Hong Kong’s ethnic minority communities can leverage their multicultural backgrounds and language skills to play an “important role” in the city’s efforts to build ties with belt and road countries, the labour minister has said. Other speaker...

There has been much hyperventilating over two recent controversies at M+, Hong Kong’s museum of visual culture. The first was a series of mahjong social nights charging museum members and patrons up to HK$2,500 (US$319) for a package including an e...

A young Malagasy woman was stopped at Madagascar’s Ivato International Airport last month as she prepared to travel to China for a proposed marriage, according to local media reports citing police. She had reportedly been promised 10 million ariary...

There is no “red line” set for approving public assemblies, Hong Kong’s police chief has said, while warning that national security risks persist despite the landmark conviction and imprisonment of organisers behind the city’s annual Tiananme...

Hong Kong police are investigating after the body of a 53-year-old mainland Chinese woman was found in the waters near Lamma Island on Saturday morning. Police received a report at 10.19am after a body was spotted floating in the ocean near the Lamma...

Hong Kong police have frozen HK$30 million (US$3.8 million) held in the bank account of a 36-year-old man who was arrested on suspicion of theft after he allegedly refused to split a winning Mark Six jackpot with his colleagues. The arrest was made o...

Syrian government plans to turn a former military airport in Damascus into a ⁠hub for private jets are raising alarm among rights groups and residents who say redevelopment could disturb suspected mass graves and override private land claims. Syria...

“Separatists” and the United States are putting Taiwan in greater danger, state broadcaster CCTV warned on Friday after Washington’s de facto ambassador said the island could convince a potential adversary that landing forces would be very diff...

A premature baby in southern China, weighing just 330 grams and measuring as large as an adult’s palm, was discharged from the hospital in good health after a 105-day stay. The newborn baby boy was born on May 20, when his mother was only 23 weeks ...

The Hong Kong government will table a bill at the Legislative Council in the first half of 2027 to introduce a statutory cooling-off period for prepaid beauty and fitness contracts, the commerce chief has said. Secretary for Commerce and Economic Dev...

Unvaccinated children and elderly people are four to five times more likely to face serious complications or mortality from flu infections than those who receive vaccinations, a Hong Kong health official has warned, as influenza cases in the city con...

Coffee bars. Water parks. Retail therapy. ⁠North Korea – a country few would associate with leisure or pleasure – is experiencing an ⁠unlikely outbreak of fun. Leader Kim Jong-un, himself no stranger to indulgence, is orchestrating new ways f...

The state funeral for the city’s first chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, is scheduled for next Sunday, the South China Morning Post has learned. A source confirmed on Saturday that the service would take place on September 20, with details being arra...

Farmer Pema Dema had never even heard of hazelnuts when she was first recruited to begin growing them on her land in Bhutan’s Thimphu region. “I wondered what sort of a nut it was,” the 58-year-old said with a laugh, looking out over the deep v...

In the third of our series of previews on the five-year plan and policy address, to be announced on September 16, Leopold Chen and Theodora Yu look at how the city can raise its game and expand the adoption of artificial intelligence. Read part one h...

Authorities in China are taking content creators, fan groups and online platforms to task as their aggressive pursuit of online traffic upends lives and public services across the country. State media and local authorities have called on these partie...

Irma smells the fire before she sees it: a column of thick, yellow-tinged smoke rising above the tree line near her small wooden home. She pulls on heavy rubber boots, checks her equipment and drives straight into the impenetrable smog emanating from...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s declaration that artificial general intelligence (AGI) has arrived following the release of OpenAI’s latest model, Astra, has ignited debate over whether AI’s holy grail is now reality. As China races to close the gap ...

US President Donald Trump lands in Ireland under tight security on Saturday for two days of diplomacy and golf, on a trip that again blurs the lines between his presidency and personal business interests. At least 4,000 police and other personnel, in...

US health authorities on Friday declared the ⁠nation’s largest recorded cyclosporiasis outbreak ⁠over, after contaminated iceberg lettuce sickened thousands, though ⁠the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it was still investigating how t...

A two-hour commute for a 14km (8.7-mile) journey. For Julius Dalay and millions of other Filipinos, this is just how public transport works in Manila: a mishmash of jeepneys, trains and buses that commuters are left to figure out for themselves. Dala...

Leaders from some of the world’s largest emerging economies are gathering in New Delhi this weekend for a summit marking the 20th anniversary of Brics, a fast-expanding group of developing nations. Chinese President Xi Jinping, along with his Russi...

The death of Tung Chee-hwa at age 89 has prompted a necessary reckoning with the legacy of Hong Kong’s first chief executive. Two decades after his resignation, the question endures: was Tung a hapless administrator overwhelmed by crisis, or a pres...

A teenage girl in mainland China travelled to Hong Kong to attend a concert of her idol, resulting in her family losing their government living allowances due to her actions being classified as a form of “high-end consumption.” This incident has ...

North Korea fired several short-range ballistic missiles ⁠from the Wonsan area towards the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said on Saturday. The missiles were launched at around 5.20am and flew about 250 km (155 ...

Products widely considered “ugly” or “bizarre” have gone viral online in China as millions of young consumers embrace the items’ quirky humour and distinctive character. Cumulative sales of such products on Taobao – an e-commerce platform...

A senior Hong Kong government official who oversaw faulty lift installation work that stalled the launch of a new block at Queen Mary Hospital was asked to resign and left her post last month to take responsibility for the defects and delays on other...

Dr Asma Zafirah doesn’t need satellite images to know when Kalimantan is burning. She sees it in the watery eyes and laboured breaths of the patients at her clinic in Sarawak, and the children who are kept home from school to protect them from the ...

Standing in the town that sheltered thousands of stranded Americans after the September 11 attacks, former Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien marked the 25th anniversary on Friday with a pointed message for the US: “Never mistake our generosity ...

A US congressional advisory body on China said on Friday that leading Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firms declined to meet its members during a recent Beijing visit over concerns that doing so could expose the firms to US sanctions. But member...

Rising tensions over artificial intelligence are shaping the final preparations for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States. Washington and Beijing are discussing the possibility of folding a long-awaited AI dialogue into a broade...

Saudi Arabia has shut down its East-West pipeline after the vital oil conduit came under aerial attack in the widening Middle East war. The world’s largest crude oil exporter temporarily closed the pipeline after a drone attack that both Baghdad an...

A 15-year-old boy survived on top of an overturned skiff in Alaska’s frigid Bering Sea for roughly two days, losing his older brother and then his cousin to the ocean after the boat capsized while they were out fishing. The teen, identified by a re...

Twenty-five years ⁠after the deadliest attack on US soil, Americans paused on Friday to commemorate the nearly 3,000 people killed when hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania – and to wrestle...

Hong Kong police have arrested a 36-year-old man suspected of having fled with a Mark Six jackpot worth around HK$30 million (US$3.8 million) that he should have shared with 14 colleagues. A source said on Friday that a 53-year-old man had reported t...

Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, the leading right-wing challenger to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in next month’s election, is under investigation for alleged corruption and money laundering tied to failed lender Banco Master, according ...

Sweden’s party leaders campaigned on Friday in the final stretch of a close election race that could see either the centre left take back power or the far-right enter government for the first time. Outgoing Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson was hoping...

In north China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, home to the country’s largest coal reserves, a vast open-pit mine cuts deep into the earth, shrouded in clouds of dust. Winters here are long and brutal, with temperatures plunging to as low as m...

UK lawmakers on Friday voted down legislation to allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales to choose to end their lives. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was opposed by 286 members of parliament, while 270 voted for it. The vote br...

The creator of a sculpture commemorating those killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown will ask Danish authorities to negotiate with Hong Kong for its return, with city officials disputing his claims of owning the confiscated artwork. The fate ...

US consumer prices accelerated in August as the cost of petrol rebounded after two straight monthly declines, bolstering financial market expectations that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates next week. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) incre...

Abnormally high temperatures across the Tibetan Plateau in early winter can trigger catastrophic rainstorms in California, according to a new study revealing a previously unidentified climate connection. In the winters of 2016-2017 and 2022-2023, rec...

While US Treasuries remain at the centre of a global bond sell-off despite efforts by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to calm the market, investors in China are rushing to buy domestic government debt. After China’s Ministry of Finance issued a...

As Singapore considers joining a China-led body on artificial intelligence, analysts say membership would give the city state a bigger say in global governance matters related to the technology but may invite an unfriendly response from Washington. M...

China is set to secure its place among the global automotive powerhouses by 2030 through further efforts to boost domestic sales and foster technological innovation, while a capacity alert mechanism will be introduced to guard against disorderly comp...

Financial markets are notoriously prone to mistaking a fundamental institutional shift for a temporary liquidity crisis. The futurist Roy Amara is often credited with the observation that people tend to overestimate the short-term effect of a transfo...

Veteran Hong Kong actor and filmmaker Simon Loui Yu-yeung, better known to fans as the “King of Ghosts” for his prolific work in horror films, has died at the age of 62. Long-time friend and fellow actor Frankie Ng Chi-hung revealed to reporters ...

Fresh clues are emerging about a new type of Chinese drone being developed as a long-range intelligence and surveillance platform intended to operate deep inside contested airspace. New photographs circulated on Chinese internet forums earlier this m...

Beijing has put a freeze on new approvals of production facilities for energy-storage batteries amid worries about excess supply and vicious price competition, according to industry officials. Companies had not been allowed to add new capacity since ...

Philippine rescuers recovered ⁠30 bodies from a burned-out ferry on Friday, raising the death toll from the blaze to 35, authorities said. Firefighters found the remains after they gained access to the vessel for the first time, having extinguished...