By Lee Hyo-jinA new song released by Jin of K-pop super band BTS has drawn protests from some Japanese internet users over the use of the words “East Sea” in its lyrics, referring to the waters between Korea and Japan.The two countries have long ...

South Korea is seeking to join the 11-member CPTPP trade pact citing “fast changes to the economic order in the Asia-Pacific region”, raising questions about whether its tense relations with Japan, the largest economic power in the bloc, will get...

Ten officials in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, including its deputy mayor, have been axed or disciplined for chopping down thousands of the city’s banyan trees.Chinese state media reported on Monday that more than 4,000 mature trees were ...

Hong Kong customs has arrested three men and confiscated HK$130 million (US$17 million) worth of illegal cigarettes – the largest seizure of its kind in two decades – as part of a seasonal crackdown on the black market trade.The haul pushes the n...

The developer of China’s first approved Covid-19 antibody cocktail said lab tests had found the treatment “holds up well” against the new Omicron variant, though one of the antibodies had a “substantial drop in activity”.Brii Biosciences on...

Jailed Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying was sentenced to another 13 months behind bars on Monday, while his seven co-defendants received jail time ranging from 4½ to 14 months for their respective roles in last year’s ­banned Tiananmen ...

A social networking app from ByteDance, the Chinese owner of globally popular short video-sharing platform TikTok, has been taken offline in a fresh sign that the world’s most valuable unicorn is retreating from some non-core businesses to consolid...

Hong Kong residents returning from Britain will be required to spend their first seven days at a government quarantine facility as city authorities are planning to tighten Covid-19 control rules for the country over concerns about the Omicron variant...

The US ambassador to the Solomon Islands has warned Pacific Islands against “aid that benefits one person, one party and one bank account” – remarks that come after the country was beset with riots last month blamed in part on discontent with C...

More powerful, destructive, and deadlier storms will be the “new normal” as the effects of climate change take root, the top US emergency management official said after massive tornadoes ravaged six states.Meteorologists and other scientists have...

Chinese tech giants Huawei Technologies Co and Tencent Holdings lost cloud services market share in the third quarter amid tough competition from market leader Alibaba Group Holding and foreign players, according to a new report.The digital transform...

China held a memorial service on Monday to mark the 84th anniversary of the Nanking massacre by Japanese troops during World War II, amid rising Sino-Japanese tension.More than 3,000 people attended the ceremony, held at the Memorial Hall of the Vict...

Iran appears to be preparing for a space launch as negotiations continue in Vienna over its tattered nuclear deal with world powers, according to an expert and satellite images.The likely blast-off at Iran’s Imam Khomeini Spaceport comes as Iranian...

South Korea will soon roll out a pilot project to use artificial intelligence, facial recognition and thousands of CCTV cameras to track the movement of people infected with the coronavirus, despite concerns about the invasion of privacy.The national...

At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, as India’s case numbers surged, some analysts saw dark days ahead for the country’s booming start-up sector, predicting investor cash would dry up. The doomsters, though, were wrong. Indian start-ups have be...

Russia is the global leader in hypersonic missiles and, by the time other countries catch up, is likely to have developed technology to counteract these new weapons, President Vladimir Putin said.Russia and the United States have an approximate parit...

The fiancée of Julian Assange has accused British authorities of playing the role of “executioner” after the WikiLeaks founder suffered a mini stroke in prison.Stella Moris, 38, said he was left with a drooping right eyelid, memory problems and ...

A slide show by a Taiwanese minister caused consternation among US officials during President Joe Biden’s democracy summit on Friday, when it included a map showing the self-ruled island in a different colour to the Chinese mainland.Taiwanese Digit...

Chris Wallace, the unflappable veteran Fox News anchor who has held US presidents’ feet to the fire and moderated combative political debates, announced Sunday he is leaving the network to “try something new” – at rival CNN.“After 18 years ...

South Korea’s president on Monday ruled out joining a US diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in February, citing the need to work with China.While in Canberra to meet with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Moon Jae-in ...

When Katie Posten walked outside Saturday morning to her car parked in her driveway, she saw something that looked like a note or receipt stuck to the windscreen.She grabbed it and saw it was a black and white photo of a woman in a striped sundress a...

Multinational investment bank Morgan Stanley has broken its own fundraising records for an annual charity event with cake – lots of it.Multi-tier fondant wonders, sugar-coated Christmas huts and elaborate cupcake towers are just some of the one-of-...

Serving and former Chinese senior officials have urged caution on the path towards carbon neutrality, echoing the leadership’s assessment that climate targets “can’t be achieved in just one battle”.Addressing a forum in Beijing on Saturday, f...

As Hong Kong emerges from some of the worst political upheaval it has seen in recent years and uncertainty looms over the cultural trajectory of the country, the opening of M+, the city’s museum of visual culture, is a historic moment for Hong Kong...

The US and China are working together on climate change, but Beijing must step up efforts to deliver on emission cuts, the US’ top diplomat in China has said.David Meale, chargé d’affaires of the US embassy in Beijing, said climate envoys John K...

Some of the 153 candidates in Hong Kong’s coming Legislative Council election are giving social media a miss in their campaigns, with a week to the poll.One in six hopefuls have either no social media platforms or left their accounts inactive, a ch...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken kicks off his maiden Southeast Asia tour on Monday as the Biden administration steps up its diplomatic efforts in a region that has been aggressively courted by China.The four-day tour, covering Indonesia, Malaysi...

A throng of Catholic pilgrims estimated at more than 1.5 million people gathered at a basilica in Mexico City on Sunday for the annual Virgin of Guadalupe gathering after the festivities were cancelled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.The Vi...

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa tested positive for Covid-19 on Sunday and is receiving treatment for mild symptoms, the presidency said in a statement.Ramaphosa, who is fully vaccinated, began feeling unwell after leaving a state memorial se...

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday warned of a looming “tidal wave” of the Omicron coronavirus variant, and brought forward a target to give over-18s a booster jab by one month to the end of December.“No one should be in any dou...

Iran’s chief negotiator on Sunday reported progress on an agenda for talks with global powers over its nuclear programme, as Britain said the Vienna negotiations were Tehran’s “last chance”.Talks restarted on Thursday to try to revive the 201...

A volcanic eruption in Spain’s Canary Islands shows no sign of ending after 85 days, becoming the island of La Palma’s longest eruption on record Sunday.The eruption has surged and ebbed since it first began spewing lava on September 19. It has s...

What was the most memorable moment in Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s run for the city’s top job in 2017? When news crews caught her not knowing that she needed to push the turnstile at the MTR station exit after she had “doo”-ed her Octopus car...

Workers on the night shift at Mayfield Consumer Products were in the middle of the holiday rush, cranking out candles, when a tornado closed in on the factory and the word went out: “Duck and cover”.Autumn Kirks pulled down her safety goggles and...

Naftali Bennett on Sunday headed to the United Arab Emirates, becoming the first Israeli prime minister to make an official visit to the Arab Gulf country.In September last year, Israel signed a United States-brokered agreement with the UAE to establ...

At least two Palestinians were killed and several injured after gunfire broke out during the Sunday funeral of a Hamas member killed in a refugee camp days earlier, Lebanon’s state news agency, Palestinian and Lebanese officials said.The National N...

Tigray rebels on Sunday recaptured the north Ethiopian town of Lalibela, home to a Unesco World Heritage Site, local residents said, 11 days after Ethiopian forces said they had retaken control.The announcement marks another dramatic twist in the 13-...

A deadly accident involving a driverless car hurtling downhill into eight pedestrians in one of Hong Kong’s trendiest nightlife spots on a busy Friday night has sparked renewed discussions on whether traffic should be banned in the area at weekends...

Nigeria plans to ban flights from Argentina, Britain, Canada and Saudi Arabia from this week in retaliation for being added to those countries’ red lists over the detection of the Omicron coronavirus variant last month, the aviation minister said.S...

Gunmen shot dead a policeman guarding a polio vaccination team in Pakistan’s northwest on Sunday in the second such killing in two days, police said.The attack in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa came a day after two men with the Pakistani Taliba...

China’s diplomatic corps stands at the front line of the country’s expanding ambitions on the world stage, but while its main rival the US is increasing overseas spending, Beijing has been doing the reverse.President Xi Jinping has said China’s...

Anne Rice, the gothic novelist best known for writing “Interview with the Vampire,” died on Saturday aged 80, her family said.“In her final hours, I sat beside her hospital bed in awe of her accomplishments and her courage,” her son Christoph...

Education authorities have stressed that teachers must use their professional judgment when deciding whether to use government-supplied learning materials after primary school pupils in Hong Kong reported feeling distraught over graphic footage of th...

The Group of Seven (G7) voiced concern on Sunday about what it called China’s “coercive economic policies” and the challenges posed by Beijing’s actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, as two days of meetings between G7 foreign ministers drew to a...

Firefighters in Sicily were digging through the rubble of a collapsed apartment building Sunday in the search for six missing people after an explosion apparently caused by a gas leak killed at least three, authorities said.The building was occupied ...

Voters in the French island territory of New Caledonia chose overwhelmingly on Sunday to stay part of France, in a referendum boycotted by pro-independence forces and closely watched around the South Pacific.Separatist activists had urged a delay in ...

Chinese workers have been urged not to make “unnecessary” trips home for Lunar New Year for the second consecutive year, as authorities nationwide tighten Covid-19 preventive measures after confirmed infections surged in the eastern province of Z...

The decision by another Taiwanese ally to switch diplomatic recognition to Beijing has barely caused a ripple of concern on the island, with the public preferring greater international participation rather than a diplomatic tug of war with mainland C...

China is to build two bases to maintain undersea cables in the East China and South China seas as part of efforts to bolster its digital infrastructure, which has emerged as a new front in its geopolitical competition with the United States.Under the...

The European Union’s top diplomat has branded China a “strategic and ideological challenge” as foreign ministers from the Group of Seven industrialised nations try to take a united stand against “malign behaviour” from Beijing and Moscow.EU...