Cross-border disasters along China’s frontiers are putting Beijing’s neighbourhood diplomacy to the test as climate shocks grow and expose strategic vulnerabilities. The stakes were highlighted last week after a sudden glacial collapse in the Him...

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, the encounter was short and carefully choreographed while the message was warm. Modi had earlier sai...

South Korea is moving towards the possible deployment of naval assets to the Strait of Hormuz under mounting pressure from Washington, potentially making it one of the first US allies to contribute militarily to the strategically vital waterway, obse...

Impersonating customer service staff is the “most rampant tactic” used by phone scammers, Hong Kong police have said, with the number of such frauds rising 45 per cent year on year in the first half of 2026 to 4,830 cases amid an overall decline ...

A mainland Chinese man has been deemed unfit to stand trial for his alleged involvement in a deadly shooting during a botched robbery in Hong Kong three decades ago, after he was diagnosed with a cognitive impairment caused by lung cancer. A High Cou...

A Philippine court on ⁠Friday ordered the ⁠arrest of Vice-President ⁠Sara Duterte in connection with a criminal case accusing her of making threats against President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, the first lady and a former House ‌speaker. A trial co...

Hong Kong’s City University has disciplined students over an orientation event with a disco theme in which a half-naked man was seen carrying a woman wearing only a bra and shorts, two days after the institution said it had “zero tolerance” for...

Two sailors from the US aircraft carrier making a port call to Thailand were sent back to the ship after a drunken altercation, Thai police said on Friday. Police were alerted to a “small scuffle” involving the sailors in the early hours of Thurs...

Fifty-two Singaporeans have been arrested and detained in China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region following a law enforcement operation targeting suspected pyramid scheme activities and related offences, according to Singaporean authorities. Singa...

Hong Kong’s leader has urged the banking sector to support financing the city’s creation of a new economic engine in innovation and technology (I&T) while expanding offshore yuan business, a key area for aligning with national strategies. Speakin...

The presence of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s youngest son at the opening of detained televangelist Apollo Quiboloy’s 75,000-seat Kingdome stadium this week offered a striking display of how ties between the Duterte family and the...

Chinese tech firm Xiaomi will start selling electric cars in Europe next year, it announced at a consumer electronics trade show in Berlin on Thursday, adding to the growing list of Chinese carmakers expanding into the European market despite EU tari...

The enduring mystery of how the ancient Egyptians built the Great Pyramid of Giza – with its 2.3 million multi-tonne stone blocks – has puzzled researchers for centuries. Mainstream archaeology holds that the pyramids were constructed from natura...

A sea wall at a popular selfie spot on Kennedy Town’s waterfront could soon gain grade two status after authorities proposed listing it as a historic structure, although experts say creative storytelling will be key to bringing the site’s heritag...

A “wintry wonderland” on a highway in tropical Malaysia left motorists awestruck – until a police revelation melted away the viral moment and turned it into a road safety warning. Social media videos showed thick white foam carpeting several la...

US President Donald Trump’s White House on Thursday unveiled a website featuring classic arcade games - but with a “Maga” twist, in which players can deport migrants and build a border wall. Rights groups swiftly criticised the release of the o...

Bosnian Serb war criminal Ratko Mladic’s body arrived in Serbia on Thursday, where it was received with military honours. The casket, draped in the Serbian flag, was carried from the plane by six soldiers after arriving from The Hague, accompanied ...

Two hydropower workers were pulled from a tunnel buried by debris in Nepal on Friday, a rare ray of hope on the 10th day of rescue efforts after catastrophic Himalayan flooding. Rescuers cheered as one man was pulled from a muddy opening, video relea...

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said both Washington and Beijing were seeking stability in their relationship and that he remained optimistic about ties ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s expected visit to the United States later this m...

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...

Argentine President Javier Milei escalated his country’s dispute with Britain over the Falkland Islands on Thursday, vowing new measures to halt an oil project near the British-controlled archipelago and praising US President Donald Trump for sayin...

Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways has extended the suspension of passenger flights to Dubai and Riyadh until the end of November, keeping its Middle East routes grounded for a total of nine months. The airline attributed the extension to ...

Even as China installs new solar and wind power capacity faster than the rest of the world combined, it is setting new benchmarks for the technologies through innovation. This year alone, Chinese companies and researchers have generated the first ele...

The latest US visa restrictions on citizens of African countries are facing increasing criticism that they are not only punitive but also likely to backfire by driving those nations closer to China. Since August 1, visa services have been suspended i...

Lan Xiaohuan is a professor of economics at China Europe International Business School. His book, How China Works: An Introduction to China’s State-led Economic Development, has sold millions of copies in China and has been translated into multiple...

US Vice-President J.D. Vance said that the United States ⁠was investigating a deadly strike on an Iranian wedding earlier this week that an analysis published by Reuters showed likely resulted from a direct hit by a US munition. An explosion that r...

Six Malaysian men have been detained in connection with a drug smuggling case involving a 39-year-old Malaysia Airlines pilot detained at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Indonesia. The six were arrested following information obtained during q...

France is facing pressure to consent to the International Court of Justice taking up a decades-old territorial feud with Vanuatu, after Paris firmly reasserted its sovereignty over two strategically vital Pacific islands. Vanuatu filed an application...

Chery Automobile, China’s largest car exporter by deliveries, will begin testing its solid-state batteries next year, aiming to spearhead commercialisation of a technology likely to further spur the electrification of the global automotive industry...

Japan’s Mogami-class warship is turning out to be a hot item among global navies. Australia is buying 11, New Zealand is considering putting in an order – and now, even the United States is showing interest. According to a US Naval Institute repo...

Much has been said about Hong Kong’s vitality as a higher education hub. Yet, a radical rethink of our primary and secondary school system is equally necessary. The need for a blueprint has never been clearer. Our world is increasingly defined by t...

An impoverished county in southwestern China issued an apology for arranging its primary and junior secondary school teachers on stage to pose for photos alongside prominent characters depicting humiliation due to their students’ low test scores. T...

Cats are wonderful gymnasts. Their ability to land on their feet – even when dropped upside-down – caught the attention of two of the nineteenth century’s greatest mathematical physicists, Sir George Gabriel Stokes and James Clerk Maxwell. The ...

For four years, Beijing-based Clare Zhang worked as a research analyst at a corporate advisory firm, helping companies assess technologies and competitors for projects they planned to list – until late last year, when she was told that artificial i...

Soon after becoming a mother, Hong Kong resident Sarah Tam enjoyed eight hours of sleep a night and yoga sessions at a post-partum care centre in neighbouring Shenzhen, where carers looked after her newborn around the clock. Tam, a 30-year-old social...

As pressure mounts in the Philippines for authorities to act on strengthening school security after two fatal shootings in eight weeks, safety experts say any measure must look at mitigating violence much earlier, even before a child brings a weapon ...

The Chinese-American community expressed anger and concern on Thursday over the death in custody of a Chinese national by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] on US territory. Wei Lianyong, 51, reportedly died in the Commonwealth of the N...

An Asian city will eventually overtake London and New York as the world’s leading financial centre, with Hong Kong well placed to compete for the top spot given its legal predictability and low tax burden, according to the creator of a closely watc...

President Donald Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to let it enforce a new US Postal Service rule tightening the use of mail-in ballots, moving swiftly after a judge temporarily blocked the regulation ahead of November’s ...

The United States should start preparing for scenarios where extreme measures must be taken to stop China from achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), according to a former White House official, including state-backed espionage and military ...

Former Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno and a former Chinese ambassador to Quito asked the country’s highest court on Thursday to spare them the five-year sentences handed down last week over a US$76 million bribery scheme. Moreno was convicted of...

A single juror in Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial is preventing the jury from reaching a unanimous verdict, her lawyer said in court on Thursday, after deliberations stretched into a sixth day over whether to convict the Massachusetts woman of killin...

Ten research teams were honoured on Thursday at a satirical science awards ceremony that was hosted outside the US for the first time due to travel concerns. Researchers who studied milk from cockroaches and analysed soil health using underwear recei...

Federal prosecutors have charged a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer with lying to investigators about the events leading up to the shooting of a Venezuelan man during the Minneapolis immigration crackdown earlier this year, according to...

Two Mercury-bound spacecraft left their mother ship behind on Thursday and headed down the home stretch of their nearly decade-long voyage to the solar system’s smallest and closest-to-the-sun planet. The linked European and Japanese spacecraft sep...

Only four of the 28 lifts at Queen Mary Hospital’s new clinical block will operate normally following minor repairs, while work must be carried out on the rest until the end of the year, according to Hong Kong’s architectural authorities. The Arc...

A Hong Kong Nepalese man is searching for his cousin who is missing after the catastrophic flood struck the Himalayan border between Nepal and Tibet. Y.B. Gurung, a 64-year-old retiree, told the South China Morning Post that he last spoke with his to...

A team of cybersecurity experts has announced they successfully compromised the latest Starlink user terminals, crossing the security boundaries of the world’s largest satellite constellation. In a post on its social media account on Tuesday, Darkn...

A leading Hong Kong charity has called off a student eco-bag design contest meant to counter domestic violence following public backlash over its directive for pupils to draw inspiration from objects commonly linked to household abuse. Po Leung Kuk c...

Taiwan’s cabinet approved a supplementary defence budget of NT$145.7 billion (US$4.6 billion) on Thursday, pushing the island’s total defence-related spending for this year above NT$1 trillion for the first time. The additional funding is expecte...