BEIJING: Two major Chinese property firms have defaulted on $1.6 billion worth of bonds to overseas creditors, Fitch Ratings agency said Thursday, as contagion spreads within the country's debt-ridden real estate sector.

BEIJING: China warned Western nations on Thursday they would "pay the price" for a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Three Omicron cases have been confirmed and a potential new one detected, according to the Department of Medical Sciences.

The economy is expected to return to pre-Covid-19 levels in the first quarter of 2023 and its recovery will be slower than some other countries in the region, the governor of the Bank of Thailand (BoT) told a business forum on Thursday.

Nearly two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, the world remains “dangerously unprepared” for the next major outbreak, according to a new report.

The number of journalists worldwide who are behind bars reached a global high in 2021, according to a new report from the non-profit Committee to Protect Journalists, which says that 293 reporters were imprisoned as of Dec 1 this year.

Revered monk Somdet Phra Maha Ratchamangalacharn, aka Somdet Chuang, abbot of Wat Pak Nam Phasi Charoen in Bangkok, has died aged 96 years.

There were 49 more Covid-19 fatalities and 4,203 new cases registered during the previous 24 hours, the Public Health Ministry said on Thursday morning.

WELLINGTON: New Zealand announced plans on Thursday to effectively ban smoking by progressively lifting the age at which tobacco products can be bought, in a "world-first" that means today's young teens will never be able to buy cigarettes legally.

The US on Wednesday imposed an arms embargo on Cambodia over its connections with China and human rights abuses, just days before sending a top State Department official to convince the Southeast Asian country to keep up pressure on Myanmar’s milit...