The Olympic flame will once again be lit in an empty stadium as it starts its truncated journey to Beijing for the Winter Games in February.Like the ceremony in March 2020 to light the flame for Tokyo – and like those Games, which were put back a y...

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has denied allegations a staffer may have inappropriately used parliamentary resources to help plan her wedding to fiancé Clarke Gayford.A spokesman for the prime minister said no parliamentary time or r...

Indian mountaineers Tashi and Nungshi Malik are only 30 years old, yet they have already been on more adventures than most people will in their entire lives.The “Everest Twins”, as they are known, were the first siblings and twins to climb the Se...

With China’s working environment becoming increasingly stressful and competitive, Zheng Lizhu’s career ambitions as a designer shifted dramatically earlier this year.“The competition and anxiety in the design industry made my toes curl,” Zhen...

Cross-strait tensions could spur efforts in Beijing to use legislation to target independence-seeking politicians in Taiwan, according to mainland observers.While there is no timetable for the legislation, Beijing said last year that it was drawing u...

For doctoral candidate Kezia Dewi, studying the history of Indonesia’s Chinese settlements is more than just of personal interest, being one of the country’s roughly 3 million ethnic Chinese. Such academic research is also rare, because many see ...

The University of Tennessee at Knoxville has offered to reinstate a professor who was acquitted of federal charges that had accused him of hiding his relationship with a Chinese university while receiving Nasa research grants, a letter obtained by th...

French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday condemned as “inexcusable” a deadly crackdown by Paris police on a 1961 protest by Algerians, the scale of which was covered up for decades, disappointing activists who hoped for an even stronger recog...

A family of 12, including a nine-year-old boy, were rescued in the waters off Hong Kong’s Tai Po district on Saturday night after the speed boat they were taking to dinner capsized.Police said they received a rescue call at about 10pm that the eigh...

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Sunday sent a ritual offering to Yasukuni, a Shinto shrine in Tokyo viewed as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism by its Asian neighbours.The “masakaki” tree offering was made under his name as prime min...

Young Chinese are increasingly reluctant to get married, according to a new survey – a trend that threatens to make the country’s dire demographic prospects even worse.Despite the traditional importance attached to marriage in Chinese culture, th...

An expatriate who returned to Hong Kong from overseas last month has accused a local hospital of putting her through a lengthy ordeal after she fell ill with appendicitis during her 21-day hotel quarantine.Alex*, 30, who has worked in the city’s ar...

Eleven-year-old Eddie Peng Bo-tao knocks on his neighbours’ door every time he prepares to practise the flute at his tiny Hong Kong home.“If no one responds, I’ll play the flute immediately. If my neighbours are at home, I have to keep it at a ...

China faces increasingly serious challenges at its land and sea borders on almost every side and must urgently reinforce its defences in these regions, according to a Chinese military researcher.The assessment from Ouyang Wei, a retired professor wit...

As he observes the twisted remains of three nuclear reactors and row upon row of steel tanks holding an estimated 1.25 million tons of highly radioactive water at the Fukushima nuclear plant on Sunday October 17, Japan’s new leader will be conflict...

Venezuela’s government said on Saturday it would halt negotiations with its opponents in retaliation for the extradition to the US of a close ally of President Nicolas Maduro who prosecutors believe could be the most significant witness ever about ...

New York real estate heir Robert Durst, who days ago was sentenced in a two-decade-old murder case, has been hospitalised after contracting Covid-19, his lawyer said on Saturday,Defence lawyer Dick DeGuerin said he was notified that Durst was admitte...

The Taliban will announce a framework that allows girls to attend school in Afghanistan “soon,” a senior United Nations official said, after four weeks in which Afghan boys have been allowed a secondary education but girls have not.“The de fact...

Russian authorities said on Saturday they had arrested two people as part of an investigation into the death of 18 people in the Urals who drank bootleg alcohol, in the second such incident in recent weeks.Investigators said “several individuals so...

Framed by the Capitol, President Joe Biden paid tribute on Saturday to fallen law enforcement officers and honoured those who fought off the January 6 insurrection at that very site by declaring “because of you, democracy survived.”Biden spoke at...

British former health secretary Matt Hancock said the United Nations had written to him to explain that a technicality in its rules meant it could not offer him a special representative role as planned.The former health secretary had been due to take...

Hillary Clinton returned on Saturday morning to the Southern California hospital where Bill Clinton is recovering after being treated for an infection.The former president is doing fine and will be released soon from the University of California Irvi...

When Vaclav Havel nearly died of a ruptured intestine as Czech president in 1998, doctors provided daily updates on his condition.Nearly a quarter of a century later, a Czech president is again in hospital but the public has not been told what is wro...

The attacker who fatally stabbed British politician David Amess was referred to an official counterterrorist scheme for those thought to be at risk of radicalisation, according to media reports.Police said late on Saturday that detectives had until F...

Three people have been arrested in southern Italy’s Calabria, the heartland of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia, after the discovery of a stash of dormice, a favourite mob food, the Repubblica daily said on Saturday.The ‘Ndrangheta serve dormice, a protec...

The damage to a US nuclear attack submarine which collided with a mystery object in the South China Sea earlier this month has raised concerns about their operational safety, as well as what happens to damaged and decommissioned nuclear reactors.Defe...

An Iranian appeal court has upheld a verdict sentencing an Iranian-British woman long held in Tehran to another year in prison, her lawyer said on Saturday.Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has already served a five-year prison sentence in the Islamic Republ...

An archaeology team has restored the original look of a 2,800-year-old chariot that may have been one of the most expensive vehicles built in the ancient world.The three-metre (10ft) wide chariot dates back to around 800BC, the time of the Western Zh...

France paid tribute to schoolteacher Samuel Paty on Saturday, one year after he was beheaded by an extremist after showing his class cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed.Paty, 47, was stabbed and then decapitated after leaving the middle school wh...

A former Hong Kong assistant police commissioner was injured early Saturday morning when he was robbed by two men in Tsim Sha Tsui.A police spokesman said officers found the 64-year-old victim – identified by sources as retired assistant police com...

Hong Kong authorities are considering putting down wild boars that stray into built-up areas, but animal advocacy groups are pushing back against the idea and want more resources put into alternative control methods.There were 562 boar sightings and ...

Nasa launched a first-of-its kind mission on Saturday to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, two large clusters of space rocks that scientists believe are remnants of primordial material that formed the solar system’s outer planets billions of year...

A weekend property sale got off to a slow start in Hong Kong, as homebuyers balked at flats offered by lesser known developers in a market where thousands of new flats are waiting to launch this year.Centralcon Properties, a local developer, managed ...

The rate of ageing in China has accelerated significantly over the past decade with the problem most pronounced in rural areas, according to a new government report.The problem is likely to be the one of the most serious crises facing China as demogr...

China said Singapore “welcomes and supports” its bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) following a phone call between the two nations’ leaders.The Chinese foreign ministry said Prime Minis...

Hong Kong’s sole delegate to China’s top legislative body has been barred from attending a meeting in the capital next week by mainland Chinese health authorities citing the risk of infection posed by a single, untraceable case of Covid-19 found ...

Myanmar’s ruling junta on Saturday slammed Asean for its unprecedented decision to sideline the military chief Min Aung Hlaing from an upcoming regional summit, saying the move would “greatly affect” unity in the 10-nation bloc.While analysts h...

Across much of the world, a recovery in air travel is finally under way. International airlines are readying their crews and planes and preparing to take advantage of an expected boom in demand as countries learn to live with Covid-19.Except for larg...

The number of applicants for usually coveted administrative officer posts in the Hong Kong government has dropped by 30 per cent from a year ago because of drastic political changes as a result of Beijing’s bottom line that only those deemed “pat...

Singapore’s energy regulator said on Saturday that it is working closely with retailers facing challenges from current volatile electricity prices and said there will be no disruption to their customers’ electricity supply.Singapore’s wholesale...

Many private English teachers who remain in China are keeping a low profile amid China’s ongoing crackdown on off-campus education, and a number of private institutions remain stuck in an operational quagmire – saying they are unable to refund cu...

Elderly Hong Kong residents seeking to get vaccinated for Covid-19 will soon only need to pick up the phone and a coach will drive them to an inoculation centre, a senior official has said.Mobile vaccination vehicles will also begin visiting local ho...

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s recent description of the island and the Chinese mainland as two unrelated entities – highly provocative to Beijing – could be a big booster for her pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party to retain powe...

An Apple employee who led fellow workers in publicly sharing instances of what they called harassment and discrimination at the company said on Thursday that she had been fired.Janneke Parrish, an Apple programme manager, said the iPhone maker inform...

The UN Security Council voted unanimously on Friday evening to extend the United Nations’ political mission in Haiti after a dispute between China and many other members that stressed the importance of the long-term presence of the United Nations i...

Hong Kong prosecutors on Saturday called for a psychiatric assessment of a 31-year-old man charged with murdering a taxi driver, as he appeared in court for the first time since his dramatic arrest three days ago.Matthew Choi’s complaints of being ...

Three people were killed and another seven were injured when a moderately strong earthquake and an aftershock hit Indonesia’s resort island of Bali early Saturday.The quake hit just before dawn, causing people to run outdoors in a panic. It struck ...

Asian nations are slowly opening up their borders, giving vaccinated travellers the chance to again explore the region, Europe and the United States. But should one travel? If so, where to, and is it safe? This Week in Asia answers some of your basic...

Former Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying has urged local and mainland Chinese businesses to boycott an American law firm which has reportedly stopped representing the University of Hong Kong after it ordered the removal of a sculpture commemo...

Australian police said on Saturday they seized the largest heroin shipment ever detected in the country, worth an estimated A$140 million (US$104 million), and arrested a Malaysian national over the importation of the illicit drug.The 450-kg shipment...