Japanese rock band One OK Rock has abruptly cancelled the Hong Kong leg of its Asian tour in early May due to “unforeseen circumstances”, leaving local fans disappointed. The announcement on Thursday followed a similar move in early March, when t...

China’s exports of energy storage equipment are expected to keep rising as the US-Israeli war in Iran renews global calls for energy independence, industry insiders and analysts said. The total export value of Chinese inverters – key components i...

Investment banking fees across Asia-Pacific excluding Japan reached US$5.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026, with China’s Citic Securities ranking as the region’s top earner. The total in the first three months fell 5 per cent from a year ear...

China’s state assets watchdog has established a new department to oversee foreign investments, as firms continue to expand their global footprint amid an increasingly turbulent geopolitical outlook. The new bureau, launched by the State-owned Asset...

A team of Chinese scientists has found a way to introduce plant-based, light-activated nanoparticles into animal cells to improve their health and lifespan. When the team’s photosynthetic nanoparticles were transplanted into rats and rabbits with d...

Israel’s military said Thursday it had struck and killed a close adviser to Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem in Beirut a day earlier, when Israeli strikes pummelled Lebanon. “Yesterday, the IDF struck in the Beirut area and eliminated Ali Yusuf Harshi...

A bus driver has been killed and 16 others have been injured in two separate crashes involving eight vehicles within two hours on Hong Kong’s San Tin Highway. Police said on Thursday that an accident involving two cars and a taxi occurred on the si...

We have selected five Trending in China stories from the past seven days that resonated with our readers. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. How Gingle Wang went from clueless novice to one of Taiwan’s t...

Unitree Robotics, one of China’s largest robot makers, will debut the R1, its cheapest humanoid model, on the international market via Alibaba Group Holding’s AliExpress marketplace next week, according to two sources familiar with the matter on ...

North Korea’s recent string of weapons tests, including cluster munitions, marks its renewed show of military strength ahead of the US-China summit next month, even as Beijing may become a go-between to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula. Analys...

Several major Chinese banks have clawed back staff bonuses or cut salaries amid a sluggish economic recovery and Beijing’s ongoing scrutiny of the financial sector. In their annual reports, an increasing number of lenders, ranging from state-owned ...

A Hong Kong man has been jailed for 11 months and fined HK$4,500 (US$574) for selling his digital wallet so it could be used by a crime syndicate to receive HK$25,500 defrauded from donors who believed the money would be used to help victims of the T...

Hong Kong customs has seized about 10,000 suspected counterfeit football jerseys and other unlicensed goods worth an estimated HK$64 million (US$8 million) ahead of the World Cup finals in June. During the 19-day operation code-named “Dawnbreaker�...

The Philippine Coast Guard unveiled on Thursday its first dedicated command centre in the Spratly island chain, a flashpoint in the disputed South China Sea that has been the site of repeated confrontations with Chinese vessels. The headquarters of a...

China never fails to deliver strange, funny and almost unbelievable viral stories. Today, the SCMP offers a glimpse into some recent quirky moments, from a “haunted” flat that keeps getting resold, to a lift that stops at only one floor and a sus...

Russia is seeking to leverage a global natural gas supply crunch to lure energy-starved South Asia into purchasing shipments from its US-sanctioned facilities, according to people familiar with the matter. The shipments were being offered at a 40 per...

⁠US President ⁠Donald Trump said on Wednesday ⁠its military ships and aircraft will remain around Iran and threatened that the US will start “shooting” again unless Tehran fully complies with the deal reached ‌with Washington. “All U.S....

With the countdown on in earnest to the PLA’s centenary next year, President Xi Jinping has urged the corruption-battered top ranks of the military to refine their ideological purity to give the armed forces a “brand new look”. Xi told senior P...

Hong Kong authorities have ruled out on-site partial redevelopment as a long-term housing solution for victims of the deadly Tai Po blaze, turning down a detailed proposal submitted by 400 displaced residents to rebuild new flats on the land. The Hou...

Singapore’s position against negotiating with Iran over access to the Strait of Hormuz has triggered backlash from Malaysian politicians, who saw its statements as “lecturing” them on how best to approach gaining safe passage through the vital ...

A technical fault in the interconnection between Hong Kong’s two power providers caused a brief voltage dip on Thursday, resulting in about 90 reports of people trapped in lifts within a 30-minute window. The Fire Services Department said it record...

China looks set to claim another coup in its mission to build AI talent, with one of the world’s top scholars in artificial intelligence for robots listed among PhD supervisors at a Shanghai university. Su Hao, who holds two doctorates – one in m...

German automotive giant Volkswagen will launch three new electric vehicle (EV) models in mainland China over the next two weeks, developed using technology from Chinese firms. The move comes at a time when international marques are struggling on the ...

A wolf that escaped from a zoo in South Korea remained at large on Thursday, authorities said, prompting a local school to close over safety concerns as the search continued. The male wolf – born in 2024 and weighing about 30kg (66lbs) – escaped ...

Hong Kong will roll out short-term subsidies and fee waivers to ease pressures on the transport sector grappling with oil price fluctuations, the South China Morning Post has learned. A government insider said on Thursday the support was expected to ...

Across much of the world, young people are turning away from military service. In Thailand, they are queuing up. Voluntary enlistment in the Southeast Asian nation has climbed steadily over the past five years – so much so that in some districts, a...

I’ve yet to meet a parent who wished their child had more screen time. Though just how far the problem can go was laid bare in the recent case of KGM against Meta and Google in a US court. The 20-year-old plaintiff, KGM, sued the owners of Instagra...

Israeli strikes hit busy commercial and residential areas in central Beirut without warning on Wednesday, hours after a ceasefire was announced in the US-Israeli war with Iran. A total of 254 people were killed and over 1,100 ‌wounded across Lebano...

Japan’s famed cherry blossom season has become the latest battleground in a broader debate over overtourism, etiquette and how foreign visitors are portrayed when trouble flares. That debate sharpened this week after the conservative Sankei newspap...

Hong Kong’s identity as a world-leading international hub has never been static. It has been built over time through openness, adaptability and, crucially, diversity. Recent discussions about the city’s talent strategy, including concerns that th...

Government facilities in Singapore will take steps to reduce electricity consumption to boost the nation’s energy resilience as the conflict in the Middle East tightens global energy supplies. Immediate measures include setting the air-conditioner ...

The fearsome-sounding “Gangtie Jiliang” is designed to do what no machine has ever done before: delve straight down, kilometre after kilometre, into the heart of the Earth. Translated to English as “steel backbone”, Gangtie Jiliang is billed ...

A brave 89-year-old grandmother climbed from the 27th to the 21st floor on her building’s outer wall after accidentally locking herself in, shocking many people online. The woman in Beijing was spotted stuck outside a residential building’s 26th ...

Hong Kong food safety authorities have ordered an immediate halt to the sale of oysters from a French brand after suspected gastroenteritis cases emerged in the Netherlands. The Centre for Food Safety on Wednesday ordered the trade to suspend imports...

A two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran is unlikely to significantly ease fuel prices in the near term without a complete end to the conflict, Hong Kong economists have warned, citing uncertainties in the volatile situation. Economist...

China’s biopharmaceutical sector is seeing an uptick in deal-making, with sovereign wealth funds from Singapore and the United Arab Emirates joining Chinese state-backed investors to back next-generation drug developers. Shanghai-based Everest Medi...

Frustration and desperation are growing in Japan amid a search for an 11-year-old boy who disappeared more than two weeks ago in a rural part of Kyoto prefecture, with 700 police officers scouring abandoned properties in the mountains surrounding the...

China has completed one of Southeast Asia’s largest solar power projects in Laos, at a time when regional economies are stepping up efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels amid global energy disruptions in the Persian Gulf. The initial phase of ...

North Korea conducted a slew of new weapons tests, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, including one involving an electromagnetic weapon system and a carbon fibre bomb. The tests, which were conducted over three days from Monday to Wednesd...

Artificial intelligence has emerged as the driving force behind global trade growth, fuelled by a surge in data-centre buildouts at a time when geopolitical tensions are redrawing trade flows, according to McKinsey & Company. Global trade grew 6.5 pe...

Chinese buyers were the end destination of a five-year smuggling pipeline that drained an estimated US$917 million worth of stolen copper from Chile, authorities said on Wednesday after police dismantled the network in one of the largest organised cr...

Whether the US-Israeli war on Iran wraps up quickly or drags on, the repercussions will be felt for years, reshaping warfare, geopolitics and energy security as well as how the world sees the United States and its tactical and strategic capabilities....

Former US attorney general Pam Bondi does not plan to appear for a planned interview with a House of Representatives committee on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files following her firing by US President Donald Trump, the Justice Department told ...

As Asia grappled with the impact of the Iran war, a major pharmaceutical milestone quietly made the headlines. On March 20, the patent for semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy drugs, expired in several countries, ...

The two-week ceasefire the United States agreed to with Iran on Tuesday not only sets a deadline to seal a deal with Tehran, but leaves just days before the expiration of the 60-day legal limit for waging war without congressional authorisation that ...

Control of the Strait of Hormuz has emerged as the central fault line in US-Iran negotiations, with US President Donald Trump appearing to recast an earlier off-the-cuff idea into a more formal proposal that seeks to bridge Tehran’s push for domina...

A Canadian opposition legislator defected to the ruling Liberal Party on Wednesday, leaving Prime Minister Mark Carney on the verge of a parliamentary majority that would make it easier to push through his agenda. The centrist Liberals, ‌governing ...

A man has admitted stabbing four children to death at a kindergarten in Uganda, saying he believed killing them as human sacrifices would make him wealthy, prosecutors said on Wednesday. The defendant, Christopher Okello Onyum, 39, who holds both Uga...

A US federal judge on Wednesday handed down a sentence of 15 years in prison to a woman who pleaded guilty to selling actor Matthew Perry the ketamine that killed him in 2023. “You’re going to have to show some epic resilience,” Judge Sherilyn ...

A Long Island architect who led a secret life as a serial killer pleaded guilty on Wednesday to murdering seven women and admitted he killed an eighth in a string of long-unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach killings. Rex Heuermann, 62, entered t...