Vietnam is seeking to end executions for drug trafficking under a draft revision to its Penal Code, a notable shift in a country with one of Southeast Asia’s toughest anti-drug regimes. The proposal, presented to lawmakers last week, would remove t...

China’s shrinking car market has received another reality check as regulators step in to police the hi-tech offerings that carmakers use to drive sales. A nationwide inspection campaign assessing the quality of Chinese-made cars that was announced ...

Speak a few sentences of your hometown dialect into a microphone at a museum in central China, and a machine will pinpoint exactly where you are from. The interactive voice-recognition booth is among star attractions at a new language resources hall ...

Hongkongers can present either their identity card or home return permit at the revamped Huanggang border checkpoint instead of both documents under the latest agreement with mainland Chinese authorities, the security minister has revealed. Secretary...

Hong Kong’s government has earmarked HK$50 million (US$6.3 million) from the Disaster Relief Fund for those affected by deadly flash floods near Nepal’s border with Tibet’s Gyirong county, which have left hundreds dead and thousands missing. Ch...

A woman in her fifties has been fined for repeatedly banging on her ceiling with a backscratcher and contacting her upstairs neighbour over noise, with a South Korean court ruling that her actions amounted to stalking. The Chuncheon District Court fi...

Norway opened a new chapter in its history on Saturday under King Haakon VIII, after the death of his father Harald, a unifying figure who was on the throne for 35 years. A national period of mourning was declared in the Scandinavian kingdom followin...

Seven words, spoken almost in passing on a recent afternoon in Srinagar, have set off a diplomatic tremor across South Asia. “This is an important part of India,” Sergio Gor told reporters on August 19, during the first visit by a US ambassador t...

Several ride-hailing firms have expressed an interest in offering services under the new regulatory regime in Hong Kong, one day after the government opened licence applications setting out nine requirements, the transport chief has revealed. Secreta...

China is being urged to use human translators to refine AI renderings of its political messaging, amid concern that literal translations can make Beijing’s language sound more threatening abroad. An article in a state-affiliated academic newspaper ...

Chinese artificial intelligence companies are carving out a distinct lead over their US rivals in video generation, leveraging vast short-video ecosystems, looser copyright rules and aggressive pricing to dominate an arena where compute alone does no...

More than 1,000 luxury items and 80 real estate properties forfeited in Singapore’s S$3 billion (US$2.4 billion) money laundering case would go under the hammer from September 7, audit firm Deloitte said on Saturday. The properties will be auctione...

Mukti Patel has huddled with family and friends at her parents’ Richmond, Virginia, home since her dad, sister and two other relatives went missing in the catastrophic flash floods along the Nepal-China border. She knows the hotel they were staying...

Hong Kong and Macau lawyers will be able to practise in nine Guangdong cities from next week after passing an exam and obtaining the required qualifications under legal amendments passed by mainland China’s top legislative body. The Standing Commit...

Chinese rescuers continued searching for survivors from this week’s devastating floods along the border with Nepal as the operation passed a critical 72-hour window. On Saturday morning, engineers and workers started clearing away mud and debris us...

Seven Yemeni men were arrested in Malaysia after they allegedly performed dangerous stunts while travelling in two vehicles along Jalan Sungai Besi early on Friday. Kuala Lumpur Traffic Investigation and Enforcement Department chief Mohd Zamzuri Mohd...

As the deadline approaches for homeowners to accept the Hong Kong government’s deal to buy back their flats at fire-ravaged Wang Fuk Court, some who refuse to sell have said the offer cannot make up for the loss of their property and communal bonds...

China’s GJ-21 large stealth attack drone has been spotted on flight tests this month, as the country’s first Type 076 amphibious assault ship – the vessel that will launch the drone – enters its final sea trials. The GJ-21, the naval variant ...

Iranian leaders are acknowledging the economic toll of war with the United States, with the supreme leader calling on the government to address the hardship while the president reported foreign trade has shrunk 35 per cent due to the American sanctio...

The Philippines spent years dismantling Chinese-linked gambling compounds in dramatic, headline-grabbing raids. But all the while, and with far less scrutiny, South Korean syndicates were building a parallel industry worth billions of US dollars – ...

A former White House teleprompter operator accused of using inside knowledge to make bets on the prediction market Kalshi has been ordered to turn over more than US$100,000 in profits and pay a US$65,000 fine as part of a settlement with federal auth...

Following temples and nightclubs, a Chinese bank and a hospital have recently begun offering marriage registration services, igniting discussions on the Chinese government’s commitment to promoting nuptials. In August, a branch of the Postal Saving...

Beijing’s recent curbs on cross-border investment and a tax shift targeting overseas insurance gains may create short-term uncertainty, but they will not undermine Hong Kong’s long-term competitiveness as a major wealth management hub, according ...

When Kripa Vaidyanathan’s 27-year-old niece died in an Alaska car crash in 2024, her family in Chennai, India, felt shell-shocked. They questioned why this tragedy would befall them when they had such “immense faith in God”. Vaidyanathan, a yog...

In contemporary discourse, the bogeyman of “debt traps” is almost exclusively tied to Beijing. Western media, think tanks, NGOs and policymakers from Washington to Brussels frequently warn developing nations of the perils of bilateral loans from ...

About 80 per cent of the foreign nationals granted working visas under Hong Kong’s General Employment Policy (GEP) last year were hired on short-term contracts, while nearly half of successful applicants earned less than HK$20,000 (US$2,564) a mont...

President Donald Trump’s administration is considering giving a section of the renowned Yosemite National Park to a private developer, a lawyer for the company confirmed on Friday. The National Park Service had been holding talks with Nevada-based ...

The Tokyo metropolitan government has unveiled a plan to use an underground facility near Tokyo Station as a shelter for residents and tourists in the event of a ballistic missile attack. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike told a press conference earlier th...

In the rush to build an AI future, semiconductors are the silicon rock stars that soak up all the applause. Yet behind the curtain, an unglamorous stagehand is doing much of the heavy lifting. Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are the copper-laced panels...

President Donald Trump on Friday said the US had entered an agreement with Venezuela to take control of 65 billion barrels of the South American country’s oil reserves. Trump in a social media post announced the agreement he said was negotiated by ...

The United States announced sanctions on a Hong Kong company on Friday for allegedly helping launder funds for a sanctioned Iranian exchange house, the latest Chinese entity to be targeted as part of Washington’s expanded efforts to squeeze Iran’...

US immigration officials arrested controversial British far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos on Thursday in New Orleans, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Immigration officials announced on Friday that Yiannopoulos was arrested at ...

On the windswept plains just south of Tibet’s second-largest city, the towering smart inspection systems and automated cargo gantries of a brand-new international land port gleam under the plateau’s high-altitude sun. Official road maps predict t...

Artificial intelligence (AI) poses risks that do not respect national borders, from cyberattacks and misinformation to system malfunction and potentially dangerous misuse. In a geopolitically charged world, does greater incompatibility between countr...

Rescuers pulled out survivors caked in dark brown mud and helicopters lifted stranded people to safety, as Nepal and China raced to respond to catastrophic flash floods that killed nearly 600 people and left almost 2,500 missing. The rescue efforts i...

US President Donald Trump on Friday announced the creation of a “Space Academy” to train future civilian and military recruits for an arena where the United States faces rivalry with China. Speaking at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Tr...

President Donald Trump arrives at an awkward moment for his presidency on Friday as the US-Israel war against Iran reaches the six-month mark, a notable milestone for a conflict that the Republican leader repeatedly assured Americans would be a “li...

The US central bank will “have work to do” if policymakers are not confident that underlying inflation is returning to its 2 per cent target, Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh said on Friday in remarks that acknowledged financial conditions do...

China’s electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD saw its earnings jump 30 per cent in the three months from April to June, ending a five-quarter losing streak as buoyant overseas sales and premium models enhanced its net margin and profitability. The Shenzh...

“Asia’s water tower” is heading towards a more unpredictable and unstable future, according to a new study measuring the Tibetan Plateau’s stability. The study, published on August 21 in Nature Communications, examined the entropy of the regi...

Hong Kong authorities will take enforcement action against dog owners who fail to keep their pets under control during special operations taking place on Sunday and the following weekend in response to a spate of canine attacks. The Agriculture, Fish...

Beijing has unveiled a package of measures to shift home sales in China’s vast property market away from a presales model, in a stronger-than-expected push to stabilise a property downturn that has weighed on consumer demand for years. A notice rel...

An unmanned electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft made its maiden demonstration flight in Hong Kong on Friday, as the city pushes to develop a low-altitude economy, with the government aiming to complete drafting relevant legislatio...

Beijing has formally removed former senior officers Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli as members of China’s supreme military command. The two generals have been under investigation for alleged discipline violations since January and were officially strip...

The Central Asian country of Uzbekistan has approached the United States about joining Pax Silica, Washington’s flagship initiative on artificial intelligence (AI) supply chains, a month after signing up for China’s own global grouping, the World...

Within hours of a devastating glacier collapse on the China-Nepal border, a Beijing-based satellite company had already redirected six of its satellites to survey the disaster zone. The high-resolution radar images they captured revealed a massive co...

One of the two people killed in an attack at a school near Berlin was a 30-year-old nursery worker, police said on Friday. It had previously been reported that the man who was killed in Thursday’s attack was the caretaker. A woman and a man were ki...

With the end of the 60-day US-Iran memorandum of understanding, tensions in the Strait of Hormuz have flared again. The crisis in the strait highlights how the security and stability of key international waterways are becoming an increasingly urgent ...

An 81-year-old man has been sentenced to life imprisonment in Germany for the murder of an American tourist more than 30 years ago, the presiding judge at Koblenz Regional Court, Rupert Stehlin, announced on Friday. The court also found that the offe...

Malaysia sees an opening in the Gulf travel disruption caused by the Iran war, pitching itself as a Muslim-friendly destination for travellers seeking halal food, prayer facilities and family-focused holidays. But such gains could be limited because ...