As the United States assembles its greatest military firepower in decades in the Middle East, Iranians are warily awaiting the next round of talks with the US in Geneva this week – negotiations that many see as a last chance for their ruling theocr...

Hong Kong authorities will offer sweeteners of about HK$22 billion (US$2.8 billion) to residents and businesses, up from HK$7.8 billion last year, as public coffers are set to pivot from a deficit to a surplus. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po on ...

Malaysia has blocked access to LGBTQ networking and dating sites Grindr and Blued, with authorities reviewing legal measures to curb their apps in the Muslim-majority nation. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), the country�...

US President Donald Trump pushed a message of economic strength and global leadership in the first State of the Union address of his second term on Tuesday night, seeking to rally voters ahead of the November midterm elections. In the nearly two-hour...

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s coming trip to India is expected to further efforts for a diplomatic reset and strengthen Canada’s trade links with the world’s fourth biggest economy. Carney arrives in New Delhi on Thursday, as part of a ...

Hong Kong raised its economic growth forecast to between 2.5 per cent and 3.5 per cent this year, as Financial Secretary Paul Chan delivered a budget speech focused on diversifying growth and boosting innovation. The city also will end deficits ahead...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has called on China to make the shift to a consumption-led growth model an “overarching priority”, while urging the country to curb what it called “unwarranted industrial policy” amid mounting external im...

Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po has announced an array of industry spending and relief measures in Hong Kong’s budget, in response to the city’s quicker-than-expected return to a surplus of HK$2.9 billion (US$370.8 million) in its consolidate...

Against the news of China’s record trade surplus of US$1.19 trillion last year, some have warned it is making trade impossible, arguing that the rest of the world has fewer goods they can sell, or are willing to sell, to China. Critics point to Chi...

China’s yuan has strengthened to its highest level against the US dollar in nearly three years, with its official fixing rate also firming amid growing uncertainty over the American currency. On Wednesday afternoon, the offshore yuan traded at 6.86...

While many people in today’s China watch the state media CCTV’s gala show on the Lunar New Year Eve, about 1,000 years ago children took part in a special and playful routine to celebrate a festival called “selling ignorance”. Known in Chines...

South Korea unveiled an ambitious package of tourism measures on Wednesday, including looser visa rules, expanded regional airport routes and a crackdown on price gouging, as part of a government effort to attract 30 million inbound visitors. The pla...

We have put together stories from our coverage on science from the past two weeks to help you stay informed. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. EU bans Chinese organisations from critical tech programmes, ...

Xiaomi is doubling down on its five-year plan for core technologies including chips, artificial intelligence and operating systems, aiming to position itself as a deep-tech player amid China’s self-reliance push, while peers such as Li Auto and Xpe...

US President Donald Trump briefly laid out ⁠his case for a possible attack on Iran in his State of the Union speech to Congress on Tuesday, saying he would not allow the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism to have a nuclear weapon. Even while as...

South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung marked Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s state visit with an AI-generated video animating their shared past as factory workers, before the two men embraced as heads of state. Lula arrived in Seo...

Malaysia’s Communications Ministry has ordered an investigation and immediate action following a social media post showing the desecration of the Koran. Minister Fahmi Fadzil said the government strongly condemned the act, describing it as disrespe...

He called himself a spiritual guide. Prosecutors called him a fixer. This week, a court in Seoul called him something else: guilty of accepting bribes – a verdict that may yet determine the fate of South Korea’s disgraced former first lady Kim Ke...

The risk of an artificial intelligence bubble has, for the first time, become the top concern among credit investors, overshadowing geopolitical worries, according to a Bank of America (BofA) survey. In a February survey of investment-grade clients w...

This article was first published on February 26, 2021. By Mimi Lau Xi claims victory in eliminating extreme poverty China has declared com­plete suc­cess in elim­in­at­ing extreme poverty, with Pres­id­ent Xi Jin­ping hail­ing the lift­ing ...

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was under pressure on Wednesday after it emerged she gave congratulatory gift catalogues to lawmakers from her ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) following its landslide election victory this month. Each of h...

The southern Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen has handed in a glowing report card of technological and economic development, surpassing Shanghai and Beijing as the nation’s largest manufacturing and exporting city while solidifying a lead in artifici...

US President Donald Trump delivered his first official State of Union address of his second term on Tuesday night, defending his policies and touting his administration’s biggest achievements since his return to the White House. In the longest spee...

HSBC Holdings unveiled a range of new growth targets and strategies on Wednesday, including plans to boost investment in Hong Kong and other high-growth markets to US$1.8 billion in the coming years. CEO Georges Elhedery said the bank would raise its...

The news rippled through Malaysian social media with something close to glee. Nick Adams, the Australian-born, self-described “alpha male” whom US President Donald Trump had nominated as ambassador to Kuala Lumpur, was not coming after all. “Th...

This story was published on February 25, 1986. Marcos on brink of Manila turmoil From Harvey Stockwin The Philippine capital Manila was last night (February 24, 1986) in revolutionary turmoil as a people’s government led by Corazon Aquino sought to...

The mayor of New Zealand’s capital city took an afternoon dip on Wednesday hoping to assuage public fears after a breakdown at a local waste water treatment plant pumped raw sewage into the ocean and sprayed faecal matter on coastal homes. Millions...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Hong Kong finance chief Paul Chan Mo-po unveiled his latest budget on Wednesday, revealing an earlier-than-ex...

Norway’s former prime minister Thorbjørn Jagland has been admitted to hospital due to the stress caused by the Epstein scandal, the NTB news agency and others cited his lawyer as saying on Tuesday. Jagland is one of the most prominent figures to h...

All eyes on Wednesday will be on how the government plans to give a big push to its latest investment darling, the Hong Kong Investment Corporation, its three-year-old vehicle that has yielded impressive early gains. Sources told the South China Morn...

An American convicted of killing the mother of his then-pregnant teenage girlfriend at an Indonesian luxury hotel was deported on Tuesday after his early release from prison, immigration authorities said. Tommy Schaefer, 32, was released last week fr...

Hong Kong police have launched an investigation into the death of a 23-year-old inspector who shot herself with a pistol inside the Kwun Tong police station. The force said the inspector, who was attached to the Patrol Sub-unit of the Kwun Tong Distr...

This live blog has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Get faster notifications on the latest updates by downloading our app. US President Donald Trump delivere...

Hundreds of AI-generated Chinese-language YouTube videos have been targeting Singapore and Prime Minister Lawrence Wong as part of an ongoing disinformation campaign. Seven in 10 videos attack Wong specifically, fabricating narratives about his leade...

It has been a sad time for the legions of fans of Noam Chomsky, having to see their hero in a photo hobnobbing with the late paedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein inside the latter’s private jet. The picture and their email exchanges were p...

A Chinese company and its boss have gone viral on mainland social media for distributing 180 million yuan (US$26 million) in year-end bonuses out of 270 million yuan in profits, sparking widespread envy among netizens. On February 13, Henan Kuangshan...

Just hours apart on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, two congressional hearings laid bare the United States’ calibrated yet deeply sceptical approach to China, with senior officials stressing the pursuit of stable ties without trust and highlighting allege...

Hong Kong’s finance chief will earmark substantial funds for a new innovation hub near the border with mainland China and include incentives to attract more aerospace players to the city in his budget, government sources have said. Highlighting inn...

Brazil’s dismissal of the idea of a Brics currency suggests that the bloc may continue to pursue less politically fraught monetary cooperation that stops short of challenging the US dollar’s dominance, such as swaps and seamless payment systems, ...

A Malaysian resort offering pangolin soup and meat for an “exquisite” experience for tourists is going to pay dearly after authorities swooped in on their illegal activities. In an integrated crackdown dubbed “Ops Khazanah” on Monday, Sabah W...

The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has secured for the first time separate court orders in Hong Kong and the UK to freeze HK$4.3 million (US$552,948) in assets belonging to three alleged insider traders – including a former Hong Kong Excha...

Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po will deliver his annual budget on Wednesday, unveiling measures to accelerate the city’s economic recovery after balancing the books, amid mounting expectations for more “sweeteners” in the blueprin...

A team of Chinese scientists has unveiled the world’s smallest and most energy-efficient transistor in a breakthrough poised to anchor the next generation of high-performance AI hardware. The researchers achieved the feat in ferroelectric transisto...

US military forces boarded a third sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea in an effort to target illicit oil connected to Venezuela, the Pentagon said on Tuesday. An organisation that tracks ship movements ...

The maxim, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”, attributed to the Athenian historian Thucydides, described the reality of world politics for millennia. Today there are forces that wish to see a return to a world where...

New York police are investigating after officers were pelted with snowballs while responding to a massive snowball fight at Washington Square Park in Manhattan, as a winter storm blanketed the Northeast in snow. A video of the fracas shows two unifor...

The Louvre Museum’s director resigned on Tuesday after months of pressure following the October theft of the French crown jewels, as the world’s most visited museum faced widening scrutiny over security failures, labour unrest and a suspected tic...

The European Union’s trade chief Maros Sefcovic has railed against the bloc’s glacial trade defences, warning that years-long probes and rigid rules will not protect the bloc from China’s increasingly fierce export machine. Speaking in the Euro...

Russia ⁠accused Ukraine on Tuesday of trying ⁠to obtain a nuclear weapon with help from Britain and France, an allegation Kyiv called an absurd lie. A French foreign ministry spokesman said the allegation was “blatant disinformation”. A spoke...

Today show host Savannah Guthrie said her family is now offering a US$1 million reward for information leading to the recovery of her mother, Nancy Guthrie, who went missing from her Arizona home more than three weeks ago. Savannah Guthrie said on Tu...