Malaysia’s king on Wednesday said the country’s parliament, suspended since January following the declaration of an eight-month nationwide state of emergency to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, should be able to convene while other restrictions rema...

A police chase of an overloaded truck along a northern Hong Kong highway ended with the arrest of the driver and the seizure of about HK$10 million (US$1.29 million) worth of contraband cigarettes in the early hours of Wednesday.Officers found a tota...

Beijing has joined Hong Kong, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), along with the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), to explore cross-border payments for digital currencies, a move that could potentially create a new path for China to p...

Prices of lived-in homes rose last month in Hong Kong, ending three straight months of decline, as buyers were encouraged by the city’s tapering coronavirus caseload to return to the property market, confident that the local economy would bounce ba...

Hong Kong’s finance chief on Wednesday unveiled a raft of tax breaks for businesses and residents, though many were on a smaller scale than last year’s initiatives given a budget deficit that has ballooned to HK$257.6 billion (US$33.2 billion).Fi...

Hong Kong’s finance chief has unveiled a spending blueprint with targeted relief measures including an unprecedented digital voucher scheme for residents to spur consumption, while also forecasting economic growth of up to 5.5 per cent to boost con...

The United States, India, Australia and Japan have held their first meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or “Quad”, since President Joe Biden’s inauguration – showing the new US administration’s support for a grouping China has c...

Singapore is discussing the mutual recognition of vaccine certificates with other countries, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said, calling it a necessary step towards resuming global travel.Singapore, a regional travel and tourism hub, has been rollin...

Announcing a record deficit of HK$257.6 billion this year, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po told Hongkongers on Wednesday that a raft of countercyclical measures costing HK$120 billion were necessary to stabilise the economy and relieve people’s...

One of three men accused of planting a car bomb that killed Maltese anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 dramatically pleaded guilty on Tuesday and was swiftly sentenced to 15 years in jail.Vincent Muscat received a relatively le...

Beijing is moving to get its efforts to boost defence ties with its Southeast Asian neighbours back on track, with the start of a joint exercise on Wednesday between the Chinese and Singapore navies.The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted some of China’s p...

Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po used his annual budget address to underscore the importance of Hong Kong’s new vaccination programme on Wednesday, a day when the city confirmed 17 new Covid-19 cases.All but one of the latest infections were loc...

Myanmar’s military-appointed foreign minister travelled to Thailand on Wednesday, a Thai government source said, as Myanmar’s neighbours intensified efforts to resolve a crisis that began when its army seized power in a February 1 coup.The minist...

The Philippines will let thousands of its health care workers, mostly nurses, take up jobs in Britain and Germany if the two countries agree to donate coronavirus vaccines, a senior official said on Tuesday.But Britain’s health ministry said it was...

Hong Kong’s culinary Good Samaritan, Chan Cheuk-ming, was the victim of a burglary on Wednesday after a masked intruder broke into his restaurant and fled with HK$2,000 (US$258) in coins just before dawn.The burglary took place at Chan’s Pei Ho C...

Missed intelligence was to blame for the outmanned Capitol defenders’ failure to anticipate the violent mob that invaded the iconic building and halted certification of the US presidential election on January 6, the officials who were in charge of ...

China claimed last year it had met a long-trumpeted target of lifting all its people out of extreme poverty.President Xi Jinping heralded the feat as a “major victory” that the Chinese Communist Party had wanted to achieve before the centenary of...

At his village along a “poverty alleviation road” in Hunan province, farmer Liu Qingyou shares a booklet detailing how Xi Jinping’s government has hoisted him and 100 million other Chinese from the breadline.In it, the cause of his family’s h...

Constantly angry with her foreign domestic worker for being slow or unhygienic and eating too much, Gaiyathiri Murugayan installed closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in her Singapore flat to monitor the worker and her own young children.This pr...

The United States and Canada will work together to “better compete” with China and counter threats to the two countries’ “interests and values”, US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday, following a virtual meeting with Canadian Prime Ministe...

India is faced with a conundrum in its relations with neighbouring Myanmar, following the February 1 military coup that ousted the fledgling civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi. New Delhi’s policymakers have long maintained that they do not bel...

Hong Kong’s economy is set to bounce back from the devastation wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic to register growth of up to 5.5 per cent in 2021, a boost that will allow the finance chief to dish out coupons worth HK$5,000 (US$645) to each permane...

Are economic ties between India and China finally on the upswing?Over the past nine months, the two countries amassed tens of thousands of troops, tanks and missiles in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation in the Himalayan region of Ladakh, with the s...

In countering China, the Biden administration must demonstrate that the US can deal with China from a position of strength, so America’s friends feel safe enough to entrust their security to the alliance. Currently, there are deep anxieties about t...

The huge parachute used by Nasa’s Perseverance rover to land on Mars contained a secret message, thanks to a puzzle lover on the spacecraft team.Systems engineer Ian Clark used a binary code to spell out “Dare Mighty Things” in the orange and w...

Beijing is contemplating drastic reforms to Hong Kong’s electoral system by breaking up the current five geographical constituencies into 18 districts and scrapping five popularly returned seats in the legislature, the Post has learned.One of the l...

Chinese police are investigating the death of a 23-year-old woman who is alleged to have leapt from the window of a van she had hired through online platform Huolala, which is known as Lalamove in other Asian markets. The incident has rekindled publi...

As President Joe Biden ticks off items on his lengthy to-do list, speculation continues to grow about who will be chosen as the next US ambassador to China.Among the names floated in Washington include Nicholas Burns, a former long-time diplomat and ...

At least 75 inmates died on Tuesday and several were injured in riots blamed on gang rivalry at three jails in Ecuador’s overcrowded prison system, authorities said.As security forces battled to regain control, distraught family members waited desp...

China’s political elite will face a number of political challenges when they gather in Beijing next month for the year’s biggest legislative set piece – the meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consu...

Top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi’s Zambia visit could not have come at a better time.Africa’s second-biggest copper producer has asked to restructure its debts under a new “common framework” supported by the Group of 20 major economies in whi...

It has been a year since the pandemic turned the world on its head, and amid the tsunami of changes is a disturbing feeling that something has shifted when it comes to the treatment of Asian Americans in the United States. At first, I thought it was...

A Chinese divorce court has ordered a husband to pay his wife for the housework she carried out during their five-year marriage in the first ruling of its kind following the introduction of a new marriage law in China.The legal judgment has sparked h...

US golfer Tiger Woods was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital on Tuesday after suffering multiple injuries when his car went off a road and rolled down a steep hillside, requiring the “jaws of life” to extricate him.Woods’ injuries were not believ...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Ryan Heath on politico.com on February 23, 2021.The US Senate voted on Tuesday to confirm Linda Thomas-Greenfield as United States ambassador to the United ...

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt called on the US government to fast track development of emerging technology including artificial intelligence (AI) to catch up to China’s lead.The United States is “one or two years ahead of China, not five or 10�...

French film giant Gerard Depardieu has been charged with rape and sexual assault, a judicial source said on Tuesday, the latest in a string of such allegations against prominent figures in France.Depardieu, one of the most famous actors of his genera...

Wally Adeyemo, President Joe Biden’s nominee for the No 2 job at the US Treasury, said on Tuesday that Washington should work with allies to hold China accountable to international rules to ensure a level playing field for companies in the United S...

When it comes to saving sea turtles, Israeli rescuers have discovered that mayonnaise is a miracle.Employees at Israel’s National Sea Turtle Rescue Centre are treating endangered green sea turtles affected by a devastating oil spill that has coated...

Hong Kong’s first trial over the Yuen Long mob attack that took place during 2019’s anti-government protests opened on Tuesday after the judge imposed an anonymity order on 16 victims and eyewitnesses expected to testify.The District Court case c...

When US President Joe Biden took office a month ago, his proposed cabinet was already being praised as the most diverse in American history. It would include, among others, the nation’s first openly gay cabinet secretary in Pete Buttigieg; its firs...

Dr Anthony Fauci told CNN that new guidance from the CDC for those who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 should be expected “pretty soon”.Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, the White House chief medical adviser said that he would expect less stringe...

China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system is more visible – and may be more of a beacon for spacecraft – than its US rival GPS from near-Earth space, according to a new study.Researchers from the National Space Science Centre in Beijing found ...

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has rejected claims of genocide or oppression in the far western region of Xinjiang and said China would welcome the UN human rights chief to visit the region.Wang’s statement comes as international pressure mounts ...

Thailand’s pro-democracy protesters took to the streets anew on Tuesday, massing around police headquarters in Bangkok after seizing on revelations of a pay-to-play promotion culture within the Thai police force to rev up their flagging movement.Ev...

Mount Anderson, the first new residential property project to be launched in the Year of the Ox, received a very lukewarm response from buyers, with just three of 52 flats sold on Tuesday, according to agents.Some potential buyers are apparently hesi...

Murat has watched for years as LGBT people who face persecution in the Middle East have found refuge in his cosmopolitan neighbourhood of Istanbul.Today, in the face of growing government hostility and vitriol from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo...

Washington’s recent overtures to Tehran have raised hopes that the Iran nuclear pact can be resurrected – something Beijing has been pushing for.China, having invested in its economic and military ties with Iran for decades, wants to salvage the ...

Singapore’s central bank on Tuesday said regular surveillance of the country’s US$2 trillion banking system showed Myanmar companies and citizens did not have “significant funds” in the city state.The announcement came as the government – u...

Beijing has dropped yet another political bombshell by declaring that Hong Kong must drastically revamp its electoral systems to ensure only “patriots” hold key positions in all three branches of government as well as the city’s statutory bodie...