Chinese technology firms, including internet giants Tencent Holdings, Alibaba Group Holding and ByteDance, are offering easy or inexpensive access to OpenClaw, the popular open-source AI agent software amid a “lobster fever” in the country. Tence...

This year’s government work report delivered by Premier Li Qiang marks a shift from the perennial fixation with growth towards a greater emphasis on effective strategic development, especially social and people-centred outcomes. The “two sessions...

A Bangladeshi man who spent over three years on bail in Malaysia fighting local child pornography charges has been spirited to Alaska by the FBI to face what prosecutors describe as one of the most prolific child exploitation cases in US history. Zob...

A Hong Kong police officer has been jailed for 16 months for extorting HK$60,000 (US$7,675) from a rape suspect he believed had been wrongly released by prosecutors. The District Court on Tuesday condemned Constable Ng Wai-fung for taking the law int...

HSBC Holdings is phasing out its remote-work flexibility as it tightens its post-pandemic policy in Hong Kong, requiring frontline employees to be in the office or meet clients five days a week. In an internal memo seen by the South China Morning Pos...

Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways has further suspended all flights to and from Dubai until the end of March amid the war in the Middle East. The airline announced on Tuesday that all services between Hong Kong and the commercial hub in t...

The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un criticised the United States and South Korea for proceeding with their annual joint military exercises at a perilous moment for global security and warned that any challenge to the North’s safe...

A Hong Kong court has convicted a professor of offering a HK$1,000 (US$128) bribe to a property agent in an attempt to avoid paying HK$16,000 in compensation for breaching a tenancy agreement more than three years ago. Sha Tin Court on Tuesday reject...

China’s Ministry of Transport has summoned two maritime giants – Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) – for talks on “international shipping operations” amid legal disputes over the Panama Canal, a vital artery for global trade. ...

Escalating hostilities have forced nearly 700,000 people to flee their homes in Lebanon over the past week, a UN agency said on Monday, as the war between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah entered a second week. Lebanon has been pul...

China condemned it. Russia condemned it. Brazil condemned it. Brics, as a bloc, has said nothing. More than a week after US and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and triggered the worst regional crisis in years, th...

Scientists in China and Germany have identified four possible landing sites for China’s first crewed mission to the moon in an area that has also been of interest to Nasa. The Rimae Bode region on the lunar nearside is favoured for its diverse geol...

A Chinese woman has revealed online that her mother was married to her younger brother posthumously, who then embezzled her properties as her widower. The 27-year-old woman from central China’s Henan province, surnamed Sun, lost her mother Zhao Fan...

The Chinese embassy in the United Kingdom has warned its citizens in the country to beware of scams involving fraudsters posing as staff from Hong Kong’s anti-corruption watchdog. In a statement on Monday, the embassy said criminals had recently po...

Authorities are communicating with local oil companies to monitor how the war in the Middle East is affecting Hong Kong’s fuel market, amid a public backlash over what has been described as premature price hikes. Responding to a South China Morning...

Since the US and Israel unleashed strikes on Iran on February 28, war has spread across the region and casualties have been reported in countries across the Middle East. Due to reporting restrictions, Agence France-Presse has not been able to indepen...

Hong Kong Airlines will raise its fuel surcharges by up to 35.2 per cent from Thursday amid soaring oil prices driven by escalating conflict in the Middle East, becoming the first local carrier to do so. The airline announced on its website on Tuesda...

Explosive drone strikes by Haitian security forces targeting gangs have killed over 1,200 people, including 43 adult civilians and 17 children, Human Rights Watch said in a report on Tuesday, adding that operations have ramped up in recent months. Si...

Warissara* survived the crash. It was the next four hours that killed her. The 21-year-old had been riding home from her restaurant job on the night of February 20 last year, caught in heavy rain on a slick Bangkok road, when she came off her motorbi...

An investigation into allegedly corrupt flood-control projects worth billions of pesos is beginning to ripple through the Philippines’ public finances, slowing infrastructure spending and adding uncertainty to the government’s investment-driven g...

Whenever South African officials meet their Chinese counterparts to talk trade, the issue of the imbalance in China’s favour is almost certainly raised. But a discrepancy in the data from the two sides makes it hard to assess the trade gap. The lat...

Mandatory e-payment in Hong Kong taxis could attract more residents and visitors to use the service, as about 90 per cent of drivers are ready to meet the requirement ahead of its implementation next month, an industry representative has said. Ryan W...

Talks to advance US President Donald Trump’s plan to ⁠end the Gaza war have been on hold since last week when the US and Israel jointly attacked Iran, sparking a broader Middle East war, three sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations sai...

China’s export growth surged in the first two months of this year, as global demand booms, while experts pointed to the likelihood of strong momentum for the rest of the year as AI-driven tech investments ramp up. Exports jumped 21.8 per cent from ...

Three brothers, including two of America’s most successful luxury real estate brokers, were convicted of sex trafficking charges on Monday after a five-week trial over accusations that they used drugs and force to rape scores of women they had dazz...

China should bring in judges from overseas and expand arbitration pilot programmes to extend the international reach of its legal system, according to a former senior justice official. Xiong Xuanguo, who was vice-minister of justice from 2016 to 2023...

China’s annual parliamentary “two sessions” have been framed as a show of resilience in a turbulent world. That framing is not wrong but it is incomplete. Beijing’s deliberately lower 2026 economic growth target is less an admission of weakne...

Australia will deploy a military surveillance aircraft to the Middle East and send missiles to the United Arab ‌Emirates but will not put troops on the ground in Iran, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday. Australia’s military support ...

In modern China, the so-called 996 work culture, working six days a week from 9am to 9pm, has become a major point of contention. While some advocate for the gruelling schedule as a fast track to success, others decry it as “modern slavery”, poin...

Hong Kong could emerge as the world’s leading financial centre as the central government pushes to internationalise the yuan – a move that will advance the nation’s development under the 15th five-year plan while also driving the city’s own g...

A Singapore-rooted property family has put a rare residential estate in Hong Kong’s Southern district up for tender at about HK$300 million (US$38.4 million), testing demand for trophy homes as the city’s luxury housing market shows early signs o...

For the first time in over three decades, South Korea is doing something it hoped it would never do again: telling the market what it can charge for fuel. President Lee Jae Myung’s order is more than a mere policy reversal, however. For a country t...

China will develop a new financial law and a dedicated financial stability law this year, as Beijing works to defuse risks and prevent new ones as part of its ambition to become a financial superpower. In its work report delivered on Monday, the Nati...

Canada will allow TikTok to continue operating in the country, a complete reversal after the government had previously ordered the social media company to close its Canadian division for security reasons. In November 2024, under former prime minister...

Mainland Chinese investors can now buy shares in more than a dozen newly added Hong Kong-listed biotech and pharmaceutical companies after a reshuffle of the Stock Connect southbound trading list took effect on Monday, reflecting the sector’s growi...

China’s semiconductor entrepreneurs – including artificial intelligence chipmaker Cambricon Technologies and testing-and-packaging leader Tongfu Microelectronics – have voiced support for the country’s 15th five-year plan, which places renewe...

Hong Kong’s legislature will consider establishing a dedicated mechanism to scrutinise the implementation of approved bills and funding, drawing inspiration from mainland China’s law enforcement inspection system, according to its president. Legi...

Potential US innovation in recycling electronic waste, combined with refining and processing, will allow the US to leapfrog China in critical minerals, an official at the Department of Energy said on Monday amid Washington’s aggressive attempts to ...

In his decades toiling as a health official in a coastal Chinese province, Alan Chen has rarely had to study a subject about which he knew so little. “Nd is Neodymium. It is needed for almost all modern EV motors. China dominates the refining of Nd...

Around the world, news organisations are racing to create rules for artificial intelligence. Editors debate whether reporters may use AI to draft text, summarise documents or help in research. Some outlets promise readers they will disclose when a ma...

US President Donald Trump claimed on Monday that American military objectives in Iran were nearly complete and the conflict could be nearing an end - a declaration met with a defiant vow from Tehran that the war would end on its own terms. Speaking a...

Companies in southern China are feeling growing confidence in the state of US-China relations and are reinvesting cautiously in the country, according to a survey by a US business lobby group. The American Chamber of Commerce in South China (AmCham S...

It was a prank that turned deadly, authorities said: a group of teenagers unspooled rolls of toilet paper outside the home of a beloved high school teacher who tripped in the street and was struck by a pickup truck as the pranksters started to drive ...

Ships anchored in the Gulf or transiting the Strait of Hormuz are changing their tracking data to boast links to China in an attempt to evade Iranian attacks, according to data from shipping tracker Marine Traffic analysed by Agence France-Presse. Ir...

The United States and China traded barbs at a ⁠UN drugs meeting on ⁠Monday, with Washington accusing Beijing of ⁠failing to stop sales of precursor chemicals for fentanyl and China dismissing the allegation as false while calling the US irrespo...

Anthropic on Monday filed a lawsuit to block the Pentagon from placing it on a national security blacklist, escalating the artificial intelligence lab’s high-stakes battle with the US military over usage restrictions on its technology. Anthropic sa...

Hong Kong has been urged to extend its stock trading hours to maintain its status as an international financial hub, as competitors move towards near 24-hour operations to capture global liquidity. Speaking at the “Redefining Hong Kong 2026 Budget ...

China should not follow SpaceX in launching artificial intelligence data centres into orbit, but instead focus on more practical near-term space-based computing, a senior researcher has said. Gao Wen, a computer scientist at Peking University and a m...

A major fire in the heart of Glasgow crippled Scottish train services on Monday as firefighters worked to douse the blaze that destroyed a four-storey building next to Scotland’s busiest railway station. Glasgow Central Station was closed and all t...

Against the backdrop of oil prices surging past US$100 per barrel for the first time since the onset of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022, China has its sights set on strengthening energy security by stabilising domestic crude production and strategic b...