In a cluster of villages in Pakistan’s largely ⁠rural Chakwal district, more than 100 Shiite Muslims have returned from the United Arab Emirates without jobs, luggage or access to the savings they spent years building abroad. They are among poten...

China is looking to give every humanoid manufactured in the country a digital identity, as it seeks promote growth in the rapidly growing sector through establishing industry standards and strengthening regulation. The country launched a national ini...

The desperate search for seven villagers in Laos prospecting for gold who became trapped deep inside a flooded cave entered a sixth day on Monday, with the incident highlighting how surging prices have sparked a rush for the precious metal despite ri...

China was the second-largest financial contributor to the UN peacekeeping mission after the US last year, with its share rising “substantially” as geopolitical tensions increasingly paralysed multilateral peace operations, according to a Swedish ...

Former chairman of Seven & i Holdings Toshifumi Suzuki, credited for the global success of 7-Eleven convenience stores, had died at the age of 93, according to the company. Suzuki - known as the “father of the convenience store” in Japan - died d...

Twenty-one people were injured on Monday afternoon after a double-decker bus collided with a highway maintenance vehicle on Hong Kong’s Tsing Kwai Highway. Police received a report at 2.05pm that a KMB route 960 double-decker bus, travelling from W...

A dispute over where churches and temples can operate in Malaysia’s richest state has become an awkward political test for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s ruling coalition, which came to power promising to protect the country’s multiracial and m...

Around 20 people were injured at a luxury shopping complex in the Japanese capital of Tokyo on Monday after a man sprayed a substance inside, police and fire department officials said. Tokyo police spokesman Yusuke Koide said that a man sprayed a sub...

A viral video of a blind woman on a tactile pavement being hit by an electric bike, which turned out to be staged, has sparked a wave of public anger in China. The video has been viewed more than 100 million times online. It has also raised questions...

The annual haj pilgrimage, one of the Five Pillars of Islam, officially began on Monday. More than 1.5 million pilgrims have arrived in Saudi Arabia from outside the country, Saleh bin Saad Al-Murabba, commander of the haj passport forces, said on Fr...

A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative country. Siranudh Scott, a fourth-generation member of the billionaire ...

We have put together stories from our coverage last weekend to help you stay informed about news across Asia and beyond. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. 82 killed in China’s worst coal mine accident f...

Singapore train operator SMRT will be stepping up pest control measures at its stations and depots after a video circulating online showed a rat on one of its trains. In the video posted on social media on Saturday, a rat is seen scurrying around the...

A coalition of major EU member states is pushing Brussels towards a much tougher trade regime aimed at combating Chinese-style industrial overcapacity, including faster emergency tariffs, broader safeguards and new anti-circumvention powers. A paper ...

Hong Kong’s note-issuing banks are replacing burnt cash for Wang Fuk Court residents, following emergency measures introduced by the city’s Monetary Authority and lenders to support those affected by last November’s devastating fire at the Tai ...

Three people ⁠were killed ⁠and one was ⁠injured in an accident during lifeboat maintenance work at a floating storage and offloading (FSO) vessel operated by Malaysian state energy ‌firm Petronas on Sunday, the firm said. Petronas, or Petroli...

For decades, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has preached a mantra of peace and stability in the Middle East through the destruction of Iran’s Islamic Republic. The obliteration of the ayatollahs, he prophesied, would lead to the normalis...

Each morning, people in Thailand wake up to the latest viral videos on social media of drunken punch-ups, thefts, scams or acts of public indecency committed by some foreign tourists. After months of warnings, Thailand on May 19 announced the cancell...

In the global shift towards carbon-neutral mobility, a striking role reversal is taking shape on the pavements of the world’s most populous cities. While geopolitical analysts focus on the high-altitude rhetoric of the Xi-Trump summit in Beijing, a...

Singapore’s economy expanded faster than expected in the first quarter as the global artificial-intelligence boom lifted the nation’s manufacturing and services, offsetting the drag from higher crude prices. Gross domestic product grew a seasonal...

XCMG Group, mainland China’s largest construction machinery maker, aims to achieve annual overseas sales of 100 billion yuan (US$14.7 billion), luring more international clients by turning its excavators, cranes and specialised vehicles greener and...

Hong Kong’s airport is set for a shift in volume this summer after airlines quietly swapped jet sizes and reduced scheduled flights to manage costs amid a global fuel crisis and following a jump in economy passenger fares to Europe. Some airlines t...

A single drop of blood could soon be used to screen for early-stage cancer, according to Wen Liaoyong of Westlake University in Hangzhou. Wen’s team has compressed what was once a refrigerator-sized detection system into something that fits in your...

Xiaomi is betting on artificial intelligence to future-proof its sprawling hardware empire, pouring massive resources into open-source models to ensure its next generation of smartphones and electric vehicles (EVs) does not get left behind in an AI-d...

A mother in central China has captivated mainland social media with an unconventional homework hack that has her restless son pedalling an old sewing machine while studying. According to Dazhong Daily, a primary school boy from Anyang, Henan province...

A photographer shooting the final day of the World Surf League (WSL) in New ⁠Zealand was injured by what organisers suspect was a sea lion or shark bite on Monday, forcing the event to be put on hold for several hours. The New Zealand Pro semi-fina...

Southeast Asia has been planning a unified electricity grid since 1997. Now, nearly 30 years later, its leaders are giving renewed impetus to the push to get energy flowing seamlessly across borders and seabeds. In Cebu earlier this month, leaders of...

Oil fell as senior US officials gave further, positive signals on progress towards a deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Brent lost as much as 6.2 per cent to US$97.10 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate was near US$91. Secretary of St...

Geopolitical tensions and a funding crisis are jeopardising peacekeeping missions, particularly those under the auspices of the United Nations, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) warned on Monday. Just under 79,000 internati...

Dr Evan Medeiros is the Penner family chair in Asia studies and the Cling family distinguished fellow in US-China studies at Georgetown University. He has served as the National Security Council’s director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, and later ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to China last week saw the signing of some 40 documents and a joint statement on strengthening the Beijing-Moscow partnership. The visit, just days after US President Donald Trump’s Beijing trip, is more t...

Experts trying to prevent a tank holding a highly toxic and flammable chemical from exploding in Southern California found a “potential crack” in the container that might be reducing the pressure, a fire official said on Sunday. Since Friday, off...

The US Department of Justice is acknowledging it has removed from its website news releases about criminal cases related to the January 6, 2021, riot, calling the information about the prosecutions “partisan propaganda”. The purge of news release...

A shipment of nearly 15,000 tonnes of rice donated by the Chinese government to Cuba has arrived at the port of Havana, the island’s president said on Sunday. The shipment is the first batch of a promised 60,000 tonnes that China says it will donat...

Turkish riot police fired tear gas and forced their way into the main opposition party’s headquarters to evict its ousted leadership on Sunday, fuelling a crisis at the heart of Turkey’s democracy. Clouds of tear gas billowed within the Republica...

Security was tightened in South Africa’s Kruger National Park nature reserve after two tourists were found killed there, authorities said on Sunday. The two South African victims, a 71-year-old man and a woman whose age was not disclosed, failed to...

Ukraine is calling for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and a gathering of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) following massive Russian air strikes, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Sunday. ...

An Israeli air strike on a flat in ⁠a refugee camp in central Gaza on Sunday left three people dead, including a six-month-old child, health officials said. Medical workers named the three who died in the Nuseirat refugee camp as Mohammad Abu Mallo...

As the race to send humans back to the moon heats up, China has been fine-tuning its plans. On Saturday – the day after the US company SpaceX successfully launched its largest and most powerful Starship – the China Manned Space Agency unveiled fu...

With no food aid, 65-year-old Saeedah Mohammed heads out with a plastic bag to pick tree leaves near her displacement camp in southern Yemen, before serving them to her grandchildren to stave off hunger. Behind the camp wooded hills stretch under a c...

China’s latest space mission, which includes Hong Kong’s first astronaut, lifted off on Sunday night. The Long March-2F rocket carrying the Shenzhou-23 spacecraft blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwestern China’s Gans...

An electric atmosphere swept from the edge of the Gobi Desert to Hong Kong on Sunday night, as thrilled residents erupted into cheers to celebrate the historic launch of the Shenzhou-23 space mission featuring the city’s first astronaut, Lai Ka-yin...

US President Donald Trump’s next medical examination is intensifying health-related scrutiny that has surrounded him ever since his first campaign for the nation’s highest office more than a decade ago. Trump on Tuesday is heading to Walter Reed ...

The PLA Navy’s aircraft carrier base in Hainan could prove vital to the fleet’s survivability and crucial in countering US containment along the first island chain in wartime, according to a prominent mainland Chinese magazine. Such a posture cou...

Hong Kong police have launched an investigation after a Hung Hom shop cat was found with its tail nearly severed and its lips turning purple before dying at a veterinary clinic on Sunday afternoon. A 39-year-old woman, who operates a funeral services...

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek’s latest flagship model has been ranked as one of the world’s best on an intelligence-per-dollar basis, far exceeding those from US heavyweights OpenAI and Anthropic in cost-efficiency after a 75 ...

Images of sparse meals aboard naval vessels deployed in the United States’ war on Iran are a reminder that keeping military forces supplied with adequate food has been a problem for thousands of years. The photos came to light after a crew member f...

Hong Kong’s education authorities have demanded a written report from a secondary school after a video went viral that apparently shows its principal swearing at security guards during a school trip to Singapore. The Education Bureau expressed its ...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Hongkongers are set for a scorching week ahead, with the forecaster predicting temperatures will climb as hig...

A blast targeting a train carrying military personnel killed at least 24 people on Sunday in Pakistan’s turbulent southwestern province of Balochistan, a senior official said. Army servicemen and their relatives were among the victims of the attack...