Hong Kong is considering a new mortgage scheme for subsidised flats that would slash down payments by half and allow buyers to defer some of the debt in a bid to make homes more affordable, the city’s leader has said.Speaking to local media, Chief ...

Zhang Ming, until recently China’s ambassador to the European Union, is the new secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, one of the world’s largest political and economic groupings.The appointment makes Zhang the first Chinese ...

A senior Hong Kong police officer and a former policeman have been charged with fraudulently obtaining mortgages from two banks in excess of HK$26 million (US$3.33 million) by concealing the former’s affiliation with the force.Superintendent Harbou...

Three men were convicted on Wednesday of plotting to vandalise an MTR station during Hong Kong’s 2019 social unrest, after discussions of their plan were recorded on the dashcam of a private car driven by one of the suspects.The trio were among fou...

Xian reported a significant drop in new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, raising hopes of a slowdown in the spread of the coronavirus in the northwestern Chinese city where 13 million people have been in lockdown for almost two weeks.The National Health ...

Japan’s Okinawa region appeared to be the epicentre of a new coronavirus surge with cases more than doubling on Wednesday from the previous day, with officials looking to re-impose movement restrictions that were lifted in late September last year....

Hong Kong police pepper-sprayed eight suspected triad members accused of behaving in a disorderly manner at a Ruttonjee Hospital on Wednesday morning.Officers were called to the waiting area of the public hospital’s accident and emergency departmen...

Cambodian police have detained more than two dozen current and former employees of the country’s largest casino, run by a Hong Kong firm, amid the workers’ 19-day strike to protest against mass lay-offs and alleged labour law violations last year...

China’s widely used Sinopharm and Sinovac Covid-19 vaccines will give some protection against severe illness, hospitalisation and death from the Omicron variant despite declines in protective antibodies, a WHO official said on Tuesday.The assessmen...

Myanmar has “all the ingredients for civil war”, Cambodia, chair of Southeast Asia’s regional bloc, has warned ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Hun Sen to the violence-wracked country.Myanmar has been in chaos since a coup last year, with mor...

US President Joe Biden urged concern but not alarm as the United States set records for daily reported Covid-19 cases and the highly contagious Omicron strain made up over 95 per cent of new cases.In remarks before a meeting with his Covid-19 respons...

A Chinese snack producer has apologised for an old advertisement featuring a red scarf, which is usually worn by students on the mainland to commemorate revolutionary martyrs, the use of which is carefully controlled and prohibited for commercial pur...

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China’s main space contractor plans more than 40 launches this year, consolidating the country’s presence on a front that is becoming a source of rivalry with the United States.China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) said on its...

China’s central bank is set to replenish liquidity shortfalls before the Lunar New Year holiday, the China Securities Journal reported, even as markets were split on whether more monetary easing was imminent in the world’s second-largest economy....

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he will never apologise for the deaths of thousands of suspected drug users and dealers under his government’s crackdown on illegal narcotics.At least 6,221 people have been killed in drug operations from J...

The Chinese city of Xian suspended its top official in charge of big data after the system powering the local health code app, a critical tool in China’s zero-Covid strategy, crashed for a second time.Xian’s Communist Party committee announced on...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing.Key points:- Dine-in services banned from 6pm to 4.59am the next day; diners per table capped at two in Type B...

New York City Mayor Eric Adams called on the White House to make a public apology to Asian-Americans for calling Covid the “China virus” and other remarks that former president Donald Trump made during the onset of the pandemic.“The president r...

Some Qantas pilots are making mistakes as they return from long breaks caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to an internal memo reported by Australian media on Wednesday.Among the errors listed in Qantas pilot reports: starting take-off with th...

When the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Indian-American Gita Gopinath, welcomed the new year she did so with a snack widely loved in India – golgappas.Gopinath, 50, shared a photo of herself tucking into the spicy-tangy dish, a...

A South African corruption inquiry pointed to systemic corruption during former president Jacob Zuma’s tenure in the first part of its report published on Tuesday, after more than three years of investigations involving more than 300 witnesses.The ...

Kazakhstan’s president sacked the Central Asian country’s cabinet on Wednesday in a bid to head off unprecedented unrest across the nation that followed an energy price hike.More than 200 people were detained during protests that swept across Kaz...

[Sponsored article] Medical breakthroughs in recent decades have saved many lives, but it is the workers behind the health care in places such as hospitals and out-patient clinics that help a patient to heal. Yet in their hearts, the health staff ...

Donald Trump abruptly gave up his plan to steal the limelight on the anniversary of the January assault against Congress, leaving President Joe Biden to address a divided nation.The former US president said in a statement on Tuesday evening that he w...

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday reclassified its Covid-19 travel advisory for Singapore, guiding Americans to avoid travel to the Southeast Asian city state because the level of the disease there is “unknown.”The chan...

About 2,500 cruise ship passengers were ordered on Wednesday to cut short their trip and return to Hong Kong for compulsory coronavirus testing after nine of them were identified as close contacts of a preliminary-positive case linked to a suspected ...

Home to temple ruins recognised by Unesco, adored by Instagramers and revered by Thais as the ancient seat of kings, the city of Ayutthaya now has another claim to fame: its culinary culture has been put on the global foodie map by the prestigious Mi...

A provincial court in eastern China said in an article on Sunday that people cannot file for divorce if they only cite “adultery” as a reason for the break-up, causing a public uproar.The court in Shandong argued that because most people in affai...

Plans to create a booming economic and residential hub for some 2.5 million residents near Hong Kong’s border with mainland China may boost home prices in Tuen Mun, Tin Shui Wai and Yuen Long by as much as 10 per cent in 2022 and by up to half in t...

North Korea fired a suspected ballistic missile off its east coast on Wednesday, just hours before South Korean President Moon Jae-in attended a groundbreaking ceremony for a rail line he hopes will eventually connect the divided Korean peninsula.The...

Hong Kong’s Covid-19 vaccination rate received a boost this week as residents, especially the elderly hoping to maintain their dim sum rituals at favourite haunts, as well as concertgoers not wanting to miss coming shows, raced to get their shots a...

China’s last-minute decision to extend tax exemptions on expatriate employee allowances for two more years has been welcomed by foreign business groups, though worries about rising costs, coronavirus-related travel restrictions and market access re...

The House panel investigating the January 6 US Capitol insurrection on Tuesday requested an interview with Fox News personality Sean Hannity, one of former president Donald Trump’s closest allies in the media, as the committee continues to widen it...

A US man was firing a gun to celebrate the arrival of 2022 when a police officer opened fire without warning, killing him, the wife of the deceased says.Marquetta Williams told The Repository newspaper of Canton that her 46-year-old husband, James, h...

In his first order of the year to China’s two million-strong military, President Xi Jinping stressed the need for the People’s Liberation Army to adopt the latest technologies in its training so it can win future wars, state media reported on Tue...

The US government announced on Tuesday that it had arrested one of the main suspects in the killing of Haitian president Jovenel Moise and charged him with conspiracy to commit murder or kidnapping outside the United States.Mario Antonio Palacios, a ...

A judge has essentially said “nevermind” to a lawsuit brought by the so-called “Nirvana baby” who was featured on the rock band’s iconic Nevermind cover and who is now as old as the 30-year-old album.US District Court Judge Fernando M. Olgu...

The world’s first wind tunnel capable of testing a full-sized hypersonic missile through the critical stages of flight has been operating in China and helped prevent expensive test failures such as setbacks seen in the United States, according to s...

Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo will not face criminal prosecution over an allegation that he fondled an aide, after a prosecutor said on Tuesday he was dropping the case because he could not prove it.Three days before the Democratic ex-governo...

The bad news: an asteroid as big as the Eiffel Tower and named after a god of chaos is heading towards the Earth. The good news: it is expected to miss.Scientists in Russia have projected that the asteroid Apophis will skim past the Earth in April 20...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday said that England could withstand a surge in Covid-19 infections without shutting down the economy as Britain reported another record daily high in cases, fuelled by the Omicron variant.Johnson has resi...

A judge was mostly dismissive on Tuesday of oral arguments by a lawyer for Prince Andrew who wants to win a fast dismissal of a lawsuit alleging that the prince sexually assaulted an American woman when she was 17.US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan di...

A fourth dose of Covid-19 vaccine boosts antibodies five-fold a week after the shot is administered, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday, citing preliminary findings of an Israeli study.“A week into the fourth dose we know to a h...

China and the United States have reached a “stalemate” in the process to resume trade talks despite the expiry of their phase-one trade deal last week, with no clear indication from either Beijing or Washington of when the silence will be broken....

Nostalgic for those mobile phones with a physical keyboard? Brace yourself, because as of Tuesday many models of the once-indispensable BlackBerry devices will no longer work.The Canadian company has decided to pull the plug on new updates of its ope...

A long-established Hong Kong child protection group at the centre of an abuse scandal has set up an independent review committee to look into the alleged offences and review its operations to prevent similar incidents going forward.The committee, whi...

The countdown to the Beijing Winter Olympics has entered its final month with the continued threat from Covid-19 and calls for an international boycott dampening the mood.The Games, which begin on February 4, appear to have generated little public ex...

More evidence is emerging that the Omicron coronavirus variant is affecting the upper respiratory tract, causing milder symptoms than previous variants and resulting in a “decoupling” in some places between soaring case numbers and low death rate...

Nearly two in three Hongkongers are unhappy with life in the city, while one in five residents have thought about leaving, a poll by the largest opposition party has found.Some 58 per cent of 534 respondents in a random phone survey conducted by the ...