The High Court in Singapore has awarded two cabinet ministers S$230,000 (US$177,860) each in damages following a defamation trial involving financial news outlet Bloomberg and one of its reporters over the officials’ property transactions. In Janua...

An independent Hong Kong bookshop founded by journalists has announced that it will close on August 30, citing financial losses and “hard-to-grasp red lines”. In a statement posted on social media on Tuesday, the bookstore Have a Nice Stay said i...

Great leadership doesn’t start with what you do but who you are. There are generally two leadership styles: loud and quiet. Loud leadership considers visibility for effectiveness and often focuses on showing dominance to drive results. Quiet leader...

France’s Emmanuel Macron is overseeing his 10th and last national day parade as president on Tuesday. The annual military procession – which marks the July 14, 1789, storming of the Bastille fortress in Paris during the French Revolution – will...

China’s chip exports nearly doubled in the first half of the year, customs data shows, as a global AI boom cemented computing hardware’s place as a key economic growth engine. In the first six months of this year, China exported 179.44 billion in...

A record 24 students from 15 schools have scored perfect marks in Hong Kong’s university entrance exams, up from 17 last year, with 36.8 per cent of day-school candidates meeting the minimum admission requirement. The Hong Kong Examinations and Ass...

A young Chinese man has been dubbed “Yunnan’s strongest matchmaker” for his funny matchmaking videos that turn clients’ flaws into advantages. The 24-year-old man from southwestern China’s Yunnan province, who goes by the nickname Panlong, ...

Rosmah Mansor has slapped Malaysian comedian Harith Iskander with a defamation lawsuit over a stand-up comedy routine that allegedly mocked and insulted her. Rosmah, the wife of former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, filed the writ of summons a...

A Hong Kong couple has lodged a complaint with the United Nations over an alleged breach of human rights after Swedish authorities applied to permanently transfer the legal guardianship of their daughter to a local foster family. Tsang Wai-bong and K...

China’s tropical resort island of Hainan is solidifying its timeline to ban the sale of petrol-powered vehicles by 2030, heralding the beginning of the end for the internal combustion engine technology as the province, China’s largest free-trade ...

An associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is facing two indecent assault charges after a woman accused him of molesting her and reported him upon discovering he had allegedly hidden his marital status. Peng Peng, 38, appear...

China’s fourth-ranked official, Wang Huning, will head to North Korea this week, the latest in a flurry of high-level exchanges between Beijing and Pyongyang. Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday that Wang would lead a Communist Par...

Many mainland Chinese businesses that joined a Hong Kong-led delegation to Central Asia last month are preparing to list in the city to raise capital for global expansion, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has revealed. At a summit on Tuesday, the cit...

From franchising to diversification, Hong Kong’s heritage brands and long-running family businesses are looking for ways to navigate challenging times amid changing consumption patterns and soaring costs. Second- and third-generation stewards of th...

If you have been holding out for cheaper durians, you may not want to wait much longer. Just weeks after a bumper harvest sent durian prices tumbling across Singapore, sellers said the unusually abundant supply has begun easing since last week as Mal...

In the fields of central Luzon, farmers who planted their rice in June are watching the sky with worry. Out over the Pacific, a familiar spectre is gathering strength – and with it, the threat of empty granaries and hungry households. The Philippin...

Photos and discussions about China’s recent use of heavy-duty drones to “airlift” villagers affected by flooding in Guangxi have gone viral but almost two decades ago, the disaster-prone country once relied on risky, low-tech means to fight nat...

Hong Kong’s new cash incentives of up to HK$45,000 (US$5,740) to encourage welfare recipients to take up jobs are expected to benefit many single-parent families, lawmakers have said, while urging more flexible eligibility rules and stronger employ...

A man suspected of repeatedly stalking a 22-year-old university student has been arrested in Malaysia after CCTV footage showing him sniffing her shoes outside her flat went viral on social media. The footage shows a man in a black T-shirt loitering ...

We have selected seven stories from the SCMP’s coverage of Asia over the past week that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Why South Korea is ...

Jeju’s renewed push to allow Chinese tourists to drive rental cars on the South Korean resort island is reigniting a decade-old debate over safety, insurance and legal loopholes. On July 2, the island’s Vice-Governor Park Cheon-su said allowing C...

Mark Wahlberg shed the aura of a Hollywood star when he savoured street food and mingled with locals in Penang while filming Netflix’s The Big Fix. His trip delighted Malaysians and highlighted the country’s growing appeal to global productions. ...

Former Politburo member and Xinjiang party chief Ma Xingrui has been removed from the party and dismissed from public office following an anti-corruption investigation, the state broadcaster said on Tuesday. Ma, 67, who once headed China’s new-gene...

The Argentine national football team has expressed solidarity with China’s flood-affected Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and announced it will donate to victims of the disaster, according to a statement posted on Tuesday. The national team, belov...

The London Clearing House (LCH) has begun accepting offshore yuan-denominated Chinese government bonds as eligible non-cash collateral, marking a structural milestone in Beijing’s decade-long push to internationalise its currency and integrate its ...

India’s nuclear energy ambitions hinge not only on reactors and reforms but also on an unresolved fuel question: where the uranium will come from. A deal finalised with Australia last week could provide part of the answer, giving New Delhi access t...

Yemen’s Houthi movement fired missiles at Saudi Arabia after accusing the kingdom of bombing an airport under their control on Monday, breaking a four-year truce in the conflict between the kingdom and the Iran-aligned group. Saudi Arabia intercept...

On July 6, a Chinese strategic nuclear submarine fired a missile carrying a training dummy warhead into a designated area of the Pacific. Beijing described the launch as routine, said relevant countries had been notified and insisted that it targeted...

A woman in eastern China fractured four of her mother-in-law’s ribs after accusing the older woman of neglecting her grandchildren to pursue a romantic relationship. The family feud in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, was recently reported by Zhejiang T...

A US airbase ⁠in Jordan was targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles on Tuesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said, while calling on Jordanians to dismantle American bases in the kingdom. “You know very well that not only do we not ha...

Facing anti-corruption policies and profit squeezing at home, Chinese innovative medical device companies are accelerating their push into the European market despite mounting cross-border trade protectionism. Government-backed hospital purchases of ...

Artificial intelligence boosts homework scores but cuts exam results by 20 per cent, and this “brain drain” effect takes two years to fully emerge, a new study has found. Generative AI is rapidly transforming classrooms as much as workplaces, wit...

Concern that foreign spies can operate with impunity in Japan has deepened following a media report that dozens of Russian agents ordered to leave Western European countries have entered Tokyo and are buying components for Moscow’s war on Ukraine. ...

With central banks prioritising domestic objectives, Plaza Accord-style exchange-rate coordination is now out of reach despite growing concerns over the dollar-centred monetary system, complicating the smooth transition to a more multipolar internati...

Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv with missiles early ‌on Tuesday, triggering fires in widely separated districts of the city, senior officials said. The air alert in the city was lifted after about 50 minutes. No casualties ⁠wer...

Britain banned support for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and a linked group on Monday following a series of antisemitic attacks, using new powers designed to stop the use of state-sponsored proxies. The government and intelligence...

Andy Burnham took another significant step on Monday towards becoming Britain’s next prime minister, netting additional Labour MPs’ nominations to give him an unassailable lead in the ruling party’s leadership contest. The veteran politician, w...

A decade after Beijing rejected the ruling by The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration on its South China Sea claims, rival nations continue to manoeuvre for control. In the second of our series on the anniversary, Alyssa Chen explores how deepen...

China’s artificial intelligence ambitions tend to be depicted in the news as predominantly related to defence, large language models and semiconductors. But one emerging use case for AI revolves around a market projected to grow to US$441 billion b...

The United States’ National Science Foundation (NSF) is set to ban collaborations with Chinese research institutions designated as restricted entities, as well as their employees, under a new policy that moves away from seeking to balance security ...

Interior minister Shabana Mahmood announced plans on Monday to change UK law to allow a convicted paedophile who led a so-called grooming gang to be deported following his release from prison. Shabir Ahmed was jailed in 2012 for 22 years for multiple...

The ongoing US tariff investigations against China and Washington’s other trading partners are unlikely to significantly impair bilateral ties or the planned meeting in September between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, anal...

US President Donald Trump’s administration has turned over to ⁠Minneapolis prosecutors evidence it had withheld on immigration agents’ killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and wounding of a Venezuelan man during deportation sweeps in January,...

The death of US Senator Lindsey Graham has removed one of Washington’s most influential advocates of a hardline approach towards China at a moment when Republicans are debating how aggressively the United States should confront Beijing and project ...

France on Monday battled two fires that scorched over 1,300 hectares in a forest south of Paris on Monday, as police arrested two people suspected of arson. The fire erupted Sunday in the sprawling Fontainebleau forest, a former royal hunting estate ...

Shein Executive Chairman Donald Tang will step down as his mission of taking the company public nears completion, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Monday, retreating to an advisory role after three years as the public face of...

The US Department of Defence ⁠said on Monday ⁠it would invest US$25 million ⁠in rare earths start-up ReElement Technologies, part of a broader push by the Trump administration to boost domestic supplies of critical minerals and challenge ‌Chi...

For decades, Western carmakers complained that China forced them to hand over technology in exchange for access to the world’s largest auto market. Now the tables have turned. As Chinese carmakers capture global market share with cheaper, high-qual...