Hong Kong’s biggest property developers have denied coming under pressure from mainland Chinese officials to solve the city’s housing woes, following reports that Beijing is losing patience with the industry.The Real Estate Developers Association...

Parliamentarians in London have launched a new inquiry into allegations that British banks, including HSBC, helped Beijing punish pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hong Kong, which includes both unelecte...

Top diplomats from the European Union and China will hold official talks on Tuesday, sources in Brussels and Beijing said, as swirling geopolitical headwinds continue to gather pace.The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell is expected to lead talks, alo...

China’s foreign ministry on Friday issued what it described as a “criminal record” of the United States’ attempts to interfere with Hong Kong affairs and support anti-China troublemakers, cataloguing more than 100 “violations of basic norms...

Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, says the North is open to “constructive discussion” to mend fences with South Korea if Seoul drops its “hostile attitude” toward Pyongyang.Speaking on Friday, she also we...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Andy Blatchford on politico.com on September 23, 2021.Joe Biden’s choice for the next ambassador to Ottawa says the US is waiting for Justin Trudeau’s l...

The former chairman of China’s biggest liquor company, Kweichow Moutai, was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison for taking bribes, Xinhua reported.Yuan Renguo was sentenced by the Intermediate People’s Court in Guiyang, the capital of the sou...

Hong Kong scientists are urging city residents to get vaccinated before winter in the wake of a new study showing low temperatures exacerbate the severity of Covid-19.The study, led by University of Hong Kong associate professor Jasper Chan Fuk-woo a...

Japan’s major universities, including those with close ties with China, are moving to tighten background checks on foreign students seeking to study civil-military technologies, a Kyodo News survey found.Their effort to keep sensitive information f...

Scientists in China and Australia have developed a catalyst which uses urea-loaded waste water to efficiently generate clean energy, paving the way for low-cost portable fuel cells that work like batteries.Fuel cells, which have been used to power el...

CanSino Biologics’ single-dose Covid-19 vaccine, given at a lower dosage than that for adults, is safe and triggers an immune response in children aged six-17, results from a small trial showed.Researchers decided to lower the dosage after a few pa...

China’s Supreme People’s Court is seeking to strike a balance between protecting gig works and ensuring the country’s internet platforms can continue to develop and offer flexible employment, a top judge said, suggesting companies like Meituan ...

Former Hong Kong lawmaker James To Kun-sun and several others from the Democratic Party, which will decide in just two days whether to boycott December’s Legislative Council poll, were among more than 50 district councillors who swore oaths of loya...

Two Covid-19 outbreaks at opposite ends of the country are dampening hopes for the week-long National Day holiday which starts next week. There were 30 new cases recorded by the end of Thursday – 15 of them in Harbin, in the northeast province of H...

When Tan tested positive for Covid-19 last week, she was worried about being separated from her infant daughter.Thankfully, the fully vaccinated 40-year-old Singaporean qualified for the city state’s home recovery programme and has been able to rec...

China is snapping up cargoes of Australian wheat despite a bitter trade stand-off between the two countries, as crop downgrades elsewhere lead to a global shortfall in output.The buying spree comes as Australia, a key global food supplier, is expecti...

The US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 enabled women athletes to represent the country at the Olympic Games for the first time.Even so, the progress was only gradual; Afghanistan has sent 23 athletes to the Games since then, yet only four have been w...

A new battleground has opened up between Beijing and Taipei, with an escalating war of words over their separate bids to join a trans-Pacific trade pact.Beijing is calling on the 11 members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pac...

Mid-Autumn Festival is a special occasion to gift people mooncakes, but there is another seasonal food in mainland China that might be more valuable: hairy crabs.Coupons, or “paper crabs”, are used to redeem Yangcheng Lake crabs, considered the b...

The US House of Representatives select committee investigating the deadly January 6 riot at the Capitol has subpoenaed four former members of Donald Trump’s administration, including Mark Meadows and Steve Bannon.Former White House deputy chief of ...

US Vice-President Kamala Harris invoked her familial ties to India as she gently pressed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on human rights during a history-making meeting on Thursday between America’s first vice-president of Indian descent and th...

The White House is pressing carmakers, chip companies and others to cooperate in a bid for more information about the ongoing semiconductor crisis that has forced cuts to US auto production, but made clear on Thursday that the industry needs to take ...

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Thursday the Biden administration will take further action against Chinese telecoms firm Huawei Technologies if necessary, after some Republican lawmakers pressed for more steps.Washington says Huawei is a ...

Not many people can expect to receive a personalised flower basket from one of the most powerful people in the world, but for Nobel laureate physicist Yang Zhenning, a happy birthday greeting from Chinese President Xi Jinping comes with the territory...

Following the 1997 handover, Hong Kong filmmakers censored their work to secure funding and mainland Chinese distribution, but independent films for the local market were still free to broach politically sensitive subjects.Not any more. The national ...

On the day Hanoi re-emerged from coronavirus lockdown, Tran Khanh Thien went out for a ride. After nearly two months of movement restrictions, the Vietnamese capital’s streets were once again lined with parked cars and filled with the noise of roar...

A 3,500-year-old tablet recounting the epic of Gilgamesh was returned to Iraq Thursday after being stolen three decades ago and illegally imported to the United States.Iraqi Cultural Minister Hassan Nazim accepted the tablet during a ceremony in Wash...

A top Chinese security official has told law enforcement officers to make use of hi-tech tools like big data and artificial intelligence at a time of rising uncertainties at home and abroad.Chen Yixin, secretary general of the Central Political and L...

Federal officials say the fiancé of Gabrielle “Gabby” Petito, whose body was found at a national park in Wyoming after a cross country trip with him, has been indicted for unauthorised use of a debit card as searchers continued looking for him i...

The leaders of a new military alliance that the Chinese government has lashed out against in recent months are gathering in Washington and, analysts say, Beijing’s reactions may be undermining its own interests by pushing the Quad into closer milit...

A shooting at a Tennessee grocery store left one person dead and 12 others injured on Thursday afternoon, and the shooter was subsequently found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at the store in an upscale suburb of Memphis, authoritie...

The trade war between the United States and China failed to prompt American businesses to leave the Chinese market, with costs from tariffs instead passed along to consumers, new research found.In a paper published on the preprint platform SSRN this ...

James Bond actor Daniel Craig has been made an honorary commander in Britain’s Royal Navy, matching the rank of the fictional superspy he plays on screen, the service announced on Thursday.The honour comes as Craig, 53, makes his final outing as Bo...

The US Border Patrol halted using horses in migrant operations around Del Rio, Texas, the White House said on Thursday, after embarrassing photographs suggested mistreatment of Haitian border-crossers.Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas �...

Former supermodel Linda Evangelista says she has been permanently disfigured by a fat-reduction cosmetic procedure that backfired and caused her to look bloated and unrecognisable.Evangelista, 56, said she underwent “CoolSculpting” five years ago...

One of the founders of the Taliban and the chief enforcer of its harsh interpretation of Islamic law when they last ruled Afghanistan said the hard-line movement will once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in pub...

As many as 24 mainland Chinese warplanes entered Taiwan’s air defence identification zone on Thursday.The warplanes – including 18 fighter jets, two bombers, two anti-submarine aircraft, a transport and an electronic warfare plane – entered the...

A core member of the group behind Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen Square vigil has openly objected to calls by two other leaders to disband, saying the move will mean it loses its voice irreversibly.Chow Hang-tung, vice-chairwoman of the Hong Kong All...

This is the second in a two-part series on the China policies of the leading candidates to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel. Here, Finbarr Bermingham looks at looks at the China policies of the potential coalition kingmakers, the Greens and Free Demo...

Residents should be confident Hong Kong is on the path to success with the principle of “patriots” holding office now firmly in place and the city enjoying strong support from the central government, acting leader Paul Chan Mo-po said on Thursday...

The US envoy to Haiti dramatically resigned on Thursday in a letter that excoriated Washington for deporting hundreds of migrants to the crisis-engulfed Caribbean nation from a border camp in recent days.The resignation was confirmed by a senior offi...

The US Air Force sent two supersized airlifters to a base in western Tokyo for a week of maintenance training as the American military seeks to spread risk from a possible conflict over Taiwan, according to a defence analyst.US military newspaper Sta...

China’s cybersecurity review of ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing shows no sign of concluding any time soon, as the widely followed investigation closes in on the 60-day mark and the company’s business starts to slow down.Didi incurred the ire of r...

Beijing has expanded its top office overseeing Hong Kong affairs by appointing two veterans to head the newly established security affairs and propaganda departments, in a bid to better communicate its policies on the city, especially regarding the n...

Next month’s United Nations environment conference in southwest China will include a declaration on building a global ecological civilisation and preserving biodiversity, according to a government official.“The Kunming Declaration will be one of ...

It was “highly probable” Covid-19 started to spread in the United States in September 2019, a group of Chinese scientists said in a new paper published on the preprint platform of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.In the paper, which has not been p...

Hong Kong crypto finance firm Amber Group is considering a direct listing in the US within the next two years, as the firm rapidly expands amid increasing cryptocurrency adoption worldwide, according to co-founder and CEO Michael Wu.A direct listing ...