Beijing held a military drill targeting Taiwan and described the United States as the “biggest troublemaker” in the region as a US destroyer sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Friday in the ninth such passage by American warships this year. The ...

Hong Kong firms in Shenzhen’s expanding Qianhai economic zone will soon find it easier to settle various company matters without having to cross the border, but opening a mainland Chinese bank account remains challenging, according to a top officia...

It took five years for Minhaz Mannan to see justice for his brother Xulhaz after Islamist extremists hacked him to death with a machete. Xulhaz was the co-founder and publisher of Bangladesh’s first LGBT magazine, Roopbaan. He and his associate Ma...

China has urged Brazil to ensure there is no repeat of an incident in which a man threw an explosive device at its consulate general in Rio de Janeiro.The device damaged the premises but no one was injured in Thursday evening’s attack, the consulat...

Two women are in contention to become prime minister of Japan for the first time in its history – a potential turning point for a country that ranks below Saudi Arabia in terms of female political representation.Victory for either Seiko Noda and Sa...

The Covid-19 outbreak in China’s southeastern province of Fujian showed signs of slowing on Friday, with daily infections recording the smallest growth since cases started emerging last week.Thirty-one Covid-19 cases were reported on Friday, includ...

An influential Chinese military magazine has said that the Chengdu J-20 is likely to appear in more training exercises – but analysts say its inferior engine and the air force’s lack of strategic transporters will limit the country’s ambitions....

Hong Kong’s welfare chief has admitted that there will inevitably be some “hiccups” when what is effectively an 800-room hotel at a government-run quarantine centre opens its doors next week to foreign domestic helpers arriving in the city.Citi...

Firefighters battling to protect the world’s biggest tree from wildfires ravaging the parched United States said on Friday they are optimistic it can be saved.Flames are creeping closer to the majestic General Sherman and other giant sequoias, as m...

Hong Kong police will deploy between 5,000 and 6,000 officers on Sunday to ensure the first Election Committee polls since Beijing’s drastic overhaul of the local electoral system will proceed without a hitch, the force’s commissioner has reveale...

Frozen meat distributor Allen Chiu Hoi-lun fears his stocks of United States Angus beef could dry up by November as Hongkongers seek out hotpot meals in the cooler weather.Prices have been soaring to levels he has not seen in 30 years and he is worri...

Singapore’s primary schools will shift to home-based learning for 10 days ahead of a key national examination, the education ministry said on Saturday, as the city state reported 935 new Covid-19 cases the previous day, the highest since April last...

Australia said it would not be willing to negotiate China’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) unless Beijing removes retaliatory tariffs on Australian goods, as other member countr...

Scientists have created a robot fish that swims using a low-cost artificial muscle that could one-day be used to develop prosthetic limbs.The researchers, from the University of Science and Technology of China, hope that the technique – which uses ...

American Samoa, a US territory in the Pacific, reported its first case of coronavirus on Friday.The territory’s acting governor, lieutenant governor Talauega Eleasalo Ale, and health officials said the islands’ first case of Covid-19 was in a res...

Sunday’s Election Committee polls will be very different to the previous five trips to the ballot box in Hong Kong since the city’s return to Chinese sovereignty.Under Beijing’s overhaul of the Hong Kong electoral system aimed at ensuring only ...

Australia said on Saturday it regrets France’s decision to recall its ambassador to Canberra over the AUKUS security deal made with Washington and London, but it values its relationship with the western European nation and will keep engaging with P...

Running on the western bank of the Xi River in Foshan city in southern China’s Greater Bay Area, a revolution in transport is quietly under way, one that the Chinese government hopes will slash kerbside pollution and pave the way for public transpo...

As one of China’s army of grannies who dance en masse in public places, 60-year-old Hou Linghua never expected to become a competitor at the country’s top all-round sporting event.It was even a bigger surprise that her 36-member dancing troupe, a...

Scientists who analysed 9,000-year-old pottery discovered in eastern China said our ancient ancestors might have enjoyed a fresh pint as much as the next person.An analysis of ancient pots and cups found in Qiaotou, Zhejiang province, showed that the...

Former Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who fought for independence from France in the 1950s and 1960s and was ousted amid pro-democracy protests in 2019 after 20 years in power, has died at age 84, state television announced on Friday.The re...

South Korean mother of two Kwon Se-jin spends 1.9 million won (US$1,616) every month to put her son in a preschool where the four-year-old can pick up some English words while playing with a native speaker.“I don’t want my young boy to get stress...

The Mid-Autumn Festival will be the first chance for Chinese to take a break since the Delta variant of the coronavirus forced lockdowns and transport curbs across the country and scuppered summer travel plans.As the summer clusters have waned, enthu...

Wenda Wu’s life has been one of moving back and forth between Hong Kong and Australia, and having to decide where to settle for good.She was 11 when her family emigrated to Sydney in 1988. She noticed that the people looked different and spoke a di...

A California jury on Friday found multimillionaire real estate heir Robert Durst guilty of murdering his best friend Susan Berman in 2000, the first homicide conviction for a man suspected of killing three people in three states over the past 39 year...

Haitians made up most of the over 10,000 migrants sleeping on the ground and desperate for food in a squalid camp under a bridge in southern Texas on Friday, in a growing humanitarian and political challenge for US President Joe Biden.The Haitians we...

A group of scientists have urged more research on the controversial theory that the coronavirus leaked from a laboratory, issuing the call in a letter in the medical journal The Lancet on Friday.The letter was signed by 16 virologists, biologists and...

The whitest paint in the world has been created in a lab at Purdue University in the US, a paint so white that it could eventually reduce or even eliminate the need for air conditioning, scientists say.The paint has now made it into the Guinness Worl...

France recalled its ambassadors from the United States and Australia on Friday, a stunning development in the deepening fallout over Washington’s new security alliance with Canberra and London.Announced on Wednesday, the new pact, known as “Aukus...

A panel of expert outside advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration voted against broadly approving Covid-19 vaccine booster shots on Friday, instead recommending emergency use authorisation for the narrower group of older or high-risk patients...

China has denied its long-awaited application to join a mega Pacific Rim trade pact was timed to counter the “Aukus” security pact between the US, Britain and Australia, reaffirming its intentions to promote economic cooperation while slamming th...

The Pentagon retreated from its defence of a drone strike that killed multiple civilians in Afghanistan last month, announcing Friday that a review revealed that only civilians were killed in the attack, not an Islamic State extremist as first believ...

The Dutch defence minister on Friday became the second cabinet member to resign over the Afghan evacuation debacle as the widening scandal claims a growing number of Western political scalps.Ank Bijleveld followed foreign minister Sigrid Kaag out of ...

Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google removed a protest-voting app from their Russian stores on Friday as parliamentary elections got under way, a move that pleased the Kremlin but drew swift anger from Washington and opposition activists.The US te...

The world’s first female chess grandmaster, Nona Gaprindashvili, has filed a US$5 million defamation lawsuit against Netflix over a line in its The Queen’s Gambit series which her lawyers say is false and sexist.The 80-year old Soviet chess icon,...

The top US military officer said on Friday that calls he made to his Chinese counterpart in the final stormy months of Donald Trump’s presidency were “perfectly within the duties and responsibilities” of his job.In his first public comments on ...

With Hong Kong’s most influential opposition trade union winding up, a government minister has said his top priority is minimising the impact on some 1,000 people enrolled in training courses currently provided by the group.Secretary for Labour and...

The US government on Friday sanctioned several Hong Kong-based companies and individuals based in China as part of Washington’s ongoing efforts to disrupt alleged terrorist activity related to Iran.The seven entities include PCA Xiang Gang Limited,...

Amazon.com said on Friday that it has closed about 3,000 online merchant accounts, backed by about 600 Chinese brands, on its popular platform, as the world’s largest e-commerce company ratchets up its crackdown on consumer review abuses.The compan...

China should forge stronger ties with Europe and other economies to offset the impact of a US-led international order, according to an independent Chinese intelligence analyst.In a paper in this month’s Journal of Intelligence, Zhao Bingfeng, head ...

A think tank founded by a former Hong Kong leader has launched an online educational channel aiming to promote national identity among young people, featuring controversial topics such as Xinjiang cotton and the national security law.The online chann...

Several top advisers to Hong Kong’s leader have joined a study examining how people fully inoculated against Covid-19 respond to a third dose.The antibody levels in some participants were almost non-existent more than half a year after they receive...

Chinese President Xi Jinping called on countries around the world to oppose “hegemony and division”, a day after the United States launched a security alliance seen as countering Beijing.In a virtual address to a regional security summit in Dusha...

Hong Kong officials need to establish new links with their counterparts in neighbouring Shenzhen as part of the Qianhai economic zone’s mammoth expansion, pro-establishment politicians have said, after Macau launched a new committee to co-develop a...

Didi Chuxing’s ride-hailing orders in August fell 21.1 per cent from the previous month, a steeper decline than the industry’s overall 17.2 per cent decrease in the same period, indicating that local rivals may be chipping away at the company’s...

China has lobbied Russia, Iran and Pakistan to take a unified stance on Afghanistan, focusing on holding the United States accountable for the chaos in the war-torn nation and stemming security threats to neighbouring countries.In meetings on Friday ...

A leading Chinese-cuisine chef who spent his career in Hong Kong and Singapore has died, days after the fine-dining restaurant whose kitchen he headed won its first Michelin star. Mok Kit-keung was 58.Mok, a married father of three, died suddenly on ...

China’s new guidelines for building a “cyberspace civilisation” likely indicate more campaigns cracking down on online information in the months ahead of next year’s 20th party congress, experts say.Internet platform operators such as WeChat ...

WeChat, the ubiquitous social media platform operated by Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings, on Friday started to allow links to its rivals to be shared in one-to-one chats to comply with Beijing’s new requirements on Big Tech to unblock links...

Chinese eyes were on the skies this week, with the safe return of its three astronauts after 90 days on board the Tiangong space station on Friday, and a tour on Wednesday of the PLA’s primary satellite control facility by President Xi Jinping, who...