Chinese AI tools have come under fire for allowing deepfake images that critics say are a form of “digital public shaming” targeting women. Free Nora, a grass-roots feminist media collective in China, reported last week that many internet users h...

Premier Li Qiang has called for deeper technological cooperation with Germany and highlighted opportunities under China’s latest five-year plan – a move that could help ease tensions with the EU over the war in Ukraine and years of trade disputes...

In China, some young people are paying steep prices for wish candles sold by influencers, hoping to rekindle a romance. One such influencer, Li Zhuofan, built a following of more than 600,000 on mainland social media after appearing on the Russian re...

Malaysia is weighing new legal measures to curb LGBTQ dating platforms, widening concern among rights groups that the country is pushing deeper into morality-driven internet regulation, even as its control of global app stores remains limited. Author...

Andre Geim, the 67-year-old Nobel Prize-winning physicist known in China as the “father of graphene”, will join the University of Hong Kong as a chair professor in April, according to the university. Geim, who led a team at the University of Manc...

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz voiced concerns about Chinese industrial overcapacity after meeting President Xi Jinping, as he seeks to rein in a trade deficit that has grown fourfold since 2020. “This dynamic is not healthy,” Merz told reporte...

Semiconductor designer Hygon Information Technology and supercomputer maker Sugon, two stalwarts of China’s tech self-reliance efforts, reported surging revenue for 2025 amid strong domestic demand for home-grown computing systems. The two Shanghai...

Two men were arrested on Thursday after shots were fired at a car carrying the Malaysian border police chief, in what authorities believe was retribution for a crackdown on rampant smuggling. The porous border between Malaysia and Thailand is a notor...

The arrest of a Japanese journalist in Iran has puzzled observers and prompted speculation that it is linked to the US threat to attack the country over its nuclear programme. On Tuesday, Radio Free Europe reported the arrest of Shinnosuke Kawashima,...

A video of a young girl being shoved while posing for a photo at Tokyo’s iconic Shibuya Crossing has amassed over 9 million views in one day and ignited an online row over safety, manners and tourist behaviour. The clip was posted on Wednesday by a...

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet said on Wednesday that scam centres were destroying his country’s economy and giving the nation a bad name – pushing back on allegations of government connivance. The nation has emerged as a hotspot for crime...

The Chinese embassy in Angola has issued a warning about a crackdown on illegal immigration in the African country, urging its citizens and companies to make sure they follow the correct visa procedures. In a social media post on Wednesday, the embas...

A Hong Kong court has sentenced the father of a wanted activist to eight months in jail for attempting to cash out an insurance policy worth more than HK$88,000 (US$11,251) in his daughter’s name, rejecting suggestions that the sentence amounted to...

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, sales director Sabir Ansari relied on Deliveroo almost daily for burgers and pasta delivered to his door in Singapore. Over time, the 31-year-old said, it became harder to justify the service’s costs as rival...

China logged an overall increase in travel during the just-concluded Chinese New Year break compared with last year’s holiday period, but analysts said spending per capita stayed flat. The country saw 596 million domestic trips over the extended pu...

China has doubled down on its hard line against any nuclear escalation in Ukraine and called for restraint following Russia’s claims that Britain and France are planning to give Kyiv nuclear weapons. Asked on Wednesday about Moscow’s accusation t...

The Chinese New Year is traditionally a time for family reunions, but this year a growing number of young Chinese people chose to avoid going home. This year’s Spring Festival holiday took place between February 15 and 23, which is the longest brea...

Hong Kong’s financial chief has defended his budget against public criticism over the lack of “sweeteners”, stressing that the government must balance its finances with long-term investments for the city’s benefit. Financial Secretary Paul Ch...

Hong Kong’s early childhood education sector will receive its lowest level of subsidy in more than a decade as the number of preschools falls to a 13-year low, with the government cancelling two grants for kindergartens in the new school year. Acco...

A nearly blind refugee from Myanmar missing since his release from a Buffalo jail into the custody of US Border Patrol has been found dead on a downtown street, according to city authorities on Wednesday. Police officers in the upstate New York city ...

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), which operates Asia’s third-largest stock exchange, reported a record-high annual profit for the second straight year, thanks to higher market turnover and robust listing activity, it said in a stock exchang...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has warned that Pyongyang is ready for confrontation with the US but has also left the door open for dialogue, depending on Washington’s stance. The prospects for North Korea-US relations hinge “entirely on the att...

Chinese scientists have developed a new technique that solidifies liquid into three-dimensional objects in under a second, making for the world’s fastest 3D printing. 3D printing is no longer a novel concept – whether it is tech enthusiasts creat...

We have put together stories from our coverage of Hong Kong’s 2026-27 budget. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Budget reveal: government turns matchmaker with stronger hand in shaping economy Hong Kong...

More than 8,000 personnel from 30 countries are taking part in Cobra Gold, one of the largest and longest running multinational military exercises in Southeast Asia. The annual exercises are being held in many provinces across Thailand until March 6,...

Beijing intervened and helped get charges dropped against three Chinese scientists at the University of Michigan who were accused of helping a colleague smuggle biological materials into the US, defence lawyers said. The materials turned out to be mo...

As Manila scrambles to investigate links between convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and a Philippines-based team he allegedly hired to scrub his criminal history from the internet, the revelation has cast an unwelcome spotlight on a relatively...

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz became the seventh world leader to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing this year, when the two held discussions on February 25. US President Donald Trump may be next on the list, as he is scheduled to arrive ...

Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies has joined hands with US companies OpenAI and Google, among others, to advance global open-source standards in the rapidly advancing field of agentic artificial intelligence. The development marks a rare collabo...

A Hong Kong appellate court has quashed Jimmy Lai Chee-ying’s fraud conviction for operating a consultancy office from his now-defunct Apple Daily tabloid-style newspaper, finding the prosecution failed to prove the jailed former media boss had mad...

A proposed scheme in Japan offering cash rewards for tip-offs about illegal foreign workers has won support from residents frustrated by what they see as weak enforcement of immigration rules, but migrant advocates warn the policy could deepen distru...

Nvidia has yet to generate any revenue from its H200 chips in China and does not know if any sales will be allowed in the country, the company said, as the US chip giant reported record quarterly revenue on surging demand for data centre processors. ...

I have a habit of re-watching movies during festive times. As we entered the Year of the Horse, one movie that I watched again during Chinese New Year was Marriage Story, a legal drama released on streaming platforms in 2019. The story centres on the...

Hong Kong will cancel the two-decade-old “A Symphony of Lights” within the year, with the South China Morning Post learning that the fixture will be replaced with immersive projections across various districts to upgrade the city’s offerings. T...

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, buoyed by a commanding majority in the powerful lower house after this month’s election, is poised to revive one of her longest-standing conservative causes: making it a crime to deface the national flag. At...

There are few assets on earth as strategically sensitive as the ports flanking the Panama Canal. They sit at the hinge of global trade, where container ships glide between oceans and geopolitics moves just beneath the surface. That is why Panama’s ...

Communist Party cadres have been put on notice over governance and performance appraisals as the ruling body counts down to leadership changes across the country and the start of the next five-year plan. In a campaign that will continue until July, o...

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz travelled to Beijing with a delicate brief: vouch for a shrinking slice of big German firms still bullish on China, while defending the growing number being squeezed. On day one of his first official visit, Merz trod ...

China widened its lead over South Korea in critical technologies in recent years, according to an official review by Seoul’s science ministry, as Beijing doubles down on strategic investment in advanced research. The expanding gap underscores the n...

A Chinese father who, after divorcing, confiscated more than 80,000 yuan (US$11,500) of his son’s Chinese New Year “red envelope” money to cover the expense of a new marriage ceremony, has lost a lawsuit that demanded he return the full amount....

Hong Kong’s finance chief on Wednesday lived up to his credentials as a chartered accountant when he produced a surprisingly robust budget, flush with surpluses and full of initiatives to be funded through substantial means at his disposal. One sig...

It began with a late-night declaration of martial law and has ended, for now, with a gavel. In the 443 days between those two moments, South Korea’s democracy was tested in ways most countries never experience. Citizens formed human chains to block...

Hilary Knight, captain of the victorious US women’s Olympic ice hockey team, said Wednesday it was unfortunate that a “distasteful joke” by President Donald Trump had overshadowed the achievements of US athletes at the Milan-Cortina Games. The ...

Washington will keep China tariffs at their current level as the Trump administration seeks “continuity” after the Supreme Court struck down the levies it imposed last year, according to US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, weeks ahead of a hi...

Weee, an online grocer specialising in Asian and Latino goods, is betting that America’s appetite for ethnic food and grocery delivery will outlast a sharp drop in immigration, with its founder forecasting years of double-digit growth even as the T...

South Korean retail investors, known for their aggressive trading style, are ramping up exposure to Chinese artificial intelligence-related stocks, even as their home market ranks among the world’s top performers. Data from SEIBro, a portal operate...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that he and US President Donald Trump agreed that the next session of trilateral talks in March on a war settlement should lead to a meeting of the countries’ leaders. Zelensky, speaking afte...

At a defining moment in human history, the world gathered at the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi. For us in India, welcoming heads of state, heads of government, delegates and innovators from across the world was a moment of immense pride and joy....

Cuba’s coastguard shot dead four people and injured six others travelling in a US-registered speedboat in an exchange of fire off the Cuban coast on Wednesday, the interior ministry in Havana said. The “illegal” Florida-registered boat was dete...