Chinese coastguard ships reportedly approached a Japanese vessel in a disputed area of the East China Sea on Monday, overshadowing a “symbolic” visit to the area by a local mayor.The presence of the Chinese coastguard ships in waters surrounding ...

Hong Kong has returned to triple-digit figures for new coronavirus cases, confirming 129 on the first day of Lunar New Year, as the number of untraceable infections surged to the highest since the city’s fifth wave began.Ending a two-day streak of ...

A pregnant New Zealand journalist who was stranded in Afghanistan by the Pacific country’s Covid-19 border policy said on Tuesday she will return home after her government finally offered her a pathway back.The government offer amounted to a backdo...

Hong Kong police on Tuesday said they received multiple reports of fireworks being set off illegally in different districts around midnight to mark Lunar New Year.An online video shows a mini fireworks display to welcome the Year of the Tiger on a ro...

Japan’s parliament on Tuesday adopted a resolution on the “serious human rights situation” in China, and called Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government to take steps to relieve the situation, as the Beijing Winter Olympics loom just days ah...

A sense of solitude brought on by the coronavirus pandemic is going to make Felix Shek cherish his time with his newborn daughter and family more than ever, the father of one of the city’s first “tiger babies” said on Tuesday.Shek’s daughter ...

Thailand expects to welcome hundreds of thousand holidaymakers a month with the kick-off of a quarantine-free visa programme that’s set to serve as a model for tourism-reliant countries balancing safe border reopenings with economic revival.Startin...

Buying property in the small town of Yanjiao was once the first choice for many white-collar workers who did not have a permit to buy a house in Beijing.Like New Jersey is to New York, Yanjiao is less than two hours to downtown Beijing across the Cha...

The threat to the West from the Chinese government is “more brazen” and damaging than ever before, FBI director Christopher Wray said on Monday night in accusing Beijing of stealing American ideas and innovation and launching massive hacking oper...

Increasing numbers of children around the world are becoming infected with Covid-19 as the Omicron variant fuels a surge in cases.In many places this reflects the fact that children are less likely to be vaccinated, prompting many governments to redo...

A curious thing has been happening in Dubai over the past few weeks.Each week, eight strangers gather for an eight-course meal. But before they tuck in, they first learn how to wrap Chinese dumplings. Later, they will polish these off alongside fried...

Japan is preparing for a possible summit visit by US President Joe Biden in the last half of May for discussions on regional security, China and North Korea, the Yomiuri newspaper reported on Tuesday, quoting multiple government sources.The visit, wh...

Hong Kong lenders are escalating efforts to expand the local market for electronic lai see amid increasing demand from tech-savvy consumers, while current social-distancing measures have made this digital red packet service more essential than ever, ...

As the world marks the start of the Year of the Tiger on February 1, the question for Asia’s food and beverage industry: Will Lunar New Year be as good for business as it was before the Covid-19 pandemic?Last year, consumers in China spent around U...

Whether it is building the subway systems in Hong Kong or constructing the Olympics facilities near Beijing, part of infrastructure development in China is managing the possibility that the project will stumble upon a piece of ancient Chinese history...

It was a request Sajed Rayan had not heard before in Hong Kong. Waiting for the lift in his building’s lobby after work one day, a Chinese family of three kept their distance and asked him to take it alone while they waited for the next one.Rayan, ...

The New York Times Co said on Monday it had acquired Wordle, a website-only word game that has seen a recent burst in popularity, for an undisclosed price in the low seven figures.The acquisition will help The New York Times broaden its digital conte...

PlayStation maker Sony announced a US$3.6 billion agreement on Monday to buy US video game studio Bungie, creator of hits like Halo and Destiny, as a gaming industry battle heats up with Microsoft.Sony’s deal comes weeks after Microsoft unveiled a ...

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s “lost” WeChat account may not have gone as far as to jeopardise national security but it raises questions about his relationship with the Chinese nationals and companies who owned and managed his accou...

A sub-variant of the highly contagious Omicron coronavirus strain is even more infectious than the original version, according to a Danish study published on Monday.Sub-variant BA.2 – also called “stealth Omicron” – was detected earlier this ...

China will suffer a greater loss than the United States from “tech decoupling” and trails its rival in key areas, Chinese academics have warned.In a report published by Peking University’s Institute of International and Strategic Studies on Sun...

A team at Tufts University and Harvard University has brought scientists a step closer to the goal of regenerative medicine by using a drug cocktail to regrow a frog’s amputated legs.Only a few animals in the world are able to regrow some limbs: sa...

Russia accused the West on Monday of “whipping up tensions” over Ukraine and said the US had brought “pure Nazis” to power in Kyiv as the UN Security Council held a stormy and bellicose debate on Moscow’s troop build-up near its southern ne...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday he has tested positive for Covid-19, while calling out truckers protesting against vaccine mandates.“I feel well and have no symptoms,” the 50-year-old premier told a news conference.Trudeau h...

Some events at British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office and residence during a Covid-19 lockdown should not have taken place, an inquiry said on Monday, describing serious failures of leadership and judgment at the heart of the country’s gov...

Most Hong Kong residents who successfully applied for a pathway to UK citizenship are university educated, married or in a relationship with children, and have no plans to return to the city, according to a British Home Office survey.The survey inter...

Former Miss USA Cheslie Kryst, who worked as an entertainment correspondent for the television show Extra, has died after apparently jumping from a Manhattan apartment building, New York police told The Washington Post. She was 30.Kryst died on Sunda...

A change in monetary policy by the US Federal Reserve will have a “negative impact on the world”, including China, and should not be “dismissed”, according to a top Chinese researcher.The US central bank last week signalled it is likely to ra...

Joe Rogan pledged more balance and better research for his podcast in an apology aimed at quelling growing controversy about misleading coronavirus information that plunged Spotify Technology SA into controversy last week.“If I’ve p***ed you off,...

Caspar Tsui Ying-wai, Hong Kong’s first political appointee to rise through the ranks to become a minister, has now become its first official of that rank to resign under a cloud in a decade.The 44-year-old secretary for home affairs said on Monday...

China has published videos showing its Mars orbiter Tianwen-1 circling above the northern ice caps of the red planet taken using its “selfie stick” on Monday, the eve of Lunar New Year.In a pink-tinted video, the spacecraft can be seen flying aga...

People across Asia prepared for muted Lunar New Year celebrations on Monday amid concerns over the coronavirus and virulent Omicron variant, even as increasing vaccination rates raised hopes that the Year of the Tiger might bring life back closer to ...

Hong Kong welfare officials say they will improve inspections of children’s homes after 20 staff of a scandal-hit residential facility were arrested for allegedly abusing at least 35 toddlers.They also defended their decision to not take over the c...

Bringing China on board is “critical” to promoting transparency in sovereign lending, according to a report by the Bretton Woods Committee, amid a rise in sovereign debt distress in emerging markets caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.The influential...

Four major Japanese manga publishers said they will sue a US company accused of hosting servers for a piracy site, in the latest offensive against illegal copies of their graphic novels.Piracy is a long-running problem for Japan’s internationally r...

Slovenian officials have attempted to head off a potential dispute with China by clarifying that any Taiwanese diplomatic presence in the country will refer to “Taipei” rather than “Taiwan”.The move comes amid speculation that the Alpine nati...

Beijing reported more than 20 new Covid-19 cases over the weekend with just days to go until the start of the Winter Olympics.According to the city’s health commission, 23 new symptomatic cases were reported in the capital on the weekend, including...

A Myanmar court added electoral fraud to the charges already facing ousted leaders Aung San Suu Kyi and Win Myint on Monday, a day ahead of the first anniversary of the coup that toppled them.The verdicts are expected in about six months, people fami...

The troubles at soon-to-fold cruise operator Genting Hong Kong have emerged as an issue of contention in Malaysia’s tumultuous politics, with the opposition and government sparring over whether its liquidation will hurt local banks that had lent it...

Woman alleged to be a gold-digger in online rumours based on photo of her with her grandfatherA Chinese woman became the victim of online rumour after a man wrongly claimed she had married an ageing tycoon based on a picture that actually turned out ...

The Philippines’ police are looking into claims of an alleged assassination threat against presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jnr that was made in a post on the social media platform TikTok.At the Philippines National Police headquarters in Ca...

Taiwan’s gift of 150,000 doses of its domestically developed Medigen Covid-19 vaccine has arrived in Somalia’s breakaway Somaliland region, the Taiwanese foreign ministry said on Monday.As part of the island’s renewed pandemic diplomacy push, T...

In the past couple of months, a 31-year-old migrant worker has gained notoriety in China for teaching himself English and immersing himself in philosophical studies while doing blue-collar work for more than a decade.When he was not toiling away in g...

For S$50 (US$36.88) a day, Wayne Chia will drive you around, play mahjong with your relatives, and peel shrimp for you so your hands won’t get dirty.More importantly, he’ll pretend to be your boyfriend so that you can avoid the dreaded “why are...

A man and a woman were jailed on sedition charges on Monday, the former for conspiring to distribute leaflets advocating Hong Kong independence, and the latter for putting up posters insulting the judges in the city’s first national security trial....

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is pushing to quicken the pace of booster vaccinations, as a poll showed his voter support slipping months ahead of a key upper house election.Kishida inspected a military-run vaccination centre on Monday, as a s...

Hitoshi Nakama’s small fishing boat has been approached or even chased by Chinese coastguard vessels off disputed islands in the East China Sea more times than he cares to recall, but he says that will not stop him returning to waters he insists ar...

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has asked Beijing to remove her home affairs chief, the highest-ranking official to be caught up in a scandal surrounding an Omicron-hit birthday bash this month, while two other members of her team will re...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to Australia in February to meet counterparts from Japan, India and Australia to discuss Indo-Pacific coordination, the Australian government said on Monday.The two-day meeting of the Quadril...

Hong Kong’s leader will not attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, instead remaining in the city to supervise anti-pandemic efforts after local health officials raised concerns about a rise in untraceable Covid-19 cases.Ho...