When health ministers from around the world converge for a historic meeting this week, just one thing will be on the agenda.On Monday, the governing body of the World Health Organization will begin only the second “special” session in the body’...

With the US and Iran set to re-engage on November 29 in their seventh round of talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by Donald Trump’s administration three years ago, Washington has sought to reassure Middle Eastern allies that it will no...

A record number of Chinese are sitting the national civil service examination this year, in hopes of landing a secure government job amid slowing growth and high youth unemployment.More than 2.12 million applicants registered for Sunday’s exam, kno...

How big is China’s music industry?China’s music industry has grown rapidly to become one of the world’s largest over the past decade. Since breaking into the top 10 of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s (IFPI’s) glo...

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has said younger ministers tasked with picking someone among themselves to take over from him needed “a little longer” to make a decision, with a successor likely to be named well before elections due ...

Alvin Chau Cheok-wa, the head of Macau’s biggest casino junket operator, and 10 others have been arrested over their alleged links to illegal cross-border gambling and a money-laundering syndicate.The city’s judiciary police told a press conferen...

Hong Kong’s quarantine hotels must cut off any possible avenues of coronavirus transmission in light of the spread of the new Omicron variant, one local health expert has said, while another has cautioned against unnecessary travel during the comin...

Neha Dhupia is just one of a host of Bollywood actresses who have been causing a stir recently by posting revealing photographs on the internet.They’ve been mocked and trolled and told to cover up, but they’re willing to turn a deaf ear to the cr...

Chinese police have captured a North Korean prisoner who staged a daring escape from jail in October and had been on the run for more than 40 days, authorities said on Sunday.Officials in northeast China offered a US$23,000 bounty for the recapture o...

Eritrea and Guinea-Bissau have joined the Belt and Road Initiative, President Xi Jinping’s trade and infrastructure development plan, ahead of a key Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) meeting starting on Monday.Eritrea’s cooperation is exp...

The United Kingdom could face a shortage of alcohol ahead of Christmas as the country deals with limited delivery drivers, The Wine and Spirit Trade Association has warned.WSTA wrote to UK Transport Minister Grant Shapps asking him to take action ami...

A man who stowed away in the landing gear of an American Airlines flight from Guatemala was discovered by airport crew in Miami on Saturday – apparently after the plan had already arrived at the gate.The man, who came off of American Airlines fligh...

China and Russia should monitor a Turkey-led move to upgrade Turkic-speaking states’ cooperation into a political unit that could weaken Beijing’s and Moscow’s influence in Central Asia, experts said.The Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking S...

Bullied for not being “masculine enough”, Bambang Priawan is feeling wretched.Priawan, a transgender man, rues his lot in life as part of a sexual minority in Indonesia, destined for prejudice by both society and government alike.In Priawan’s m...

Australia confirmed on Sunday that two people arriving from southern Africa over the weekend had tested positive for the Omicron coronavirus variant, adding to a growing number of countries fighting the highly infectious strain.Health officials in Ne...

As some countries in Asia begin to loosen travel restrictions and people in America and Europe reacquaint themselves with international travel, China continues to pursue a zero-Covid policy.That leaves people in Beijing and other Chinese cities resig...

The United States praised South Africa on Saturday for quickly identifying the new Covid strain called Omicron and sharing this information with the world – a barely veiled slap at China’s handling of the original outbreak of the novel coronaviru...

China needs to ramp up its risk assessment and anti-corruption measures to mitigate political dangers and credit instability in its Belt and Road Initiative, analysts said, following a similar call from President Xi Jinping.Despite seeing concrete su...

Australia will introduce legislation to make social media giants provide details of users who post defamatory comments, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday.The government has been looking at holding platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, r...

Groped in public, killed by an ex-partner, beaten by an employer. Women across Asia and beyond have faced increased domestic violence as well as sexual and gender-based abuse amid the coronavirus pandemic. A report released this week by the Internati...

Ming* has been spending an hour a day over the past six months collecting discarded cardboard on the streets of Sham Shui Po. The most the 15-year-old earned in a week was HK$25 (US$3.20) for 5kg.The older child of a divorced 39-year-old cleaner, he ...

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, at his first troop review on Saturday, renewed his pledge to consider “all options,” including acquiring enemy base strike capability, and vowed to create a stronger Self-Defence Force to protect the country...

A rare joint opinion article by the ambassadors of China and Russia has sharply assailed US President Joe Biden’s plans for a virtual summit of democratic countries – from which they were pointedly excluded.Calling the US plan “an evident produ...

A total of almost 40,000 people have taken to the streets of Austria to protest against coronavirus measures and plans to make vaccination mandatory.The largest of the demonstrations took place in Graz on Saturday.Police said that up to 30,000 people...

China’s involvement in regional digital economy deals would not only mean a bigger role in rules-setting but also help consolidate its ties with partners like Singapore to counter American containment strategies.That is according to Chinese analyst...

The omicron variant, a new strain of Covid-19 triggering panic worldwide, could already be in the United States.Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Saturday that while there is no indic...

French far-right presidential hopeful Eric Zemmour capped a tough week on Saturday after cameras caught him giving an opponent the middle finger following a tumultuous campaign stop in Marseille.Zemmour, a former journalist known for his hardline ant...

Covid-19 restrictions are easing and the world is slowly reopening, allowing people to once again venture beyond their own borders. And, with the advent of the holiday season, more may be travelling abroad for a long-awaited vacation or to reunite wi...

Afghanistan’s Taliban prime minister defended the group’s rule in a public address Saturday, saying it was not to blame for a worsening economic crisis and is working to repair the corruption of the ousted government. He also dismissed internatio...

LE GOSIER, Guadeloupe — France’s government is offering to discuss some autonomy for the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, which has been wracked by virus-related rioting and strikes that reflect long-running frustrations over inequality wit...

Opening statements on Monday are set to launch the much-anticipated sex crimes trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite charged with recruiting and grooming underage girls for the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.The 59-year-old daughter of th...

Riot police were deployed in force Saturday in the Iranian city of Isfahan, a day after dozens were arrested in violent protests over the drying up of a lifeblood river.Security forces fired tear gas during the clashes with stone-throwers in the prot...

MOSCOW — A Russian court on Saturday ordered five people to remain in pre-trial detention for two months pending an investigation into a devastating blast in a coal mine in Siberia that resulted in dozens of deaths.Russian authorities reported 51 d...

A French national who is known for mocking the Thai government was denied re-entry to Thailand on Saturday for being “a danger to society,” his lawyer said.Yan Marchal, who has lived in Thailand for nearly 20 years, arrived in Thailand on Saturda...

A film about the 2019 anti-government protests in Hong Kong which has not been screened locally won the prize for best documentary at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards on Saturday.Hong Kong director Kiwi Chow Kwun-wai’s 2½-hour documentary Revolution...

The Chinese army has carried out a “naval and air force combat readiness patrol” near the Taiwan Strait following a contentious visit to the island by a group of American lawmakers, a spokesperson said.Tensions between Beijing and Washington have...

Three men have been arrested on suspicion of trafficking HK$10 million worth of liquid methamphetamine into Hong Kong from Thailand in air cargo declared as frozen shrimp.Customs officials revealed on Saturday they had seized about 12kg of the illega...

China has urged Switzerland to help counter “malicious politicisation” of sport amid international calls for a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics.Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the appeal in a phone call with his Swiss counterpart Igna...

British Airways has temporarily suspended passenger flights to and from Hong Kong after more of its aircrew were sent to a government quarantine camp.Two separate sources said the British flag carrier had taken the decision after one aircrew member t...

Development of China’s new-generation hypersonic weapons and aircraft is expected to get a boost with construction of a wind tunnel simulator to test vehicles and missiles at many times the speed of sound – with more such facilities in the pipeli...

Only three of the 153 candidates running for Hong Kong’s Legislative Council refer to themselves as “pro-democracy” and are standing on election platforms calling for universal suffrage, a Post study has found.Other non-establishment hopefuls s...

Hong Kong police found the body of a solo hiker on a Sai Kung hillside on Saturday night after almost a day of searching.The 29-year-old man had set off from his home in Tin Shui Wai to go hiking alone in Sai Kung, with his family losing contact arou...

The emergence of a coronavirus variant with a large number of mutations could pose new challenges for China but too little was known about the strain, according to one of the country’s top respiratory disease specialists.Chinese media reported Zhon...

South Africa has complained it is being “punished” for detecting a new Covid-19 variant which the World Health Organization has termed a “variant of concern” and is more transmissible than the dominant Delta strain.The decision by a host of c...

More than three in four Hongkongers first watched or read pornographic material when they were aged 15 or below, according to a survey, with researchers on Saturday saying it was disturbing that 15 per cent of people first came into contact with X-ra...

China could face more than 630,000 coronavirus infections a day if it dropped its zero-tolerance approach and followed other countries by lifting travel bans, according to forecasting by Peking University mathematicians.In the report published in Chi...

Two people were killed, thousands of homes cut off from power and drivers stuck on freezing roads overnight as a powerful storm hit the northern UK, authorities said on Saturday.One man was killed when his car was struck by a falling tree in Northern...

The Netherlands says 61 flight passengers arriving from South Africa have tested positive for the virus amid worldwide concern about the new variant first detected there.Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates says it has given all of its citizens at lea...

The head of China’s legislature has called for closer ties with Russia’s lawmaking bodies to lay a legal foundation for greater economic integration and political security, as the two countries confront the United States and its allies.Diplomatic...

Having lived in Asia for a decade as a freelance journalist, US citizen Erin Hale realised that it would be imperative to learn Chinese to get where she wanted to be in life.She had spent much of 2019 simultaneously reporting on Hong Kong’s anti-ex...