The number of phone scams recorded in Hong Kong over the first five months of 2026 has surged 46 per cent compared with the same period last year, with a recent police operation arresting 61 suspects in cases involving more than HK$31 million (US$3.9...

As Norwegian World Cup footballer Erling Haaland’s herbal drink advertising blitz captivates millions, his home country has emerged as a popular destination for Chinese travellers. An increasing number of Chinese citizens have visited Norway over t...

What if Wall Street stock prices were to collapse from their current pinnacles under the sheer weight of excessive investment in artificial intelligence (AI)? Would markets in Tokyo and other Asian centres – not to mention Europe and beyond – fol...

Chinese semiconductor design firm Biren Technology has unveiled its next-generation “supernode” solutions – systems designed to link thousands of AI chips across a single cluster – by using optical data transmission to bypass current hardware...

Millions in China have been moved by a man who swam for three hours through floods to check on his parents’ status. The floods in southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, caused by torrential rains and a number of dam collapses, have re...

Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged Thailand and Cambodia to resolve their border dispute after meeting both countries’ leaders on the same day. The dispute escalated into the deadliest fighting between the neighbours in more than a decade last ...

Not so long ago, the Philippines was bedevilled by warning signs to investors, from its corruption to its groaning infrastructure and a fuel crisis born of a war fought thousands of miles away. Those problems have not simply disappeared, but a flurry...

Some 43,347 day-school candidates are sitting Hong Kong’s Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exam this year, but there are only about 12,000 subsidised undergraduate places at the city’s eight public universities. So what options do the tens of...

Taiwan’s biggest food safety scandal in years has become a political liability for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), giving the opposition valuable ammunition ahead of November’s local elections. The latest controversy centres on soy...

President Donald Trump’s latest diatribe against China over alleged election meddling has laid bare a “huge crisis” within America’s democratic system, a prominent adviser to Beijing has suggested. Zheng Yongnian, a leading political scientis...

Homeplus was once a retail haven for millions of South Korean families who shopped for groceries and household goods regularly at its cavernous hypermarkets. But that ritual over almost three decades ended this week when the company closed all its re...

The resumption of US strikes against Iran has thrust incoming UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham into a potential day one decision on how much to support Britain’s closest ally in its controversial military campaign. Even as Burnham was installed as le...

Hong Kong delivery company Lalamove and professional services firm EY have joined forces and jumped on the “low-altitude economy” bandwagon in the hopes of expanding their reach in the Greater Bay Area and transforming conventional business. The ...

A fossil found in China suggests modern birds shed the long, bony tails of their dinosaur ancestors through a step-by-step process, rather than a sudden evolutionary transition as previously believed. The transition to a short, feathered tail was one...

China’s yoga apparel market is grappling with fierce competition and slowing growth amid sluggish domestic consumption, as middle-class shoppers diversify their activities, according to analysts. Lululemon, the Canadian athletic apparel brand popul...

Geography has handed the United Arab Emirates quite the quandary: its government wants to cut dependence on the Strait of Hormuz to “zero”, yet the ports that power its economy sit squarely inside the waterway it hopes to avoid. Jebel Ali and Kha...

About 90 per cent of homeowners at the fire-ravaged Wang Fuk Court estate in Hong Kong have returned signed letters accepting the government’s buy-back offer, but some residents have raised concerns about being rushed into decisions linked to prior...

Officials in Japan’s southwestern prefecture of Fukuoka are facing growing scrutiny over a series of overseas “research trips” that included stays in Paris and London and millions of yen in hotel upgrades, as public frustration builds over poli...

Every month, a Beijing-based ByteDance employee says he burns through close to a billion units of a new corporate currency – one that cannot buy a coffee or pay rent. Yet, as he noted, that staggering volume “doesn’t even put me near the top of...

The historian A.J.P. Taylor wrote one of the most powerful openings of any book. “In the state of nature which Hobbes imagined, violence was the only law, and life was ‘nasty brutish and short’,” he wrote in The Struggle for Mastery in Europe...

Dog owners have welcomed Hong Kong’s first wave of pet-friendly restaurants, but some have been disappointed by restrictive rules, confused staff and limited space, with one saying only half of her pet stroller could fit within the designated seati...

Chinese electric vehicle maker Xpeng made its European ambitions clear on Thursday, as the firm unveiled its Mona L03 compact SUV at an event in the heart of Germany’s car industry, Munich. The launch, arguably the largest ever staged in Europe by ...

A woman in southeastern China who was mistaken for dead and nearly cremated after falling into a coma has rebuilt her life as a painter. Chen Cuiju, 49, grew up in a poor rural family in Guizhou province. In 1995, aged 18, she moved to Dongguan, Guan...

Leading Chinese scientist Sun Fanglin, whose work on how cells age and form tumours helped pave the way for the development of new cancer treatments, has died aged 58. Sun was director of the Advanced Institute of Translational Medicine at Tongji Uni...

Asia sits atop vast amounts of coal, nearly three-fifths of the world’s known reserves by some estimates. Cheaper and more reliable than imported oil and gas, and far less vulnerable to disruptions caused by foreign wars, coal is also dirty, pollut...

Asian-American groups on Friday slammed US President Donald Trump’s speech delivered this week as a dangerous threat to citizens of US minority communities already facing attacks and hostility during troubled and deeply partisan times, even as Chin...

Donald Trump’s social media company has discussed charging Wall Street traders and investment firms as much as US$100,000 a month for faster access to the US president’s posts on his Truth Social platform, according to people familiar with the ma...

European policymakers have watched Chinese carmakers roll in like a slow but unstoppable tide over the past few years: affordable, polished and threatening one of the continent’s proudest industrial legacies. Many have warned about the dismantling ...

China successfully tested an intercontinental-range submarine-launched ballistic missile on July 6, firing it from a nuclear-powered submarine and joining an elite club that includes the United States, Russia, Britain and France. These five nations a...

A ⁠few hundred people in Venice protested ⁠on Friday against US Ambassador to ⁠Italy Tilman Fertitta as he arrived in the lagoon city aboard his superyacht, drawing criticism of President Donald Trump’s policies. Activists also objected to th...

US President Donald Trump on Friday blamed Canada for wildfire smoke spreading across the United States and said he would add the “incalculable cost” ‌of dealing with the pollution to existing tariffs on Canadian goods. Heavy smoke from hundred...

Iran launched renewed attacks on ⁠US Gulf allies on Saturday after a seventh straight night of US strikes targeting Iranian military sites including logistics infrastructure, escalating the war one week after a fragile ceasefire agreement fell apar...

Newly declassified US intelligence records show Chinese actors collected or acquired voter information covering millions of Americans and that Beijing developed capabilities that could be used to influence political opinion, but the documents do not ...

A powerful magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck off the coast of Mexico’s southernmost state of Chiapas on Friday, shaking buildings as far away as Guatemala and El Salvador, though authorities said there were ‌no immediate reports of casualties or ma...

The Hong Kong government on Friday welcomed the Trump administration’s decision to allow a national emergency declaration concerning the city to expire, although Washington said the executive order that ended the city’s preferential treatment rem...

An administrative “honour system” that relied on Hong Kong’s private sector to regulate itself created oversight loopholes and left obvious fire hazards at the Wang Fuk Court housing estate unchecked before last year’s inferno, legal counsel ...

The legal team for an independent committee examining the cause of Hong Kong’s deadly Tai Po fire has recommended that authorities gradually phase out bamboo scaffolding in favour of metal replacements, among other proposals ranging from legislativ...

Britain’s charities regulator is looking into concerns about an Amnesty International report that branded a women’s centre for sexual violence victims founded by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling as “anti-rights”. The bestselling writer, who h...

Negeri Sembilan’s bid to turn itself into Malaysia’s next hi-tech industrial hub is heading into an unusual political stress test, as a royal dispute spills into a snap election on August 1. The vote matters not because existing semiconductor and...

US President Donald Trump launched a sharp attack on China late on Thursday (Washington time), accusing Beijing of interfering in US elections in a move that has strained a fragile thaw in ties and cast doubt on future high-level engagements. In a pr...

Andy Burnham vowed Friday to “give hope” back to the British people as he was confirmed as the ruling Labour Party’s new leader, set to be the next UK prime minister. “People and places … have been waiting too long for politics to let them ...

China lashed out on Friday at “discriminatory” new US visa regulations targeting students and journalists among other groups, warning that it reserved the right to take reciprocal countermeasures. The changes, announced by the Department of Homel...

Sitting by the Tanjung Aru beach in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, watching one of the most stunning sunsets in the world, I reflected on what it would take to prioritise the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. I had just finished an intense thre...

A Russian activist who spent years targeting opponents of the Kremlin before unexpectedly denouncing President Vladimir Putin and his Ukraine offensive was arrested on Friday, state media reported. Ilya Remeslo, 42, faces charges of “spreading fake...

Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways has postponed resuming direct flights to the Middle East amid recent signs that the Iran crisis is rekindling. The airline said on Friday that its daily passenger flights to Dubai in the United Arab Emira...

⁠Armed assailants are believed to have boarded the chemical tanker Asana off the southern coast of Yemen in the Gulf of Aden on Friday and are in control of the vessel, according to maritime ‌security sources. Based on initial assessments, the in...

Malaysia’s government could not interfere in the management of companies and only regulates ⁠shareholding structures, its transport ⁠minister said on Friday, following the appointment ⁠of former DP World chief Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem to lead...

When 'Dear You', a low-budget Teochew-language story of migration became one of China’s biggest films in late spring and early summer, its lead actress Li Sitong, who played Zia Lamgi, became a university graduate and said she wished to continue he...

Chinese social media users reacted with mockery, scepticism and concern after US President Donald Trump accused Beijing of meddling in US elections in a prime-time address. In his speech on Thursday evening Washington time, Trump focused heavily on U...

The South China Morning Post has documented Hong Kong’s deadly Tai Po blaze in a series of multimedia projects, from detailing the search and rescue mission to examining evidence revealed at public hearings set up to investigate the cause of the in...