German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul’s trip to China this week signals a mutual desire to resume high-level dialogue amid mounting economic and geopolitical tensions, according to analysts. But they cautioned that the visit, which could lay the ...

A Chinese secondary school pupil who asked his classmates to save their used water bottles so he could sell them to help ease his family’s financial position has been praised online. The plea in the form of a blackboard message was written by a Gra...

Thirteen households from the Hong Kong estate devastated by the inferno in Tai Po remain uncontactable more than 10 days on from the blaze, with the city’s labour and welfare chief not ruling out that all may have died in the fire. Secretary for La...

The fire that tore through the Wang Fuk Court housing estate in Tai Po and killed at least 159 may have started on scaffolding between the first and second floors of one of the blocks, according to preliminary investigations by Hong Kong fire service...

In the tumultuous days before Singapore’s separation from Malaysia in 1965, founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew clung to the hope that the city could still be part of the federal government under a looser arrangement, but his deputy had no desire ...

Sri Lankan authorities issued fresh landslide warnings on Sunday, with rains lashing areas already devastated by a powerful cyclone as the death toll rose to 618. A chain of tropical storms and monsoonal rains has battered Southeast and South Asia, s...

A scaffolding net sample from a large Hong Kong housing estate produced flaming droplets and ignited a fire in a lab experiment despite passing the authorities’ safety standards, a test commissioned by the Post has found. The findings have prompted...

Ground has quite literally been broken on a Chinese-funded project to modernise the Tanzania-Zambia railway after years of negotiations, amid intensifying “corridor wars” as major powers compete to shape transport and trade networks across not ju...

South Africa, China’s largest trade partner in the continent, and other Southern African Customs Union (SACU) members are suffering from an unforeseen barrier to enjoying Beijing’s zero-tariff policy. The hurdle is eSwatini’s continued diplomat...

A project offering counselling to teenagers with depression and anxiety in Hong Kong will be expanded next year to reach more students, after about half of those it has helped showed no further signs of mental health issues, according to a local char...

A woman worker at a discount chain outlet in South Korea who reminded a youngster not to run around for safety reasons sparked an angry and humiliating outburst from the child’s mother. The mother became aggressive, verbally abused the member of st...

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth doubled down on deadly US air strikes against alleged drug-running boats off the Venezuelan coast, saying he would have made the same call as the admiral who ordered survivors to be killed. The nearly two dozen strikes ...

Vijay Andrews arrived in Singapore determined to compete again. The 32-year-old Indian fitness coach had spent months recovering from an injury that kept him out of New Delhi’s July Hyrox fitness competition. So when he learned there would be anoth...

They promise consistency, cost savings and the speed demanded by modern life. But in a culture that reveres freshness and the wok hei benchmark for Chinese dishes, the rapid rise of industrially processed pre-made meals has stirred a heated debate �...

A harsh folk saying from ancient China goes, “it is better to marry a widow than a divorced woman,” or Ning qu gua fu, bu qu sheng qi in Chinese. The expression reflects the rigid and often brutal moral standards that historically governed women�...

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a sailor who shoots an albatross is forced to hang it around his neck as penance, with the bird becoming a heavy burden and a reminder of his guilt. This metaphor was invoked by Goh...

A US$140 million fine on tech tycoon Elon Musk’s social media platform underscores how Europeans undermine US policies even while demanding that the United States provide military protection, one of the top American diplomats wrote on Saturday. US ...

A rare military confrontation occurred in the waters northeast of Taiwan near the Miyako Strait on Saturday when Japan claimed that Chinese naval fighters had conducted intermittent fire-control radar illumination – a tactical precursor to missile ...

Once a symbol of the all-American road trip, recreational vehicles (RVs) are enjoying a surge in popularity in Malaysia as families seek cheaper, more adventurous holidays – and as the government moves to develop more dedicated RV parks and streaml...

The southern Chinese megacity of Shenzhen, a symbol of the country’s rapid urbanisation and development, has spent decades transforming urban villages and tenement blocks into dense public housing estates and massive industrial and office parks. No...

OnlyFans star Bonnie Blue – famous for claiming to have slept with more than 1,000 men in 12 hours as part of a viral stunt earlier this year – has been arrested in Bali alongside over a dozen men for allegedly violating Indonesia’s “morality...

ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has moved to tighten controls on its artificial intelligence-powered smartphone after several of China’s most widely used apps restricted its voice-operated functions. The company said it had scaled back the capabili...

From temple courtyards to trendy cafes, cats have long captivated hearts in China. Now, scientists have shed light on the pet’s origin in the country, suggesting its earliest presence dates back to the Tang dynasty (618-907), with its arrival via t...

The fireworks between Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau are now Instagram official, following months of speculation and steamy sightings. The 41-year-old pop star, who recently ended her engagement to Orlando Bloom, shared a selfie on Saturday with the f...

Western analysts often frame automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics as an existential threat to workers, with the risk of impending unemployment potentially triggering economic unrest. However, 74 per cent of all industrial robots depl...

A fire that ripped through an Indian nightclub in the popular tourist resort region of Goa killed 25 people, the state’s chief minister said on Sunday. Tourists were among the dead in the blaze, which broke out at about midnight at a club in Arpora...

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s pledge to revive visits by former residents to the Russia-controlled islands off Japan’s far north has reignited debate over whether humanitarian exchanges can survive the deep freeze in Tokyo–Moscow rel...

A pale-grey, nearly one-metre-tall, four-legged robot drew crowds at Tokyo’s International Robot Exhibition, lowering itself down some steps before lifting its right foreleg as if to greet onlookers. It rolled around one of the exhibition halls on ...

A Chinese woman who bought handmade doll’s eyes online has received the goods 10 years after placing the original order. The woman, surnamed Li, posted online that she recently received the custom-made products she bought online in 2015. She had co...

This story 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. Hongkongers head to polling stations t...

Japan’s struggle to accept outsiders has been exposed once again after a video of a right-wing lawmaker arguing against Muslim burials went viral. The video showed Mizuho Umemura, a House of Councillors member from the populist Sanseito party, obje...

A drone attack by the Sudanese paramilitary forces hit a kindergarten in south-central Sudan, killing 50 people, including 33 children, a doctors’ group said. Paramedics on the scene in the town of Kalogi in South Kordofan state were targeted in �...

Chinese medical experts have created an ultra-efficient stem cell approach to Parkinson’s disease, raising prospects for treatment for a condition for which there is no known cure. Parkinson’s disease is often referred to as a “movement disorde...

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced on Saturday that he was sending a business delegation to Russia in the coming days in preparation for the end of the Ukraine war. Orban addressed Budapest’s foreign relations with Moscow and also Wash...

Cop30 concluded with confident declarations from global fashion brands: upgraded net-zero road maps, new partnerships under the UN Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action and bold promises to “accelerate supply-chain decarbonisation”. However...

For the first time in a decade, hunters armed with rifles and crossbows are fanning out across Florida’s swamps and flatwoods to legally hunt the Florida black bear, over the vocal opposition of critics. The state-sanctioned hunt began on Saturday,...

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that he and his negotiators who are discussing a US-led plan for Ukraine had a “very substantive and constructive” call with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. “Ukraine is committed to conti...

Hong Kong’s national security police have arrested a 71-year-old man on suspicion of disclosing details of one of their probes, invoking a provision that covers prejudicing such investigations for the first time. Police said the National Security D...

A mass shooting carried out on Saturday by multiple suspects in an unlicensed bar near the South African capital left at least 11 people dead, police said. The victims included three children aged three, 12 and 16. Another 14 people were wounded and ...

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has vowed to go to Norway to pick up her Nobel Peace Prize, defying a warning from Caracas that she would be a fugitive if she did so. The head of the Nobel Institute, Kristian Berg Harpviken, on Satu...

Hong Kong has recorded one additional locally acquired case of chikungunya fever involving a woman who went hiking in Tsing Yi, bringing the total number of confirmed local cases of the mosquito-borne disease this year to 10. The Centre for Health Pr...

Eighteen people were killed in an air strike on a town in central Myanmar, according to a local official, a rescue worker and two residents who spoke to Agence France-Presse on Saturday. Myanmar has been rocked by civil war since the military snatche...

Hong Kong authorities have made a last-ditch appeal for residents to refocus on the city’s reform and their future by voting in Sunday’s Legislative Council election, as political analysts said public sentiment after the deadly fire in Tai Po wou...

Four protesters have been arrested after custard and apple crumble was thrown at a display case containing the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London. Take Back Power, which describes itself as a new non-violent civil-resistance group, claimed it was be...

It is not unusual for Berlin to be cloaked in a blanket of grey on the brink of winter. What hangs over the city this year, however, feels heavier. This new shade of gloom cuts through conversations about everything. Germany’s coalition government ...

Hong Kong police have arrested a man and a woman for alleged possession of dangerous drugs after seizing suspected etomidate and methamphetamine from them. Officers from the force’s Kowloon West region noticed a suspicious pair at about 1am on Satu...

Two years after Thai worker Sudthisak Rinthalak was killed by Hamas militants, his family in northeastern Thailand is preparing to welcome his remains home and hold a Buddhist ceremony they believe will bring his spirit peace. Sudthisak was among 47 ...

Competing priorities and US economic interests are likely to challenge Washington in its goal of “deterring a conflict over Taiwan” through an overwhelming military advantage, according to experts. The strategic goal was laid out in the White Hou...

Beijing’s national security office in Hong Kong has met representatives from foreign media outlets in the city and warned them against crossing “red lines”, following reports it said smeared the government’s fire relief efforts and attacked t...

The nearly two-month-old ceasefire in the Gaza Strip will not be complete until Israeli troops withdraw from the Palestinian territory under a peace plan backed by Washington and the United Nations, mediator Qatar’s prime minister has said. “Now ...