Hong Kong’s residential property market made gradual and steady gains in the Year of the Snake, with the momentum set to continue in the Year of the Horse, according to the city’s largest real estate agencies. “The Year of the Snake marked the ...

China’s military and a tech firm have released high-resolution satellite imagery showing the US military build-up around Iran, amid reports that Washington may strike Tehran as soon as this weekend. Images posted on social media on Thursday by Chin...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Hong Kong astronomy enthusiasts can expect a “blood moon” lunar eclipse early next month, with residents ...

An airport in Florida will soon be renamed after US President Donald Trump, after a bill proposing the change was approved by the state’s legislature on Thursday. Trump, a real estate mogul who has plastered his name on buildings around the world, ...

Iran partially and temporarily closed the strategic Strait of Hormuz during a military drill on Tuesday, thrusting the vital shipping route under the global spotlight once again. The hours-long suspension was the first time Tehran had restricted traf...

An attack on a Hong Kong man in the Japanese city of Sapporo that triggered travel warnings from Chinese authorities was reportedly caused by a dispute over “dining etiquette”. According to Japanese media this week, a 50-year-old company executiv...

The US trade deficit widened sharply in December and the annual goods trade deficit rose by 2.1 per cent year on year to a record US$1.24 trillion in 2025, despite the widespread imposition of tariffs, US Commerce Department data showed. The goods tr...

Hong Kong authorities are set to unveil a resettlement plan as early as Saturday for owners who lost their homes in the deadly Wang Fuk Court fire, offering buy-back options at higher-than-expected prices, the South China Morning Post has learned. Go...

Ousted South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol on Friday remained defiant in his first reaction to a life sentence for rebellion handed down by a Seoul court the previous day. In a statement released by his lawyers, Yoon maintained that his abrupt and s...

I would like to explore some rather interesting data buried deep in the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Economic and Social Trends 2026 report: an estimated 15.3 per cent of jobs worldwide depended on foreign demand in 2024. In other word...

May Lau was jolted awake by loud, urgent knocking on her cabin door in the early hours of Friday – and she knew immediately something was wrong. “They were knocking so loudly, I thought there was no way this was a drill,” she said in Mandarin. ...

China has joined Russia in congratulating North Korea on the conclave of its ruling party, hailing economic achievements under the leadership of Kim Jong-un and pledging to work with Pyongyang to promote regional peace. According to Xinhua, the Centr...

Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto has called for a nationwide drive to replace corrugated zinc roofs with clay tiles, saying he wants to shed what he describes as a “rusty” image while cooling homes, reviving a struggling industry and boos...

A video clip of a woman in her 70s using ritual hell money or toy cards to “buy” snacks at a food street in eastern China without any trouble has touched mainland Chinese internet users. The story unfolded on a food street in Zaozhuang, Shandong ...

As German Chancellor Friedrich Merz prepares for his high-stakes visit to Beijing from February 24 to February 27, he faces a new reality – China has become less reliant on Germany. While China is once again Germany’s top trading partner, the rel...

Hongkongers made more than 1.4 million outbound trips over the Lunar New Year holiday, up by about 20 per cent from 2019, while the number of arrivals over the same period remained lower than pre-pandemic levels. Immigration Department data released ...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. The Hong Kong Observatory detected locally felt tremors from a 4.0-magnitude earthquake in Guangdong province...

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi pledged on Friday to make Japan “strong and prosperous”, while hitting out at China and pledging to keep “hitting the growth button” following her party's landslide election win. “China is intensifying its atte...

More than 1,000 Kenyans have been recruited to fight on Russia’s side in the war in Ukraine, according to a Kenyan intelligence report presented to lawmakers this week, five times more than authorities had previously estimated. The Russian embassy ...

The artificial intelligence boom has swept through consumer electronics – from smart wearables and AI-powered home devices to voice-interactive toys and robotic pets – but its most significant impact may be on the interface itself. Technology is ...

Until Thursday morning, it had been nearly four centuries since the arrest of a senior British royal. On his 66th birthday, the late Queen Elizabeth’s favourite son was detained on suspicion of misconduct in public office. By evening, the former pr...

US President Donald Trump declared the war in Gaza “over” at his inaugural “Board of Peace” meeting on Thursday, even as regional analysts warned that Israeli military operations could resume within weeks. At the gathering in Washington, atte...

Singapore street performer Bryan Wong may have performed all around the world, but few gigs can compare to the one where Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong randomly turned up in the audience. The 29-year-old acrobatics artist was performing his Circles ...

Hong Kong International Airport’s second terminal, set to fully open in May, is projected to serve 15 million travellers by the end of this year, with a midterm goal of increasing capacity to 30 million. The target was revealed by Rock Chen Chung-n...

Hong Kong’s public hospitals recorded a year-on-year decline of up to a 15 per cent in the number of patients seeking emergency treatment during the first three days of the Lunar New Year holiday, following fee adjustments introduced at the start o...

Chinese demand for overseas schooling, holidays and medical treatment has contributed to a persistent deficit in the country’s services trade, but signs of a tentative counter-current are emerging as a growing stream of foreign patients heads to Ch...

Twelve police officers have been arrested in Malaysia for allegedly extorting about 200,000 ringgit (US$51,000) in cryptocurrency from a group of Chinese nationals during a midnight raid on a house in Selangor, the country’s wealthiest state. The a...

Venezuela’s National Assembly on Thursday unanimously approved a long-awaited amnesty law that could free hundreds of political prisoners jailed for being government detractors. But the law excludes those who have been prosecuted or convicted of pr...

Zeekr, the premium electric vehicle (EV) brand owned by Geely Auto, has entered the Italian market, with customer deliveries and retail openings set to follow in spring. The move is part of its broader European expansion, following the launch of sale...

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please conside...

Actor Eric Dane, who played the handsome ⁠Dr Mark Sloan ⁠on the hit television ⁠series Grey’s Anatomy, died on Thursday aged 53, his family said, less than a year after revealing that he suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. Fo...

Once a rival, always a rival. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off the busiest day of India’s AI Summit in New Delhi, he orchestrated a photo op with 13 other business and political leaders, all standing in a line and holding each other’s h...

Driven by Chinese demand, Zimbabwe produced a record 352.7 million kilograms of tobacco – valued at about US$1.2 billion – in last year’s marketing season. This represents a major turnaround for an industry that, if not for Chinese investment, ...

Nasa on Thursday blamed what it called engineering vulnerabilities in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft along with internal agency mistakes in a sharply critical report assessing a botched mission that left two astronauts stranded in space. The US spac...

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he was directing the Pentagon and other government agencies to identify and release files related to extraterrestrials and UFOs because of “tremendous interest”. Trump made the announcement in a soc...

The 18-year ordeal of Norida Akmal Ayob, 45, has cast a spotlight on a silent crisis: an unknown number of Malaysian women remain stranded in “dire straits” across Indonesia, unable to afford the journey home. According to Kosmo, many of these wo...

In the cutthroat world of Chinese civil service exams, the most dangerous opponent is not necessarily the person in the next seat: it is the “ghost” candidate designed to scare you away before you even show up. A bizarre case of inflating applica...

When Sanae Takaichi strode into her first press conference as Japan’s reappointed prime minister on Wednesday, she delivered a clear message to the economists and editorial boards warning her away from her signature tax pledge. Food consumption tax...

The Hong Kong government has started the year with initiatives that have far-reaching impacts on the city’s long-term growth. Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu announced that he is spearheading Hong Kong’s inaugural five-year plan, which will prom...

The White House announced a reciprocal trade agreement with Indonesia on Thursday while President Prabowo Subianto was in Washington to attend the first meeting of President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace”. Under the agreement, Southeast Asia�...

In quiet corners of China, a growing community is forging a deep, almost personal connection with history. Known as “history fangirls”, they visit the museums and mausoleums, write books about them and are keen on related merchandise. One such de...

Simon Leung has been without a full-time job since his contract ended in March 2024, after the Hong Kong government cut its budget for NGOs by 7 per cent. The social work event coordinator, who is in his late forties, now makes ends meet through gig ...

For nearly three decades, Washington and Tokyo have pledged to close a controversial US airbase in Okinawa, located in the middle of a densely populated island. But the plan is now facing new uncertainty. The US military would not return its Futenma ...

The world is a significant step closer to a universal vaccine for cold, flu, Covid and allergies, scientists believe. Experts at Stanford Medicine ⁠in the US have developed a universal ⁠vaccine that could be given as a nasal spray and ⁠could pr...

The US State Department will subsidise companies to roll out cheap smartphones running American software in the Indo-Pacific region, part of its “Pax Silica” initiative that seeks to shore up the resilience of the US artificial intelligence suppl...

An Austrian court late on Thursday found a 37-year-old amateur mountaineer guilty of manslaughter over his girlfriend’s death of cold near Austria’s highest summit after he left her to fetch help when she could not go on. The case ‌is unusual b...

Thousands of Hong Kong bank employees will receive a return-to-work lai see on Friday, with some banks handing out extra benefits and gifts to their staff amid improving economic and market sentiment. While it is a Chinese tradition for companies to ...

Working closely with like-minded countries remains the most effective strategy to counter an increasingly powerful China – in marked contrast to the policies of US President Donald Trump – said a former senior US official, while admitting that th...

In a landmark achievement, Chinese scientists have directly observed and manipulated prethermalisation – a critical transitional state in quantum systems – using the 78-qubit “Chuang-tzu 2.0” superconducting processor. This allows researchers...

Britain’s typically pro-royal public welcomed the arrest of the former prince Andrew, whose friendship with convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has turned him into an outcast. Some on Thursday appeared delighted that police were holding King ...