Increased China purchases of Russian natural gas will not make up for the loss of the European market, but their real importance to Moscow will be as a channel for necessary goods in the face of strict Western sanctions, according to a leading energy...

When Covid-19 ripped through India in 2020-21, several million people are thought to have died. Desperate efforts to stem the pandemic hurt the battle against another huge killer: tuberculosis.India is the home to a quarter of the world’s TB infect...

A recent incident of “close distance manoeuvring” by a Chinese coastguard vessel in the disputed South China Sea “constrained” the movement of a Philippine ship sailing nearby, the Philippines’ coastguard reported on Sunday.The March 2 inci...

Myanmar’s junta will “annihilate” opponents, army chief Min Aung Hlaing said on Sunday as the military staged a show of force on the anniversary of its bloodiest crackdown so far on democracy protests.The Southeast Asian country has been in cha...

Hong Kong’s leader has fuelled talk she will not be seeking re-election after saying it will be up to the next administration to conduct a full review into the city’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with her in an advisory role.Chief Execut...

Globalisation, which has both fans and detractors alike, is being tested like never before after the one-two punch of Covid-19 and war.The pandemic had already raised questions about the world’s reliance on an economic model that has broken trade b...

For the People’s Liberation Army, it is one of the most “important and pressing” issues of the time.To observers, it is essential if China is to defend itself and keep peace in the region in an era of evolving international relations.The pressi...

Majann Lazo used to hate doing the dishes as a child. But she had to overcome her aversion and soon learned to handle a multitude of chores considered the responsibility of firstborn children, especially those who are female, in many Asian societies ...

Hong Kong will reduce a 14-day suspension for flights carrying in passengers infected with Covid-19 to a week with the trigger for this ban kept at three cases, a move the city’s leader has justified as striking a balance between contagion risks an...

Recovery workers have found the second black box of China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on Sunday, potentially offering vital clues about the accident in which 132 people died.The flight data recorder was fou...

More than 50 struggling Hong Kong residents including members of ethnic minority communities and former offenders are appealing to the government to include them in the HK$10,000 e-voucher scheme.The Society for Community Organisation (SoCO), which i...

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have announced a three-day truce with the Saudi-led coalition and dangled the prospect of a “permanent” ceasefire on the seventh anniversary of a brutal conflict that has left millions on the brink of famine.A day after a ...

Hong Kong restaurants are tired of the confusion over checking the vaccination status of customers trying to enter their premises, especially those who have recovered from Covid-19.With numerous types of electronic and paper documents available to sh...

China’s semiconductor supply chain is facing fresh risks after the local authority in Zhangjiang, known as Shanghai’s Silicon Valley, extended a strict lockdown in residential areas to contain an Omicron outbreak, following similar disruption in ...

Anti-tobacco advocates have for years pushed for a “tobacco endgame”, where young people will be banned from ever buying cigarettes in their lifetimes. New Zealand got the ball rolling when it announced its intention to gradually raise the minimu...

When the inhabitants of Trapeang Rung learned in 2017 that a 1,000-hectare banana plantation would be established in their village by Longmate Agriculture and was set to provide hundreds of jobs, there was jubilation, recalls Kem Lot. The 59-year-old...

It was a rare moment when Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor admitted last week to shortcomings in handling the city’s Omicron-fuelled fifth wave of Covid-19 infections.Announcing that a controversial mass testing exercise for the...

The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin was shrouded in darkness on Saturday evening as the lights were turned off to mark Earth Hour on Saturday.The global event encourages people to switch off their lights for an hour to bring attention to the issue of clim...

As Ukrainian forces fight on the front lines to halt Russia’s military advance, another battle is taking place in Chinese cyberspace.Ukrainians who can speak Mandarin are taking to Chinese social media platforms in an effort to provide information ...

Saudi Arabia and Qatar expressed regret on Saturday at a lack of attention to Middle East conflicts, as the West pushes them to show more solidarity with Ukraine.“The humanitarian suffering that we have seen in Ukraine, and everyone is talking abou...

President Joe Biden intends to propose a spending plan for the 2023 budget year that would cut projected deficits by more than US$1 trillion over the next decade and propose a minimum tax on billionaires, according to a fact sheet released on Saturda...

Iran’s top diplomat said on Saturday that the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard accepted the idea of continuing to be sanctioned by the US if it meant the restoration of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.Iranian Foreign Minister ...

US President Joe Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin must not remain in power on Saturday, as he delivered a major speech in Warsaw, Poland, rallying European allies for a “long-haul” resistance to Russian aggression.“For God’s sake, ...

Thousands of Russians marched through Prague on Saturday, waving the white-blue-white flag that has become a symbol of protests against Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.Carrying signs that read “Killer” over a picture of President Vladimir Putin an...

Two rockets hit the outskirts of Ukraine’s western city of Lviv on Saturday, wounding five people, regional Governor Maksym Kozytskyy said, as residents were told to seek shelter from what appeared to be the first attack within the city’s limits....

The death of Taylor Hawkins, the drummer of American rock band Foo Fighters, is being investigated by Colombian authorities after he died at a hotel in Bogota, a source at the attorney general’s office said on Saturday.The band announced late on Fr...

Ukraine’s stiff resistance to the Russian invasion, which has turned Moscow’s advance into a grinding war of attrition, has underscored the importance to American allies of the need to be prepared for any eventuality, the top US Army commander in...

The operation of Hong Kong’s care homes, hit hard by Covid-19 in the latest wave of infections, will be reviewed to ensure future outbreaks of the coronavirus can be handled quickly, the welfare minister has said.Secretary for Labour and Welfare La...

China has become a close ally of Russia, and is seen by some as tacitly backing Moscow’s war in Ukraine. But China also has strong economic and defence ties with Ukraine – it is the eastern European nation’s biggest trading partner, and Kyiv he...

President Joe Biden met with Ukraine’s defence and foreign ministers, and with Poland’s president, assuring them that the US vow to defend Nato territory is a “sacred commitment”.The comment came as Biden met with Polish President Andrzej Dud...

Chinese authorities confirmed on Saturday night that all 132 passengers and crew from China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 were killed when their aircraft crashed in southern China.The announcement from the search and rescue command centre in Wuzhou,...

Hong Kong police have arrested eight people on suspicion of laundering more than HK$10 million (US$1.27 million) in crime proceeds from 30 fraud cases last year and producing fake banknotes.Police said of the six men and two women arrested on Friday,...

In the picturesque Thai resort of Ko Phi Phi, bamboo sharks have been released into the wild after being bred for several months as part of an important environmental project.The Save Our Sharks project aims to support the fragile marine ecosystem ar...

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made an unexpected whirlwind tour of South Asia this week, with unannounced stops in India, Afghanistan and Nepal.The secrecy surrounding the visits comes as Beijing scrambles to drum up support against intense scruti...

No children who received a Covid-19 vaccine injection have reported any serious side effects, a government health adviser has said as he called for parents to receive more education on jabs safety to ease their concerns.Professor Ivan Hung Fan-ngai, ...

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida escorted the US ambassador Rahm Emanuel to his hometown Hiroshima on Saturday to pay respects to atomic bombing victims and warned that the world is again facing threats of nuclear attacks stemming from Russia’...

Hundreds of residents braved the rain on Saturday to queue up for hours outside various Swatch stores in Hong Kong hoping to be among the first to get their hands on newly launched Bioceramic MoonSwatch watches, with some looking to resell them at a ...

Some 16,000 coronavirus patients in Hong Kong have been prescribed two new oral anti-Covid drugs with favourable outcomes and few side effects being reported, according to the Hospital Authority.The authority bought the antiviral drugs molnupiravir, ...

The mayor of a war-scarred town in northern Ukraine said Saturday that the slow advance of Russian troops means that large-scale evacuations from the town are no longer possible. Chernigiv has been a centre of fighting between Russian troops and Ukra...

Health authorities in Shanghai have rejected calls for a swift lockdown to contain a Covid-19 outbreak, citing the potential impact on the national and global economy.“I saw the proposal online saying why can’t we make up our minds to lock the ci...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on energy producing countries on Saturday to increase output so that Russia cannot use its oil and gas wealth to “blackmail” other nations.Addressing the Doha Forum international conference via video ...

China has started a diplomatic drive to promote its plans to end the enduring conflicts in the Middle East and Horn of Africa, including an eight-nation peace conference in East Africa.Last week the country’s newly appointed special envoy for the H...

Nearly 180,000 people have applied for a HK$10,000 unemployment subsidy within the first three days of applications opening, with Hong Kong’s leader saying the scheme will have no upper limit on the overall funds distributed.Chief Executive Carrie ...

Students in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu have forced the university authorities to lift an extended lockdown on campus after protesting over strict restrictions that one undergraduate said meant even dogs had more freedom of movement.Chin...

Hong Kong customs officers have arrested two teenagers after confiscating HK$110 million (US$14 million) worth of cocaine concealed in an electric transformer that arrived from Costa Rica.Lee Ka-ming, head of customs’ drug investigation group, on S...

Families of the victims of the China Eastern Airlines plane crash have been the focus of official support and close monitoring in the aftermath of the worst incident of its kind in decades.In all, 132 people were on board the aircraft when flight MU5...

Children and teenagers in Hong Kong have enrolled in online classes for everything from music lessons to art and wellness programmes after their early summer break was brought forward during the city’s worst wave of coronavirus infections.Operators...

Anti-tobacco advocates have for years pushed for a “tobacco endgame”, where young people will be banned from ever buying cigarettes in their lifetimes. New Zealand got the ball rolling when it announced its intention to gradually raise the minimu...

Thousands of people were ordered to evacuate from their homes near a Philippine volcano on Saturday after an eruption sent ash and steam hundreds of metres into the sky.Taal volcano, which sits in a lake south of Manila, exploded with a “short-live...

For Chinese archaeology, 2021 was a banner year highlighted by the global breakthrough that was the beautifully preserved ancient gold masks discovered at Sanxingdui.Last week, the Institute of Archaeology under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences...