Singapore has granted licences to the brokerage arm of DBS Bank Ltd and Australian cryptocurrency exchange Independent Reserve to offer digital payment token services, building on the city state’s status as a crypto hub.DBS Vickers received formal ...

First the tourists stayed away. Then the coronavirus pandemic dragged on and on. In desperate times, the owners of one Hong Kong hotel decided drastic changes were needed.Veteran hotel general manager Rain Yim could not believe her ears when her boss...

Australia has recognised vaccines made by Sinovac and AstraZeneca, paving the way for overseas travellers and fee-paying foreign students who have received those vaccinations to enter the country.The nation’s top drugs regulator, the Therapeutic Go...

A French senate delegation will visit Taiwan next week despite repeated objections from Beijing, including warnings by the Chinese ambassador to France that the trip would “needlessly disrupt” relations between their countries.Chinese foreign min...

China Reinsurance (Group) issued a US$30 million catastrophe bond in Hong Kong on Friday to pay for future claims resulting from typhoon damage in the Greater Bay Area and other parts of the country, according to a company announcement.The bond issue...

Beijing has named Alken Tuniaz acting chairman of Xinjiang province in northwest China, replacing Shohrat Zakir who is stepping down at age 68.Tuniaz, 59, was one of Zakir’s deputies and his new appointment was confirmed by the Xinjiang People’s ...

As Australian beef exports to China wither amid diplomatic tensions, demand for US grain-fed beef has soared, fuelled by the appetites of a growing Chinese middle class.Hotpot restaurants, Japanese barbecue chains and steakhouses – all expanding in...

Japan’s Princess Mako will marry her boyfriend Kei Komuro on October 26, the Imperial Household Agency said on Friday after their wedding was postponed for nearly three years following a financial dispute involving his mother.The agency said the pr...

Hong Kong officials have defended a plan to begin automatically scheduling residents of care homes for Covid-19 jabs, rejecting criticism that the government is unfairly piling pressure on the elderly to get vaccinated.Secretary for the Civil Service...

A long-planned round of Australia-EU free-trade talks have been postponed, a European official confirmed on Friday, after fury over Canberra’s decision to cancel a major French submarine contract.“The FTA trade round has been postponed for a mont...

The Pentagon plans to rely on air strikes to prevent a resurgence of al-Qaeda now that US troops have left Afghanistan, but experts and some lawmakers are sceptical about the effectiveness of the so-called “over-the-horizon” strategy.Announcing t...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has sent China a congratulatory message on its National Day, in the latest sign of the two powers trying to ease tensions.“On behalf of the United States of America, I would like to extend our congratulations to...

Of the many days of horror during India’s second wave of Covid-19, there is one in particular that sticks with Neeru Gupta, a maths teacher at a government school in Amritsar. Her mother had died of Covid-19 little more than a week previously, the...

Police gained control of an Ecuador prison where rioting has left at least 118 inmates dead, some of them decapitated, as rival drug gangs went to war armed with guns and grenades.Another 86 inmates were wounded, six of them critically, according to ...

Health authorities have ordered cities in China to build or convert facilities into permanent quarantine centres for overseas arrivals, as Beijing pushes ahead with its zero-tolerance policy on Covid-19.City governments have been told to move away fr...

North Korea’s expansion of nuclear and missile capabilities have encouraged conservatives in the South and Japan to support nuclear rearmament, a Seoul-based former presidential adviser has said.Moon Chung-in, head of the Sejong Institute, said tha...

This is the first in a series of stories looking at China’s Xinjiang province and how the far-western region is coping economically under a series of US sanctions over alleged human rights violations and the widespread use of forced labour.Nine mon...

Scarlett Johansson and the Walt Disney Co have settled her lawsuit over the streaming release of Black Widow, bringing a swift end to what had begun as the first major fight between a studio and star over recent changes in roll-out plans for films.Jo...

Hong Kong is finally on the “right track”, the city’s leader said as National Day celebrations kicked off on Friday, promising residents the economy and their own livelihoods stand only to benefit now that political power is firmly in the hands...

The growing number and share of older people in Asia and the Pacific, thanks to declining fertility and increasing longevity, is the result of advances in social and economic development.This demographic transition is taking place against the backdro...

First the beer and coconut shop closed, then the traditional medicine store next door.With Chinese tourists staying away from Thailand during the golden week holiday due to pandemic curbs, businesses that rely heavily on mainland customers have aband...

A woman in eastern China said she plans to sue a yoga studio after the instructor accidentally broke her thighbone, or femur, during a class.The woman, surnamed Wang, was attending her first-ever private lesson taught by a woman surnamed Li at the en...

Australia is racing ever faster toward reopening its international borders, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday announcing that bans on international travel will be lifted in November, a month ahead of schedule.The shift will allow states t...

North Korea fired a newly developed anti-aircraft missile on Thursday, state media KCNA reported on Friday, the latest in its recent series of weapons tests amid deadlocked denuclearisation talks with the United States.It was North Korea’s second k...

China’s ambassador to Belgium has been accused of trying to hinder the country’s democratic processes, after he sent a warning letter to local lawmakers who are considering punitive action over the sweeping national security law imposed on Hong K...

Ethiopia is expelling seven senior UN officials, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday, two days after the world body’s aid chief warned a government blockade of aid had likely forced hundreds of thousands of people in the northern regio...

An Indian company entered into a US$700 million deal Thursday to build a strategic deep-sea container terminal in Sri Lanka, officials said, in a move seen as countering China’s rising influence in the region.The Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) sa...

India should maintain “strategic autonomy” instead of joining any exclusive alliances against its neighbour, Beijing’s top envoy in New Delhi said, days after leaders of the Quad gathered in Washington for their first in-person summit, with Bei...

For the third time in 13 years, Venezuela on Friday will slash zeros off its inflation-battered currency, the bolivar. This time, it will shed six zeros, for a total of 14 since 2008.With that, a million bolivars will overnight become one – still t...

Latin singer Gloria Estefan has revealed that she was sexually abused at the age of nine by a music teacher who was part of her family.The Turn the Beat Around singer spoke for the first time about the abuse on an episode of Red Table Talk: The Estef...

A United States senator wrote to Microsoft and LinkedIn on Thursday demanding an explanation for the professional networking platform’s recent decision to block China-based users accessing the accounts of several US journalists.Earlier this week, L...

Canadians on Thursday commemorated a century of injustices against its Indigenous populations in the first ever National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, following shocking discoveries of hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential schools.“I...

Democratic US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi withdrew a promised vote on a US$1.2 trillion infrastructure bill late Thursday after failing to win enough support from her own lawmakers, in a stark illustration of the deep internal divisions threatening Pr...

Bipartisan US legislation aimed at eliminating Chinese telecoms infrastructure in central and eastern Europe is gaining momentum as more representatives signed on as cosponsors and a Senate version was introduced.Democratic representatives Ted Lieu o...

Beijing’s top representative in Hong Kong stressed the need to solve the city’s housing problems on Thursday as he kicked off a week-long community outreach drive by his office to “listen directly to the grass roots” on the eve of the country...

A 96-year-old German woman was caught hours after failing to turn up for her trial on Thursday on charges of aiding and abetting mass murder in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, a court spokeswoman said.Irmgard Furchner is accused of hav...

Residents of Hong Kong care homes will be automatically scheduled for Covid-19 jabs under a government plan to boost sluggish vaccination rates among the elderly.They would not receive the shots if they or their families objected, while the medically...

China’s population decline may be much faster than expected, with the number of people in the country halving within the next 45 years, a new study has warned.The projection was based on the official birth rate of 1.3 children per woman last year �...

Sun Lijun, a former Chinese vice-minister of police, has been sacked and expelled from the Communist Party, and will face trial for “serious violation of discipline rules and law”, state media reported on Thursday.“[Sun] has never had any real ...

As a power crisis continues to pummel China, its southern manufacturing hub of Guangdong province is raising electricity prices as much as 25 per cent during peak-demand hours, starting Friday.The price hike, however, applies only to industrial us...

At least 81 Primary One classes at Hong Kong public schools have been cut this academic year after a wave of emigration sapped the city’s student population, according to new official figures.A representative of local principals said he expected th...

A former Chinese diplomat tried to stop Manila from conducting a review of the defence pact between the United States and the Philippines, defence secretary Delfin Lorenzana revealed on Thursday, over concerns it could be seen in Beijing as an attemp...

The US and China need to put aside differences and work together to set new safety standards for laboratories doing virus research, said Jeffrey Sachs, chair of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission that oversees task forces to combat the coronavirus pandem...

China has hit back at US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo’s comment that Washington should work with Europe to slow China’s innovation, calling it a “typical hegemonic act”.“The comment revealed the US’ real intention to make every att...

The Lithuanian government’s recommendation that its citizens throw away Chinese smartphones, singling out devices from Xiaomi Corp for their censorship capabilities, raises a red flag for the continued business expansion of these tech companies acr...

The international organisers behind the Gay Games have expressed confidence the event will go ahead in Hong Kong in 2023 after it was postponed a year over concerns linked to Covid-19 travel restrictions.The Federation of Gay Games said on Thursday t...

President Xi Jinping led top Chinese Communist Party and state leaders on Thursday in paying tribute to those who died in the struggle to establish the People’s Republic.At 10am, Xi together with the six other members of the Politburo Standing Comm...

The United States has tested an air-breathing hypersonic weapon that flies faster than five times the speed of sound, in what military experts saw as the US recovering lost ground after China and Russia moved ahead in the field.The first successful f...

Hong Kong could ban glow sticks, festival decorations, free hotel toiletries, cotton buds and other non-essential single-use plastic items under a new proposal that opened for public consultation on Thursday.The engagement exercise will also allow re...