Hong Kong’s tourism chief has struck an upbeat note on tourist arrivals during Lunar New Year and expressed confidence that visitor numbers will cross the 50 million mark by the end of the year. Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Rosanna Law...

For business owner Tracy Sung, flat-hunting in Hong Kong was complicated by two things – her pets and the intense competition in the rental market. Sung, who used to live in a 500 sq ft flat in Happy Valley, had to offer more than the landlord’s ...

A man in southeastern China who extracted 191 grams of gold from discarded SIM cards has sparked a sales frenzy. However, the man has warned of the serious safety risks involved in the process. Known online as “Qiao”, the man hails from Huizhou, ...

Hong Kong’s public expenditure growth should not exceed that of its revenue despite signs of improving finances, Paul Chan Mo-po has said, while noting that the market expects increased government investment to speed up economic development. But th...

Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP), Hong Kong’s largest developer by market capitalisation, puts another 350 units on sale in its Sierra Sea project after four rounds of sold-out flats in January, reflecting returning buyer appetite in the world’s mo...

Myanmar’s junta called for ex-civil servants who quit their jobs in protest over the coup five years ago to report back to work, pledging to remove absent state employees from “blacklists” on Sunday. After the military snatched power in a coup ...

The number of suspected scams involving unusually high and belated compensation claims for minor or non-existent traffic accidents in Hong Kong has doubled to more than 70 in less than a week, according to the security minister. Secretary for Securit...

China did not slip into outright deflation last year and that in itself matters. When weak global demand, geopolitical frictions and a prolonged property correction weighed heavily on sentiment, consumer prices stayed marginally positive. The latest ...

Almost a decade after launching the Vision 2030 programme to diversify its oil-dependent economy, Saudi Arabia is redirecting its spending away from attention-grabbing futuristic urban projects into sectors that hold more promise to deliver results. ...

A man in China has used more than 2,600 metres of aluminium thread to weave a horse ornament as a gesture to welcome the Year of the Horse. The golden figurine is named Mythical Horse Embracing Auspiciousness according to its creator, Yang Guang. Its...

It started out as a family reunion story but soon took a darker turn. A 45-year-old woman, identified only by her surname Bu, had lost contact with her family for more than a decade. She was found in late 2024 in a rural area in Heshun county in the ...

A Hong Kong-bound Cathay Pacific flight had to return to Kaohsiung after take-off on Sunday morning due to a technical problem, with around 200 passengers affected. A Cathay Pacific spokesman confirmed flight CX449 returned to the Taiwanese city shor...

Marius Borg Hoiby, the son of Norway’s future queen from a previous relationship, was initially welcomed into the royal family, but now, facing trial accused of four rapes, he has become a liability. The 29-year-old, who was born before his mother ...

Come Thursday, barring a last-minute change, the final treaty in the world that restricted nuclear weapon deployment will be over. New START, the last nuclear treaty between Washington and Moscow after decades of agreements dating to the Cold War, is...

Elon Musk wants to bring the production of its Optimus robot to the US amid electric carmaker Tesla’s plan to pivot towards manufacturing humanoids, smart machines that could one day serve as part of the workforce at American factories. That ambiti...

In a new memoir No Borders: Journeys Across Islands And Continents, renowned historian Wang Gungwu traces his life across Malaya, London, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore, sharing both personal anecdotes and perspectives on the changes in China and...

The English version of a book about the popular poker-like Chinese card game Guandan has been accepted by libraries at top universities in the United States. The acceptance marks a milestone in efforts to spread knowledge about the game to the world....

India’s government dismissed a reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel made by Jeffrey Epstein in an email in 2017. The US Justice Department released 3 million pages of material related to the late financier, a convicted sex ...

Hong Kong’s security minister has said the city currently faces four primary risks to its national security, with soft resistance being one of the most significant threats. Speaking on a radio programme on Saturday, Secretary for Security Chris Tan...

As Southeast Asia accelerates into electric vehicle manufacturing, industry leaders in the Philippines say their country risks falling behind neighbours that have moved quickly to support the sector, with policy uncertainty raising doubts about Manil...

Art logistics and storage companies are expanding in Hong Kong with an eye on the Greater Bay Area market, following the government’s pledge to make the city a world leader in the art trading sector. Crozier’s storage space across three locations...

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Saturday that disgraced former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor should testify in the US Congress over what he knows about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. Asked on the final day of a visi...

From the principled and the populist to the outright eccentric, Thailand goes to the polls on February 8 with its main prime ministerial candidates wielding lofty promises to turn the country’s flagging fortunes around. Here are the main contenders...

Chinese scientists have unveiled a cooling technology that can plunge a liquid cooling medium from room temperature to sub-zero levels in less than half a minute. This leap in thermal engineering offered a promising heat management solution for energ...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Temperatures in Hong Kong fell to 12 degrees Celsius (54 Fahrenheit) on Sunday morning but the coming days ar...

More foreign companies have rolled out instant delivery services exclusively for China or upgraded to more comprehensive offerings in the country, as they vie to stand out in the highly digitalised market and cater to consumers’ strong demand for i...

The number of Chinese visitors to Japan dropped sharply last month amid a diplomatic row over Taiwan. With Beijing again warning against travel to Japan during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, analysts have been closely watching to see how much d...

Singapore’s southern holiday island of Sentosa has halted all water activities after a crocodile sighting on Saturday night. The island’s main coastal recreational stretches – Siloso, Palawan and Tanjong Beach – remain open, but the Sentosa D...

Xia Xian, a virologist who was formerly a project scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has left the United States to take up a position studying highly pathogenic viruses – those with a strong ability to cause severe disease or i...

When Hong Kong’s Housing Authority launched the Tenants Purchase Scheme (TPS) in 1998, it embodied the city’s aspiration of home ownership for all. Then the chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, envisioned public housing tenants buying their flats at a...

Hong Kong authorities have uncovered robot-operated accounts booking public indoor sports venues just a week after a new anti-touting policy took effect, prompting experts to call for stronger measures against scalping. A Leisure and Cultural Service...

A woman from central China has made waves by selling courses that teach women the techniques of seductive gazes and flirtation to rejuvenate their marriages. Now in her late 40s, Zhou Yuan, from Changsha, Hunan province, left her career in banking to...

For Choi Yu-jin, a 31-year-old Seoul-based fashion designer, the perfect getaway requires three elements: value, spotless streetscapes and unforgettable flavours. And Shanghai, she says, delivers on all counts. Three visits since 2024, with a fourth ...

It has been just over a month since Lee Hyun-jun* was discharged from his mandatory military service, but the 22-year-old college student already feels he has hit an invisible wall regarding his future. “Whenever I search for jobs, internships or f...

A five-year-old boy and his father must be released by Tuesday from the Texas centre where they have been held after being detained by immigration officers in Minnesota, a federal judge ordered Saturday in a ruling that harshly criticised US Presiden...

A new PLA missile could provide a cheap and widely deployable option to knock out fragile US sea-lifting capabilities in an attrition war, a Chinese military magazine has suggested. The YJ-18C, a subsonic land-attack cruise missile first revealed in ...

The India–EU trade agreement marks a significant moment in the development of the global political economy. Described by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as the “mother of all deals”, the agreement links one of the world’s f...

A fresh cache of files released on Friday related to the investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein contains documents that refer to numerous high-profile figures. US President Donald Trump, tech billionaire Elon Musk and Brit...

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni joked on Saturday that she does not look like an angel, after a row blew up in the media over a restored fresco in a Rome church. Some of Italy’s press have been asking whether the premier served as inspirati...

Britain’s former prince Andrew was again engulfed by the Epstein scandal on Saturday, after newly released files included photographs of him kneeling on all fours over a woman lying on the floor. The images were among millions of new documents disc...

Hong Kong authorities’ swift U-turn on a law requiring bus passengers to wear seat belts came about because of a lack of public consultation during policymaking and a less than thorough crafting process for the regulatory fine print, political obse...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Hongkongers should brace for cooler weather on Sunday as temperatures are expected to drop to as low as 13 de...

Dressed like 1970s rock stars evoking bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Velvet Sundown look the part of a real band – with one key difference: despite millions of listeners, they do not exist. The group is generated by artificial intelli...

An explosion that hit a building in the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas on Saturday was caused by a gas leak, according to a preliminary assessment, the local head of the fire department said. Earlier, Iranian state media reported that at ...

Separatists from Pakistan’s Balochistan province claimed responsibility for nearly a dozen coordinated attacks across southern Pakistan early on Saturday that targeted civilians, a high-security prison, police stations and paramilitary installation...

Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings is expected to move forward with selling its remaining port assets, despite Panama’s Supreme Court nullifying its contract for two terminals at either end of the country’s geostrategically vital canal, accord...

China’s unrelenting anti-corruption drive will improve – not compromise – the military’s fighting strength, two signed commentaries published in the PLA Daily have argued. The articles – one on Friday and the other on Saturday – in the Pe...

A documentary about a community resisting an immigration raid in Scotland has won an award at a major film festival. Everybody To Kenmure Street was recognised with the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Civil Resistance at the Sundance ...

Hong Kong’s private schools could be ordered to cease operating or have their registration revoked if their management is deemed unsatisfactory under new guidelines issued by education authorities. The Education Bureau released a code of practice o...

Ukraine’s power grid experienced mass outages on Saturday after a “technical malfunction” caused electrical lines between Moldova, Romania and Ukraine to fail, Ukraine’s energy minister said. The outages knocked out water supplies to Ukraine�...