Chinese and Japanese officials have traded accusations during virtual talks, but they also agreed to improve communication – including by speeding up efforts to set up a defence hotline – amid rising tensions.Beijing warned Tokyo against meddling...

Indonesia has agreed to supply Australia with 5,000 tonnes of urea amid the latter’s worrying shortage of diesel exhaust fluid, which is made from the substance, and China’s global embargo on urea exports.Canberra said on Monday that enough urea ...

The operator of Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant intends to build an underwater tunnel to release water from the plant into the sea, it said on Tuesday, as part of a project to treat and dispose of contaminated water.A decade after a ...

Germany expects further military deployments in Asia following its dispatch of a warship to the South China Sea for the first time in two decades, though its activity in the region will be intensified in “small steps”, Berlin’s navy chief said ...

Former Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga has struck a more conciliatory note towards China in a new media interview, although analysts suggest his comments may be more related to internal differences within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party an...

Giant millipedes as long as a car and weighing 50kg once hunted across Northern England, experts have revealed, following the discovery of a 326 million-year-old fossil.The largest ever fossil of a giant millipede was found by a “fluke” on a Nort...

A 69-year-old man is fighting for his life in hospital on Tuesday after being injured in an alleged arson attack, which took more than 120 firefighters about three hours to put out, in his village house in Hong Kong.Police arrested his co-tenant, 67,...

About a quarter of Hong Kong’s imported Covid-19 Omicron infections so far have been arrivals from Britain, the most from any country, with the United States next in line, a Post review of recent cases has found amid a near-daily detection rate of ...

The first pair of defendants charged under a new Hong Kong law that prohibits the act of inciting others to boycott an election or cast invalid ballots have been granted bail by a court to seek legal advice.Salesman Chan Kin-man, 36, and office assis...

About 20,000 underprivileged, elderly Hongkongers will soon be given smartphones and a year-long data plan so they can begin using the government’s mandatory coronavirus risk-exposure app.Confirming an earlier Post report, the Hong Kong Jockey Club...

A defiant rejection of his massive social spending bill by a single US senator – a fellow Democrat – and a surge in Covid-19 cases are imperilling Joe Biden less than a year into his presidency.Returning to the White House from a weekend at his f...

Malaysia’s government and companies must address mounting allegations of workplace abuse of migrant labourers who fuel the country’s economy, or face risks to its export-reliant growth model, experts warn.Malaysia has for decades banked on migran...

This is the second of a three-part series to mark the second anniversary of Covid-19. Here, Zhuang Pinghui looks at how people’s lives have changed in China due to the pandemic.It is before 6am on a winter’s day and the snow lies thick outside he...

A defrocked American priest accused of sexually abusing orphaned and disadvantaged young girls under his care in East Timor was found guilty on Tuesday and sentenced to 12 years in prison, in the first case of its kind in the staunchly Catholic natio...

South China Morning Post managing editor Brian Rhoads recently flew home to the United States to attend a memorial service for his late father. After he had already left, the Hong Kong government moved the US into a new high-risk category, meaning he...

Japan hanged three prisoners on Tuesday, its first executions in two years, with the government saying it was necessary to maintain capital punishment in the face of continued “atrocious crimes”.The executions were the first under Prime Minister ...

Former US president Donald Trump revealed he received a booster shot of the Covid-19 vaccine, drawing boos from a crowd in Dallas.Trump made the disclosure Sunday night during the final stop of “The History Tour”, a live interview show he has bee...

On a warm, sunny afternoon in early December, 20 children from underprivileged families gathered on the rooftop farm of an office tower in Hong Kong to try their hand at harvesting vegetables.The activity on December 5 was arranged by The Hub Hong Ko...

The fast-spreading Omicron variant is now the dominant strain of Covid-19 in the United States, health authorities reported Monday, as the WHO called for greater efforts to ensure the pandemic ends next year.The new variant has helped fuel record cas...

Thailand has halted its quarantine-free entry programme after less than two months, citing concerns about the potential spread of the Omicron variant by arriving tourists.The Covid-19 panel chaired by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha suspended approv...

The defeat of Taiwan’s Kuomintang in a weekend referendum has brought into focus the question of whether the main opposition party can make a comeback in 2024, or if Beijing will have to continue to deal with the independence-leaning Democratic Pro...

A bus captain, an electrician and former foreigners turned Chinese citizens – all of whom were candidates described by China’s top official overseeing Hong Kong affairs as embodying diversity – are not among the 90 elected in the city’s new l...

From the ridiculous to the important, the uplifting and the serious, we have strived to tell the stories of China through the lenses of everyday people.China’s glory at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics told through a young diver who skyrocketed to superstar...

Some Singaporeans used their time spent socially distanced to adopt a pet, pick up a hobby or learn a new skill – while others, like 13-year-old Sin Hai, decided to launch a business venture, inspired by the eye-watering sums that some of the rares...

China has rolled out even more stringent Covid-19 quarantine and border control rules to counter the threat of Omicron.The latest measures, announced on Monday, come after six Omicron cases were identified in three Chinese cities within a week.Changs...

Chinese smartphone users have seen the number of apps available to them fall by 38.5 per cent over the past three years, with the most precipitous drop coming this year amid the country’s crackdowns on Big Tech platforms and internet content, showi...

The United States offered a bounty of an up to US$5 million on Monday for information on a terrorist attack that left a secularist writer dead in Bangladesh more than six years ago.The US State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service announced the...

The first unit of China’s fourth-generation nuclear reactor has been connected to the national power grid – with two more to follow.The domestically developed high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) – at the Shidaowan nuclear power plant in ...

It is known as the “Vancouver model” – a criminal technique that turned the Canadian city into a byword for international money laundering.The term, coined by Australian academic Professor John Langdale of Macquarie University in 2017, describe...

The jury in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex abuse trial began deliberations on Monday after hearing closing arguments over whether the British socialite set up teenage girls to have sexual encounters with the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.Maxwell, 59, is ...

Canada has reported a case of atypical bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in an 8-1/2 year old beef cow in the province of Alberta, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said on Monday.The carcass did not enter the human food or animal f...

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth has decided not to spend Christmas at the royal Sandringham estate in eastern England amid concerns about the fast-spreading omicron coronavirus variant.The palace said on Monday that the 95-year-old queen will spend the h...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday he would tighten coronavirus curbs to slow the spread of the Omicron variant if needed, after the Netherlands began a fourth lockdown and as other European nations consider Christmas restrictions.Sp...

The US State Department appointed a high-ranking official as its special coordinator for Tibetan issues on Monday, as Washington seeks to restart long-stalled talks between Beijing and the Dalai Lama and gain US diplomats greater access to the region...

Former President Donald Trump sued New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday, seeking to end her civil investigation into his business practices.In the lawsuit, filed two weeks after James requested that Trump sit for a January 7 deposition, ...

As the US expands its sanctions lists, Chinese companies in the aviation sector are facing increasing restrictions on financial services as well as American technology, according to trade lawyers and defence experts.Washington is deeply concerned wit...

The Group of Seven (G7) and European Union on Monday voiced “grave concern” over the outcome of Hong Kong’s recent Legislative Council elections, following a similar condemnation by the Five Eyes alliance and Washington’s decision to sanction...

Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal said on Monday he had tested positive for Covid-19, putting in doubt his participation in the Australian Open next month where was expected to make his comeback to major competition after months of injury.The Spanish ...

Germany plans to limit private New Year’s Eve parties to 10 people, a draft document showed on Monday, as it tightens coronavirus restrictions in a bid to slow the spread of Omicron.The proposed new rules will target the vaccinated and the unvaccin...

Captive missionaries in Haiti found freedom last week by making a daring overnight escape, eluding their kidnappers and walking for miles over difficult, moonlit terrain with an infant and other children in tow, according to the agency they work for....

Sales of a red wine that shares its name with the Cumbre Vieja volcano on Spain’s island of La Palma have soared since the eruption began three months ago, providing an unexpected windfall for the Bodegas Teneguia vineyard.“Since the volcano hit,...

Hong Kong’s pro-establishment parties emerged victorious in Sunday’s Legislative Council election, but observers warned that their influence could be diluted with the expansion of the legislature and the entry of lawmakers with mainland Chinese b...

[Sponsored Article]  The UGC recognises the need to incentivise local universities to conduct more research of social relevance with high economic and social benefits and has sought to acknowledge the impact generated by their research. Hence, UGC ...

Belarus said Monday it had summoned a British diplomat in protest after its embassy in London was “attacked” and a diplomat injured.The Belarusian foreign ministry said in a statement that a group of people damaged the building’s facade and phy...

Hong Kong’s already dominant pro-establishment camp swept all but one seat in the first Legislative Council election after Beijing’s “patriots-only” overhaul of the political system amid a record low turnout of only 30.2 per cent.While tradit...

The first cut to China’s one-year market benchmark rate in 20 months indicates the government’s determination to stabilise economic growth next year, but economists are still divided on how effective such easing measures will be as major Western ...

As the last few regions in Austria reopened restaurants and hotels on Monday, the country reported fewer than 2,000 new coronavirus cases, the lowest number since October.Austria saw 1,792 new infections in 24 hours, down from daily highs of around 1...

The chief of China’s newly upgraded Anti-Monopoly Bureau has declared an early victory in getting rid of the once-widespread monopolistic practice of “picking one out of two” merchants within the e-commerce sector, after the bureau’s earlier ...

Independent candidate Jason Poon Cheuk-hung kept his cool during Sunday’s Legislative Council election, even as his pro-establishment rivals in the Hong Kong East geographical constituency issued desperate “emergency appeals” for voters to cast...

A targeted medical voucher scheme should be introduced in Hong Kong so that residents can be screened for chronic diseases and receive subsidies based on their medical needs, a think tank has said.Our Hong Kong Foundation claimed in a report released...