Flight routes between Europe and China are suddenly crowded with prime ministers and presidents, giving the impression of a continent pivoting eastward. A flurry that began late last year with visits to Beijing by the Spanish king and French presiden...

A 32-year-old Chinese programmer who died suddenly after working intensively for years received a new work task message eight hours after his death. News of his overwork and death trended online and struck a chord with many people. Gao Guanghui died ...

The new generation of Hong Kong police officers will need “iron bones” in the face of unrelenting “oppression by hostile foreign forces”, the security minister has said. Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung, speaking at the force’s ...

A landslide earlier this week collapsed several mines at a major coltan mining site in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), leaving at least 200 people dead, rebel authorities said on Saturday. The collapse took place on Wednesday at the R...

Compared with the turmoil threatened by US President Donald Trump’s actions in everything from geopolitics to trade, the outcome of Japan’s parliamentary lower house election, set for February 8, may seem like small beer. Yet it could presage a g...

Russia’s call to revive a troika with China and India is unlikely to be greeted with enthusiasm by New Delhi, with critics pointing to tense border stand-offs and India’s reluctance to be seen as part of an “anti-West” grouping. Russian Forei...

Some restaurants in Tokyo have ignited controversy for reportedly enforcing age restrictions on their patrons, with some allowing entry only for people over 25 and others permitting those under 40. In Japan, certain eateries in the capital have begun...

Chinese regulators have slapped a 26 million yuan (US$3.7 million) fine on a unit of Kuaishou Technology, operator of the country’s No 2 short video platform, over multiple violations and misconduct in its live-streaming e-commerce operations, sign...

A man who was sentenced to jail in Singapore over an altercation with the police was released on the same day he was sentenced due to an error in calculating the jail term. Muhammad Fathurrahman Mohd Adzlan was contacted and returned to jail four day...

Hong Kong’s health minister is seeking to amend legislation to reform and speed up the complaint system of a medical watchdog, but has warned against “arbitrarily” adding more non-professionals to the body. Lo Chung-mau said on Saturday that th...

Wingtech Technology, the Chinese owner of chipmaker Nexperia, is expected to post a loss of between 9 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion) and 13.5 billion yuan in 2025, owing to the Dutch government’s takeover of the semiconductor firm, the Shanghai-list...

A Nevada jury on Friday convicted Dances With Wolves actor Nathan Chasing Horse of sexually assaulting indigenous women and girls in a case that sent shock waves through Indian Country. The jurors in Las Vegas found Chasing Horse guilty of 13 of the ...

Enterprises across China’s semiconductor industry recorded hefty profit growth last year, according to their unaudited financial results, driven by the country’s artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout and Beijing’s push for tech self-r...

Hong Kong film producer Tiffany Chen has announced her intention to work until the age of 100, encouraging young people not to rush into retirement. Chen, 67, is the wife of Hong Kong film mogul Charles Heung Wah-keung and is well-known on mainland s...

Hong Kong police have arrested six suspects in connection with a 58 million yen (US$376,600) robbery outside a currency exchange shop, including one victim who allegedly acted as a mole in the plot. Commissioner of Police Joe Chow Yat-ming said on Sa...

There was no mayday call from the commercial fishing vessel Lily Jean as it navigated the frigid Atlantic Ocean on Friday morning on its way home to Gloucester, Massachusetts, America’s oldest fishing port. The US Coast Guard was notified by the bo...

Hong Kong must maintain cash reserves to cope with geopolitical shocks and support long-term growth, even with a surplus expected in the government’s operating account this year, the financial secretary has said. Paul Chan Mo-po also said on Saturd...

China’s factory activity faltered in January as weak domestic demand dragged down production at the start of the new ‍year, an official survey showed on Saturday. The official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) dropped to 49.3 in January, from 50...

At an Indian gourmet food store, Avanti Mehta is organising a blind tasting of drinks sourced from France, Italy and India. No, this is not wine, it is water. Participants use tiny shot glasses to check the minerality, carbonation and salinity in sam...

This story was published in the South China Morning Post on February 1, 2006 14 Hong Kong tour­ists die in Egypt crash by Staff Reporters Four­teen Hong Kong tour­ists died on Tuesday (January 31, 2006) when their speed­ing coach ran off a high­...

Muhammad Syafiq, a 25-year-old banker from Kuala Lumpur, has started noticing something recently that felt like “real politics” compared with the soft sell of an election campaign poster at train stations in the Malaysian capital. “One governme...

A Japanese start-up is expanding a “granny business” that turns seniors’ lifetime skills into paid work through cafes, food stalls and community festivals, placing elderly women – including those with dementia – at the centre of local econo...

Taiwan’s absence from the United States’ newly released 2026 National Defence Strategy has fuelled fresh debate on the island over whether Washington is deliberately sidestepping Taiwan as it prioritises bigger interests with Beijing. The omissio...

China has plans to increase its investments in Nepal to take advantage of the country’s rich hydropower resources, according to a Nepalese official. Nepal’s hydropower sector is particularly attractive to Chinese investors because there is potent...

As spring approaches and temperatures begin to climb, Hong Kong’s cherry blossoms are preparing to burst into full bloom. Within the next week or two, Hongkongers can enjoy this spectacle without leaving the city. The South China Morning Post lists...

The Trump administration has approved a massive new series of arms sales to Israel totalling US$6.67 billion and to Saudi Arabia worth US$9 billion. The State Department announced the sales to America’s allies in the Middle East late on Friday as t...

In the world’s biggest wholesale electronics marketplace in the bustling Huaqiangbei district of the southern Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen, memory is the new gold. On a Tuesday in January, a merchant surnamed Ye held up a list of prices that look...

On a lively weekend afternoon beneath Marina Bay Sands, there is no stage, no spotlight and no audience in the conventional sense. Still, familiar music fills the underground concourse. A group of teenage girls moves in sync to rookie K-pop girl grou...

North Korea is set to use its coming Workers’ Party congress to signal an escalation towards carrying out large-scale nuclear retaliation in the event of a conflict with the US, with analysts expecting Pyongyang to unveil plans centred on intercont...

This year started with a bang – from the United States’ intervention in Venezuela and the investigation opened against US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to US President Donald Trump’s renewed claims on Greenland and the potential for US...

Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez ‌on Friday announced a proposed “amnesty law” for hundreds of prisoners in the country, and said the infamous Helicoide detention centre in the capital Caracas, which rights groups have long denou...

Hongkonger Chan Shuk-wah feels exhausted by the constant ringing of her phone. On any given weekday, nearly all of the calls lighting up her phone are from unknown numbers – as many as a dozen each day, mostly selling health checks or pushing loan ...

In the first few weeks of this year alone, the leaders of two of the five “eyes” in the world’s oldest intelligence-sharing alliance signalled they were ready to rethink their relationship with China. First came Canadian Prime Minister Mark Car...

A recruiter from a major state-owned insurance company sparked controversy by telling a job candidate that they did not deserve weekends off because they only held a bachelor’s degree. The incident came to public attention on January 18, when a job...

Li Xia suffers from an incurable genetic disease that has left him paralysed from the neck down. Yet the 36-year-old has overcome the odds by setting up a mini farm that he cultivates from inside his home in China.

It was a policy meant to ignite a golden age of infrastructure development and put Thailand at the heart of Southeast Asia’s trade and investment for decades to come. Three years – and three prime ministers – after it was first proposed, a mult...

The man who dumped a five-year-old girl in the Everglades – leaving her to be killed by alligators – had his life spared by a jury on Friday afternoon in a Miami-Dade courtroom. Harrel Braddy, 76, sat quietly when the verdict was read, briefly pu...

The US is poised to avoid a major shutdown after senators agreed on Friday to separate a controversial bill funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from a package that also includes funding for the State Department and the Pentagon. On Frid...

China is expected to look for ways to protect its maritime interests in the face of increasingly assertive efforts by the United States to seize foreign ships it accuses of breaching sanctions on countries such as Iran and Venezuela. In November, a c...

Former Google software engineer Ding Linwei was convicted by a federal jury in San Francisco ‌on Thursday of stealing AI trade secrets from the US tech ‍giant to benefit two Chinese companies he was secretly working for, the US Department of Just...

Three news items caught my eye over the past few days. The European Union is finally ready to totally ban the import of Russian natural gas. (You mean they have still been buying Russian gas?) The new National Defence Strategy put out by the Pentagon...

Washington on Friday welcomed a Panamanian court ruling cancelling a contract held by a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings to operate two ports along the Panama Canal, a decision seen as a boost to the United States’ efforts to cou...

Catherine O’Hara, a gifted Canadian-born comic actress and SCTV alum who starred as Macaulay Culkin’s harried mother in two Home Alone films and won an Emmy as the dramatically ditsy wealthy matriarch Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek died on Friday...

The US Justice Department has opened a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting of Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis resident killed by Border Patrol officers on January 24, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Friday. “We’re looki...

The World Trade Organization has faulted the United States in a dispute brought by China over US green energy subsidies introduced under former US president Joe Biden, according to a ruling issued on Friday. The global trade body’s dispute panel sa...

Beijing has lifted sanctions on British peers and lawmakers, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said, following his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “This has been a cause of concern in parliament and for parliamentarians for some time a...

Federal prosecutors cannot seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a judge ruled on Friday, foiling the Trump administration’s bid to see him executed for what it called a “premeditated...

The US Justice Department on Friday published millions of ‌new files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including emails that show Howard Lutnick, President Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, apparently visited Epstein’s pri...

Spanish police have detained a 38-year-old Chinese national who owned a ‌hair salon near Barcelona on suspicion of financing ‍the militant group Hamas through about €600,000 (US$715,000) in cryptocurrency transfers, regional police said on Frid...

The Islamic State extremist group on Friday claimed responsibility for an attack in Niger on an air force base in the capital that wounded four soldiers and damaged an aircraft. The claim of responsibility was contained in a statement on Amaq News Ag...