to set aside their differences on Afghanistan and cooperate to safeguard the region’s stability and security.The potential...