The number of seriously ill Covid-19 patients in Singapore has risen to such an extent that there are only 60 empty beds left in intensive care units.The overall ICU utilisation rate stood at 83.6 per cent as of Monday, the city state’s health mini...

Nine years after she first met commoner Kei Komuro at university, Japan’s former princess Mako was finally able to formalise her union to him in a marriage on Tuesday that was marked by zero pomp, much public criticism and a press conference.In a 1...

A labour dispute at a construction site led to more than 30 workers blocking a busy road for more than half an hour near a Hong Kong public hospital on Tuesday.Officers including personnel from the Police Tactical Unit – usually deployed for crowd ...

Protesters were defiant on the streets of Sudan on Tuesday demonstrating against a military coup, as international condemnation of the country’s security forces ramped up with the UN Security Council expected to meet later.“Returning to the past ...

New Oriental Education, the largest provider of private educational services in China, announced on Monday night it would stop providing extracurricular classes for kindergarten, primary and junior secondary school students by the end of November.The...

In September 2019, three months before the world first learned of a new virus that would spark a global pandemic, a health watchdog released a report painting a dire picture of a planet at risk of a crisis.There was a “very real threat” of a rapi...

Hong Kong police have launched a citywide manhunt for three men who leapt from a BMW and escaped on foot following a high-speed 3km chase in the New Territories in the early hours of Tuesday.Officers managed to arrest a fourth man, 26, after the vehi...

Former South Korean President Roh Tae-woo, who took part in a military coup then won the election that was the country’s first move toward democracy before he was imprisoned for corruption, died on Tuesday. He was 88.The Seoul National University H...

No organisation should be worried about the national security law if they are operating legally in Hong Kong, the city’s leader has said after Amnesty International cited the legislation in revealing plans to shut its local offices.The human rights...

Japan’s Princess Mako, the emperor’s niece, was married on Tuesday after years of criticism over her fiancé that led to their marriage being postponed for three years and resulted in her being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.Mako, ...

Police are searching for the murderer of seven people, including a local official who was killed at his home, in Wuhan in central China in the early hours of Monday morning.Xiaosi township’s acting party secretary Zhang Mouhong was killed along wit...

Children under 18 and people from dozens of countries with a shortage of vaccines will be exempt from new rules that will require most travellers to the United States be vaccinated against Covid-19, the Biden administration announced.The US governmen...

Hong Kong will end quarantine exemption privileges for most people in categories once identified as crucial for maintaining the city’s daily operations, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has revealed, as part of stepped-up efforts to convi...

Sudan’s military seized power on Monday, dissolving the transitional government hours after troops arrested the prime minister, and thousands flooded the streets to protest the coup that threatened the country’s shaky progress toward democracy. T...

The partner of Julian Assange said a media report that the CIA had plotted to kill or kidnap the WikiLeaks founder was a game-changer in his fight against extradition from Britain to the United States.US authorities will this week begin their appeal ...

The de facto leader of South Korea’s sprawling Samsung group Lee Jae-yong was convicted on Tuesday of illegally using the anaesthetic drug propofol, the latest legal travail to beset the multi-billionaire.Lee – the vice-chairman of the world’s ...

Iran executed over 250 people, including at least four child offenders, in 2020 and so far this year has carried out 230 executions that included nine women and one child who was executed in secret, the UN independent investigator on human rights in ...

Two years ago, Apple threatened to pull Facebook and Instagram from its app store over concerns about the platform being used as a tool to trade and sell domestic helpers in the Middle East.After publicly promising to crack down, Facebook acknowledge...

Top economic officials from China and the US have agreed to step up economic policy coordination, with Beijing calling for fair treatment of Chinese investment.At the request of the United States side, Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He had a virtual confer...

Japan’s Princess Mako finally married her university sweetheart Kei Komuro on Tuesday - but it was not a lavish affair, with the couple forgoing traditional rites after years of controversy.Since announcing their engagement in 2017, the pair have f...

[Sponsored Article] CTF Education Group (CTFEG) is a leading integrated education group based in Hong Kong that places K-12 education at the heart of its operations, serving students, parents and educators through its kindergarten, primary and secon...

Jessica Xu does not plan to take a Covid-19 vaccine and has advised her parents not to either, because she still has doubts about them.“It took about a year to develop the Covid-19 vaccines, when usually it takes years, and people have been taking ...

A Canadian court has ordered federal police to destroy a handwritten note carrying the passwords to Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou’s phones.The note became a controversial piece of evidence in Meng’s now-defunct extradition case when ...

Beijing’s top office in Hong Kong launched another community outreach drive on Monday by inviting renowned architects and engineers from mainland China to share their expertise with local students, but analysts warned nurturing a sense of national ...

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced on Monday that he had named Singaporean sociologist Noeleen Heyzer as the new special envoy to Myanmar. She will replace Christine Schraner Burgener of Switzerland.Heyzer, 73, has held multiple senior p...

Japan’s Princess Mako will on Tuesday register her marriage to her university sweetheart Kei Komuro, a 30-year-old commoner, without any of the traditional, festive rites.The princess, also 30, will then relinquish her title, as is customary for wo...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Monday that the State Department will establish a new bureau and envoy to handle cyber policy, revamping amid alarm over rising hacking attacks.In a memo to staff, Blinken said that a review showed a ...

Shenzhen, the southern tech hub known as China’s Silicon Valley, has either postponed or cancelled a number of trade fairs and exhibitions that the city was expected to host this fourth quarter amid rising Covid-19 infections in some parts of the c...

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Monday announced the lifting of the state of emergency in place since deadly jihadist attacks on Coptic Christian churches more than four years ago.The North African country has been under a state of emergen...

Donald Trump Jnr is using a tragedy to mock the actor who skewered his father on Saturday Night Live.A T-shirt that reads “Guns Don’t Kill People, Alec Baldwin Kills People” is selling for US$27.99 on a merchandise site linked to the former pre...

It all began with just one case of Covid-19, but China’s capital is not taking any chances as it screens arrivals from around the country and turns away those deemed to pose a risk.Set to host a meeting of the Communist Party’s elite next month a...

At least one person died and several were wounded in an explosion on Monday on a bus near the Ugandan capital Kampala, police said, as President Yoweri Museveni suggested it was caused by a bomb.Another explosion in the capital on Saturday killed one...

Canadian policies seeking wealthy and high-skilled immigrants may be influencing diabetes rates among its Chinese communities, according to a study which found mainland Chinese newcomers at greatly elevated risk compared to compatriots back in China,...

Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached record levels last year, the United Nations said on Monday in a stark warning as Boris Johnson admitted being “very worried” about the COP26 summit going awry.The UN’s blunt report on risi...

The booming and controversial solar industry in China’s far-west Xinjiang region has weathered many storms.Despite tariffs, rising production costs and human rights sanctions, it pumps out almost half of the world’s polysilicon, the shiny materia...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rowed back on Monday from his threat to expel 10 Western envoys over their joint statement of support for a jailed civil society leader.The reversal came after the United States and several of the other concerne...

Actor Alec Baldwin was practising removing a revolver from its holster and aiming toward the camera during rehearsal for the movie Rust when director Joel Souza heard “what sounded like a whip and then a loud pop,” according to a search warrant o...

The education system is outdated and exams are no longer necessary as technology can enable teachers to keep track of students’ learning progress to the minute, a former Hong Kong finance chief has said.John Tsang Chun-wah, who served as financial ...

Two Hong Kong government databases will require users to supply more information beginning next month, prompting a warning from the city’s main journalist association that the move will undermine press freedom.The tighter access to the Land Registr...

China’s campaign to “curb the disorderly expansion of capital” across several sectors of the economy is on track to ease as the government shifts focus toward bolstering growth, according to a tone-setting commentary issued by state media.The r...

[Sponsored Article]  Our connection to technology is like a love-hate relationship. Technology gave us vaccines, video calls, and much more. Yet despite the good, it can also become a toxic logic of rationality and measurable results that may be at...

Former Facebook data scientist turned whistle-blower Frances Haugen on Monday told lawmakers in the United Kingdom working on legislation to rein in social media platforms that the company is making online hate and extremism worse and outlined how it...

Life in Hong Kong’s legislature over the past five years was like a pair of chopsticks, holding sweet, sour, bitter and spicy flavours, the body’s president told a farewell dinner on Monday as members marked the end of the current term.The end-of...

Chinese boats have been harassing civilian vessels in Malaysian oil and gas fields in the South China Sea “on a daily basis” for the past two years, according to the Washington-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.The Chinese coastguard wa...

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will hold talks with a delegation of the interim Afghan Taliban government during his visit to Qatar this week, in the first high-level engagement since the militant group took power in Kabul two months ago.Wang, who ...

The abrupt cancellation of events discussing a German book on Xi Jinping has raised fresh concerns about Chinese interference in European academia, prompting Beijing’s embassy in Berlin to defend Confucius Institutes.Two separate events designed to...

An Israeli court ruled on Monday that a six-year-old boy, the sole survivor of an Italian cable car disaster and the focus of a cross-border custody battle, must be returned to relatives in Italy after his grandfather took him to the Middle Eastern c...

Some Hong Kong schools remain hesitant about allowing police onto their campuses to hold talks on national security and wider themes of law and order, but attitudes are improving, a top official has said.Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung a...

The decision by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) to comply with a US request for information has stirred anger and uneasiness in China over fears that Washington could use the information to sanction Beijing, even though the Taiwan chip m...

Japan’s foreign minister on Monday expressed hope for Tokyo’s relations with Beijing to improve, as the two Asian powers prepare to mark the 50th anniversary of the normalisation of bilateral diplomatic ties next year.In a message to an online fo...