Two mainland Chinese ride-hailing operators in Hong Kong have backed a controversial plan to regulate the industry by capping vehicle permits at 10,000, a figure the city’s largest American business chamber considers insufficient. In submissions to...

Keir Starmer announced his intention to step down as Britain’s prime minister on Monday, succumbing to intense party pressure as his popularity plummeted and rivals have manoeuvred to challenge him. “Every decision I have taken has been about put...

At first glance, the images looked like those of a happy family in Singapore. There were photos of the couple during their school days and on dates, the woman pregnant and the man holding their supposed newborn with a caption that read: “My boys”...

A cursory look at the ranking of the world’s largest shopping centres shows the scale of the decline in the US retail property market. The US has only one, the Mall of America near Minneapolis, Minnesota, among the top 20. This is not surprising gi...

A Hong Kong court has sentenced a 70-year-old gang member to a year in prison for forcing two Thai women into prostitution, after they fell for job scams claiming to be hiring massage therapists and were trafficked from Thailand to the city in 2023. ...

Bangladesh’s new leader has urged Malaysia to reopen its labour market to more Bangladeshi workers, even as migrant rights groups warned that both governments must first address years of recruitment abuse, debt and stranded-worker cases. Prime Mini...

A court sentenced a former South Korean justice minister on Monday to 25 years in prison for his role in ex-president Yoon Suk-yeol’s brief and disastrous declaration of martial law in 2024. Park Sung-jae was found guilty of involvement in “insur...

Hong Kong police arrested 24 drivers and issued over 4,000 tickets during a two-week crackdown on distracted driving and jaywalking, after the number deaths in road accidents surged more than 40 per cent in the first five months of the year. During t...

Scammers in China have traditionally preyed on young people looking for quick cash or older individuals seeking health and longevity. However, they have found a new target: academics. Liu Xia, a lecturer in economics and management at a private unive...

China’s proactive role in stabilising global energy and fertiliser markets amid the Strait of Hormuz crisis shows the country is a defender of global supply chains, rather than a disruptive force as “hyped” by the West, Vice-Premier Ding Xuexia...

Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s trip to Russia as part of an Asean delegation to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin despite the city state’s ongoing sanctions against Moscow was a pragmatic move, analysts said. They pointed to conside...

Mature Chinese women are “renting” themselves to younger counterparts to listen to their worries and share life experiences. This service, commonly known as “sister commission,” has gone viral on social media platforms after some women in the...

A Hong Kong primary school’s decision to invite pupils to watch one of the World Cup semi-final matches on campus late at night has triggered a wave of excitement on social media, with some internet users saying it will be a “once-in-a-lifetime�...

A recent meeting between the leaders of Myanmar and China has given the military junta an opening to persuade Asean to allow it to return to the bloc’s summits. Analysts also say, however, that Myanmar’s regime could feel emboldened to escalate a...

While nine out of 10 Hongkongers aim to remain as self-sufficient as possible in their old age, they also expect 14 years of care dependency and 17 years of financial dependence, among the highest totals in Asia, according to survey results released ...

The baby of a Hong Kong couple embroiled in custody battles for their two children has been taken to hospital after falling ill and was at one point recommended for meningitis testing, according to his parents. The couple earlier sparked controversy ...

At least three teenaged students were killed and five others wounded on Monday in a rare school shooting in the central Philippines, police said. The two alleged shooters, aged 15 and 14, had fired “randomly” inside the school, police information...

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. How ‘lying flat’ went from a niche subculture...

A Ferrari caught fire near a light rail stop in Hong Kong’s Tin Shui Wai on Monday morning. Police said the driver reported the fire at 10.41am after exiting the black vehicle, which had no passengers on board, near Ginza Station. Photos and videos...

Malaysian consumers and small business owners have welcomed the government’s decision to introduce subsidised diesel at 2.10 ringgit (50 US cents) per litre (0.3 gallons) nationwide from July 1, although some are seeking greater clarity on fuel all...

An explosion tore through Qatar’s key natural gas export terminal Sunday night as workers tried to resume operations there after Iran bombed it during the war, causing a fire that hurt at least 54 people as another 18 were still missing hours later...

The market capitalisation of Hong Kong-listed artificial intelligence pioneer Zhipu AI surpassed HK$1 trillion (US$128 billion) on Monday, fuelled by investor optimism as the company goes head-to-head with its American rivals. Shares of Zhipu, which ...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. A judge-led panel investigating Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades has resumed its public inquiry after ...

The US-Iran talks in Switzerland have led to the lifting of the blockade and the release of frozen assets for Iran, Tehran said, but the real test remains deconfliction in Lebanon. “Tireless Pakistani and Qatari mediation has delivered major progre...

Last week, Xia Baolong, Beijing’s point man on Hong Kong and Macau affairs, made a two-day trip to the city to review the Hong Kong government’s progress across many areas. Everything seems to have been orchestrated with precision. Ahead of Xia�...

Australian police seized a record 2.7 tonnes of cocaine hidden in plastic tubs buried underground on the outskirts of Sydney, detectives said on Monday. It was the largest cocaine haul in Australian history, a joint organised crime investigation forc...

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. More mainland Chinese invest...

A Chinese woman developed rashes and itching after applying extreme sun protection measures, including wearing a sunscreen product that covers her whole face. The woman from eastern China’s Jiangsu province was recently reported to have developed r...

Canada is deploying two frigates and a submarine to the world’s largest multinational naval exercise this week, in what analysts describe as both a display of Indo-Pacific seriousness and a pointed rebuttal to Washington’s “freeriding” charge...

A flamboyant US-backed lawyer who has never held public office narrowly won Colombia’s polarising presidential run-off on Sunday, swinging the country hard right and sparking violent protests. With almost all the votes counted, Abelardo de la Espri...

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. Authorities are expected to ...

Nie Huihua, a professor of economics at Renmin University, discusses how an effective understanding of China’s development requires a shift from Western-centric frameworks to an integrated perspective that recognises how formal institutions, inform...

People ⁠caught vandalising the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting ⁠Pool on Washington’s National Mall will be fully prosecuted, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said on Sunday. President Donald Trump has blamed vandalism for recent problems with the newly re...

China-Asean relations are usually described in two ways. One emphasises danger: the South China Sea, US-China rivalry, military pressure and risk of Southeast Asia being pulled into China’s orbit. The other emphasises opportunity: trade, infrastruc...

US claims that an individual with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tried to join the Iran team’s flight to the United States on Saturday are “fabricated and entirely baseless allegations”, the country’s football federation...

Ramiro Valdes, one of Fidel Castro’s earliest collaborators who was lauded at ⁠home as a hero of ⁠the Cuban revolution, has died at the age of ⁠94, President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on social media on Sunday. The president did not provide a ca...

Thousands of Czechs rallied in the capital on Sunday to condemn a plan by the government led by populist Prime Minister Andrej Babis to overhaul funding for public broadcasters that is considered dangerous for their independence. The protesters gathe...

The United States expects talks with Iran to continue through the night in Switzerland, a US diplomat told reporters early Monday, as they work to permanently end the Middle East war. The current round of negotiations got off to a rocky start, with t...

Pope Leo on Saturday exalted the first American saint, Mother Frances Cabrini, as a model for Christians today to care for migrants in need, as he visited her birthplace during a day trip to northern Italy. Leo, who has clashed with the Trump adminis...

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party (PP) won a landslide victory in legislative polls held June 1, the election commission said on Sunday, giving it almost 90 per cent of the seats. Abiy has led Ethiopia since 2018, and is increa...

Much of Europe was preparing Monday for an already fierce heatwave to intensify even further in the coming days, with some countries taking special measures to mitigate its effects. France recorded heat-related deaths over the weekend. A leading rese...

Telling a Harbin Z-20 and a Sikorsky UH-60 “Black Hawk” apart can be challenging – the two helicopters look almost identical and their dimensions are very similar. The striking resemblance underscores China’s decades-long effort to close the ...

Bolivia began showing signs of returning to normalcy on Sunday, a day after President Rodrigo Paz declared a state of emergency to resolve a 50-day social crisis that ‌had blocked the nation’s main highways. Early on Sunday, the Legislative Assem...

Hong Kong police have arrested an elderly man and his son for allegedly assaulting public officers after they threw a parking ticket at two traffic wardens in Tuen Mun, the South China Morning Post has learned. A source said on Sunday that police arr...

A 54-year-old Hong Kong man died after reportedly losing control of an electric bike and falling from an unloading platform in Yuen Long early on Sunday, with the incident only discovered more than five hours later. Police received a report at 9.21am...

Chen Weiqiang, formerly a tenured professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering at New York University (NYU), has joined the school of biomedical engineering at Nanjing University as a distinguished professor. “Professor Chen has long been dee...

The spectacle of US President Donald Trump thanking China for staying “neutral” with regard to the US-Israeli war against Iran would have been unthinkable a year ago. Yet at the Group of Seven summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, on June 17, he cre...

Taiwan’s main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) has hit out at the island’s government for launching investigations into five agricultural groups over participation in a mainland forum. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) referred the five groups...

Al Jazeera on Sunday rejected Israeli accusations that one of its journalists, killed in Gaza a day earlier, was a Hamas operative, as family and colleagues mourned the cameraman in the Palestinian territory. The Qatar-based network said in a stateme...