Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing’s back-to-back visits to India and China have been described as an effort to avoid becoming overdependent on either country, but analysts said there was little reason to think it would erode Beijing’s “overarch...

Malaysia’s bet on Chinese tourists is increasingly being shaped by the same forces influencing their itineraries: short videos, lifestyle apps, online personalities and newly opened routes from beyond China’s biggest cities. Tourism Malaysia conf...

A Hong Kong national security police officer has admitted filming upskirt footage of a woman and attempting to grab a colleague’s handgun in an apparent bid to harm himself after his arrest last year. West Kowloon Court heard on Monday that Constab...

The critical 72-hour window for finding survivors of the powerful twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela had completely closed by Monday, leaving international teams facing a grim race against time to pull anyone else alive from the debris. The death...

Hong Kong has relaxed its licensing requirements for rural holiday camps and village guest houses, allowing greater flexibility in building and fire safety requirements for some properties to encourage more tourist accommodation options outside urban...

Every few minutes, the mortuary owner’s phone rings. Since a record-smashing heatwave started taking lives and storage space for bodies in Paris and beyond, the funeral directors and mourning families calling him mostly have the same question: do y...

Malaysia has set up a special task force to tackle potential disruptions on the causeway linking Johor to Singapore ahead of a state election next month. Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail has said ensuring smooth cross-border movement is his mi...

A Hong Kong school has activated its crisis management team to provide counselling support in response to the death of an 11-year-old boy during a training run over the weekend, while the institution’s leaders are set to meet education officials. H...

South Korea rolled out sweeping chip and AI megaprojects on Monday, as President Lee Jae Myung pledged to cement overwhelming industry leadership with investments worth more than US$576 billion over several years. The announcement marks ⁠Lee’s bo...

A panel of a glass bridge at a popular tourist site in central China was cracked by a teenager wielding an umbrella, raising concerns about its quality among the public. On June 20, a visitor at the Baoquan Cliff World Scenic Area, a national 5A-rate...

Nasa is racing to save an ageing telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission. The US$30 million salvage operation gets under way as soon as this week with the planned launch of a robotic lifesaver. Nasa hired start-up Katalyst S...

The head of Hong Kong’s Harbourfront Commission has called for improvements to the proposal to reclaim land for a popular tourist selfie spot in Kennedy Town, saying the current design failed to fit the neighbourhood’s ambience. Ivan Ho Man-yiu, ...

Hong Kong’s M+ museum has offered ticket holders one free entry in the next three months after poor crowd management led to hours-long queues for an exhibition that opened at the weekend, prompting a wave of customer complaints. The venue’s “De...

Desalination has always been an energy-hungry way of turning salt water into fresh water, making it largely the preserve of wealthy countries with abundant fossil fuel reserves. Yet, an outdoor demonstration prototype in China has managed to exhibit ...

Australia and Vanuatu signed a sweeping economic and security agreement on Monday that bars the establishment of any foreign military base on the Pacific island. Vanuatu is at the centre of strategic rivalry between China and US allies in the South P...

She has a young woman’s voice, a friendly face and a police chief’s badge. Her name is “AIko” and she may be Japan’s most unconventional weapon in a war against fraud that cost the country a record US$2 billion last year. AIko – a blend o...

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. China’s AI-powered laser mosquito zapper goes v...

As Hong Kong marks the 29th anniversary of its return to Chinese rule on July 1, the South China Morning Post talks to the city’s senior officials about the administration’s achievements so far and what may lie ahead. Hong Kong will step up build...

Ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina has vowed to return ⁠to Bangladesh this year, brushing ⁠aside a death sentence handed down ⁠in absentia and denouncing the ruling as “illegal, unconstitutional and politically motivated”. Hasina, 7...

China has broken ground on what developers say is the country’s first production line for AI-assisted personalised tumour vaccines, raising hopes for millions of new cancer patients every year – a disease that ranks as the nation’s second-leadi...

The next frontier of artificial intelligence will be agents that can perform “economically valuable” work across a broad range of real-world domains, according to Dawn Song, Meta Platforms’ new vice-president of AI research. “The goal is not ...

A worker has died and another has been injured after an excavator fell on its side at a Hong Kong construction site. Police said on Monday that they received a report at 9.42am that an industrial accident had occurred on the site on Liberty Avenue in...

People in the Philippines are flocking to install solar power on rooftops and escape the burden of soaring electricity prices, making it the world’s biggest spender on solar panels since the war in Iran started. Top power distributor Meralco has ra...

The Ministry of Commerce said on Monday that to deter Japan’s “remilitarisation” and its attempts to “acquire nuclear weapons”, it has added 20 Japanese entities “involved in enhancing Japan’s military capabilities” to an export-contr...

As Hong Kong marks the 29th anniversary of its return to Chinese rule on July 1, the South China Morning Post talks to the city’s senior officials about the administration’s achievements so far and what may lie ahead. Hong Kong’s first rectifie...

European Union leaders had a week to bask in their rare, relatively united stance on China policy before news broke to remind them of the urgency of their task: German car giant Volkswagen was reportedly planning up to 100,000 job cuts in the face of...

Earlier this year, a screenshot of a domestic airfare went viral in the Philippines for all the wrong reasons. The flight was from Manila to Batanes, the country’s remote northern tip. The price: 27,000 pesos (US$440) – enough to fly to Taipei or...

Vietnam is increasingly using broadly written laws to arrest activists, dissidents and others that authorities consider a threat to the Communist Party’s rule, according to a new analysis released on Monday by a human rights group. The 88 Project, ...

The public consultation for Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s last policy address of his current term is under way. Will he, for example, listen to the people about whether the baby bonus, one of the initiatives aimed at raising the birth rate and...

A teenager from northern China who lost his sight in a brutal attack has emerged as one of the top scorers in the national college entrance examination for students with disabilities. Thirteen years ago, Guo Bin was just six years old when a middle-a...

Energy exploration has picked up sharply in Australia, driven ⁠by growing Asian gas demand, technological advances and an improved investment climate, with the Iran war ⁠underscoring the urgency to develop supply after years of sluggish spending....

As Hong Kong marks the 29th anniversary of its return to Chinese rule on July 1, the South China Morning Post talks to the city’s senior officials about the administration’s achievements so far and what may lie ahead. New homes in Hong Kong’s N...

Victor Lee is not the kind of man to leave behind his family without a reason, but the 34-year-old Filipino has done the sums and decided where life must take him next: Lithuania. His wife does not want him to go. She will be left to care for their c...

Sovereign wealth funds and central banks managing US$29 trillion in assets are turning to energy assets, and raising concerns about the dollar, in a portfolio reassessment driven by unprecedented geopolitical shifts, according to a survey ‌publishe...

A Chinese farmer has generated a buzz online by planting a forest of more than 170 surveillance cameras on his land in the hope of boosting his compensation under a land purchase scheme. Footage circulating on social media – which showed the poles ...

A US official said on Sunday that Washington and Tehran agreed to halt attacks after new tit-for-tat strikes strained their interim deal, with the sides planning to renew talks aimed at ending the Middle East war. The exchanges have underscored the f...

US President Donald Trump lashed out on Sunday at Washington’s presumptive next mayor, calling her a communist who would destroy the capital city, even as he touted grandiose building projects including the refurbishment of a golf course. Trump sai...

Andy Burnham, the Labour lawmaker expected to replace Keir Starmer as British prime minister, will outline his vision for Britain on Monday, his office said, promising to change how the nation is governed with power moving from London to ‌the regio...

Hong Kong faces the prospect of a tsunami of elderly poverty sweeping over society in the coming decades. The question is what to do about it. The good news is that there are ways to reduce the severity of the problem. The bad news is that these will...

Thousands of protesters descended on the Serbian city of Kraljevo on Sunday, keeping up pressure on President Aleksandar Vucic a day after he said he would step down ‌within weeks to pave the way for early presidential and parliamentary elections. ...

⁠Kate, the Princess of ⁠Wales, said on Sunday that she had ⁠scaled the three highest peaks in the UK in 24 hours to raise money for a cancer charity, citing it as a personal achievement following her own battle with the disease. Kate, 44, the w...

Ukraine kept up its heavy drone assault on Russia, setting fire to a major oil refinery in the south, as President Vladimir Putin acknowledged for the first time on Sunday that the country was facing a “certain deficit” of fuel and vowed to stren...

Turkish police on Sunday detained at least 50 people, including a journalist, during a Gay Pride event in Istanbul that went ahead despite a ban by local authorities and the lockdown of the city’s main gathering point, organisers said. Police stepp...

Car bombs and gun attacks killed five members of Israel’s Arab minority Sunday, the latest violence to hit a community that has already recorded dozens of deaths this year. Criminal violence has escalated among Israel’s Arab minority in recent ye...

The Hong Kong University Students’ Union publication Undergrad, founded more than 70 years ago and one of the city’s longest-running campus news outlets, has ceased operations after failing to recruit enough members to form a new editorial board....

Hong Kong school pupils as young as seven are being referred for addiction counselling for online gaming, with requests for help involving increasingly younger children, a digital habits workshop has heard. Crystal Leung Chui-yee, officer-in-charge o...

Chinese firms joined their global competitors at Eurosatory, the recently concluded arms fair, where the latest air defences were the centre of attention in a market made more important by the drone warfare seen in Ukraine and the Middle East. Expert...

Elon Musk’s recent record-breaking SpaceX IPO has thrust the space economy into the financial mainstream, but mainland China’s trillion-yuan commercial space sector remains strikingly underinsured – a gap industry insiders say presents a rare o...

A skydiving plane crashed on Sunday in northeastern France, killing all 11 people on board – among them a group of nurses – local authorities said, the country’s deadliest ever general aviation accident. The crash in the town of Tomblaine kille...

Generals losing a war examine the enemy, battlefield and their own forces. Brussels prefers a different sequence, ordering new weapons first and worrying about the diagnosis later. That instinct was on display at the recent European Council meeting. ...