Taiwan’s programme to build its own submarine fleet has received a boost after the US approved the sale of three key pieces of equipment.Taiwanese Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng confirmed on Tuesday that Washington had approved export permits – ...

Two 15-year-old athletes at a Chinese sports training centre scalded younger teammates with boiling water and committed other acts of abuse, state media reported on Tuesday.The incident has shined a light on an opaque Chinese state sports system whic...

A university student was arrested on suspicion of indecently assaulting an 18-year-old woman in a Hong Kong park following a purported “ritual” to improve her luck that involved her drinking two bottles of rice wine, police said on Tuesday.The 20...

A Singaporean woman who abused her domestic helper over eight months, making her punch herself and use a meat pounder to hit her mouth, was jailed for 15 months on Tuesday.Mun Sau Yeng, 41, was suffering from depression and obsessive compulsive diso...

Hong Kong residents stranded overseas for months by Covid-19 rules barring flights from Britain were offered a glimmer of hope on Monday when authorities hinted they would look at helping them return to the city.City officials noted the number of cor...

As miners eye expansions in the global race to secure a supply of lithium, a critical element in electric vehicle batteries, China’s Yibin Tianyi Lithium Industry has extended a US$15 million zero-interest loan to expand its relationship Australian...

The Biden administration has told China that normalising relations with Australia is a precondition to Washington taking any substantial step towards improving ties with Beijing, a senior US official said on Tuesday.In an interview with The Sydney Mo...

How many vaccines does it take to tackle a pandemic? The answer so far looks to be 81 and counting.The Covid-19 disease this month passed a grim one-year anniversary since the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic, sparking an unprecedente...

A ride-hailing driver in China has allegedly killed a passenger after repeatedly running them over with his car during a pickup dispute.News of the horrific killing has sparked renewed scrutiny of ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing’s accountability fo...

The online booking system for Covid-19 vaccinations experienced a surge of interest on Tuesday morning as Hong Kong widened the scheme to residents aged 30 and above, while health officials confirmed another 18 infections.Of the new cases – 13 l...

US film Nomadland, which earned six Oscar nominations on Monday, tells the story of a woman who becomes a nomad in the wake of the economic recession – spotlighting a way of life that has seen an explosion of interest in the time of coronavirus.The...

The Philippine capital Manila will widen a ban on minors leaving their residences to include youths of up to 18 years old for two weeks starting on Wednesday, tightening coronavirus restrictions in a bid to tackle a new surge of infections.Only those...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Anita Kumar and Nahal Toosi on politico.com on March 15, 2021.Donald Trump named more of his political allies to serve as ambassadors than any president in ...

Special permission has been granted to allow the children of two US consulate members of staff infected with the coronavirus to join their parents in hospital instead of being sent into quarantine, the city’s leader has revealed.Chief Executive Car...

The United States will raise its concerns about escalating regional pressure from China in strategic talks with Japan and South Korea this week, as it seeks to rebuild its alliances ahead of a high-level meeting with Chinese diplomats in Alaska, anal...

A controversial documentary portraying the fierce clashes at a university in Hong Kong during the 2019 anti-government protests was pulled on Monday, hours before its scheduled cinema screening, following warnings it could be in breach of the nationa...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s influential sister slammed Washington and Seoul on Tuesday, state media reported, as the new US secretaries of state and defence began a visit to Japan and South Korea.The US and South Korea began joint military ex...

The streets of Hlaingthaya, Myanmar, have a reputation for being tough and unwelcoming.The township on the western edge of Yangon is one of the largest and most populated in the country, its 67 square kilometres teeming with almost 700,000 residents,...

Nearly 120 children and teens are currently confined in Hong Kong’s Covid-19 quarantine camps as upset parents question the adequacy of the facilities for young people after a number of them were classified as close contacts of confirmed cases.Whil...

Alcatraz, the historic island prison off San Francisco, opened up on Monday for a limited number of indoor tours, which had been off-limits for more than a year because of the pandemic.Face masks and social distancing are still required at the island...

His social life severely curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic, Tadasu Masuda found himself embracing the opportunity to take what in Japan are known as “liver rest days” and try out a range of alcohol-free beer brands.They tasted much better tha...

Parents of five 10-year-old boys allegedly bullied violently by being strangled, burnt with boiling water, and having detergent poured down their noses, say the perpetrators are yet to be brought to justice.The boys who were left without adult superv...

One of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s sexual harassment accusers met investigators working for the state attorney general’s office for more than four hours on Monday via Zoom, according to her lawyer.During the interview, Charlotte Bennett reve...

Institutional change is often characterised by path dependence. However, the passage of major changes to the electoral system by the National People’s Congress on March 11 seems to have taken Hong Kong’s constitutional development away from its p...

The US ambassador to the United Nations urged the international community not to “be fooled” by Syria’s forthcoming presidential election during a Security Council meeting on Monday on the 10th anniversary of the start of the conflict.“These ...

A team of Chinese researchers say they have found a “massively more efficient” and more accurate way to simulate quantum computing using traditional processors, challenging a 2019 claim by Google scientists that they had achieved “quantum supre...

The families of dozens of people killed in clashes between Myanmar security forces and anti-coup protesters prepared to hold funerals on Tuesday after candlelit vigils overnight in defiance of a curfew.Security forces shot dead at least 20 people on ...

HSBC suffered no risk of loss as a result of alleged deceptions by Meng Wanzhou, her lawyer told a Canadian court on Monday, as the Huawei Technologies chief financial officer’s two-year battle against extradition to the United States entered a cri...

The man convicted of slaughtering his parents and four siblings in a home that later inspired the The Amityville Horror book and films has died, prison officials said on Monday.Ronald DeFeo, 69, died on Friday at Albany Medical Centre, where he was t...

The United States and European Union must quickly repair their alliance if they are to deal with the rise of a “more aggressive” and “threatening” China, said the chief of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato).Addressing European Parl...

Gene Sperling, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations, will lead the oversight for distributing funds from President Joe Biden’s US$1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package, a White House official said on Monday.Sperling will take a role...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday backed London’s police chief following outrage over her officers’ handling of a vigil for a woman who was allegedly kidnapped and murdered by a member of the same force.Johnson said he still had full...

The new head of Hong Kong’s trouble-plagued RTHK confirmed on Monday he had ordered the axing of several television-show episodes he deemed unbalanced and vowed to make his leadership role more visible over future programme production.Bureaucrat Pa...

WHO safety experts prepared to meet on Tuesday over the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine whose roll-out has been halted in several European countries over blood clot fears, imperilling the pandemic fight as infection rates surge.The three largest EU n...

US officials have arrested and charged two men with assaulting US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick with bear spray during the January 6 riot, but they do not know yet whether it caused the officer’s death.George Tanios, 39, of Morgantown, West...

He lured a multibillion-dollar Chinese company to the California desert, encouraged Chinese “birth tourists” to have babies with US citizenship and envies Chinese officials who have real clout.The United States has its share of colourful mayors. ...

China’s central bank is stepping up liquidity support for domestic businesses and increasing its monitoring of cross-border capital flows as concerns persist over the side effects of Washington’s massive new fiscal stimulus plan.The moves by the ...

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is being held in a prison camp in Russia’s Vladimir region northeast of Moscow known for its strict control of inmates, a message posted on the opposition politician’s Instagram account confirmed on Monday.Navalny’...

The girlfriend of prominent Chinese legal activist Xu Zhiyong was formally arrested by authorities in eastern China on Monday after being detained for over a month and has been charged with “inciting subversion of state power”, according to her c...

China is giving priority to coronavirus inoculation campaigns at home but will still be able to honour promises of vaccines for other countries, according to a senior official in charge of producing the doses.Tian Yulong, chief engineer with the Mini...

China’s arms exports have dropped over the past five years, a decline that experts have attributed to tensions between China and the US prompting some of China’s neighbours to buy more American weapons, according to a new report.Some military exp...

Netflix’s 1930s Hollywood drama Mank led a field of Oscar nominations on Monday that was strong on diversity, with nine of the 20 acting nods going to non-white performers and two women competing in the male stronghold of directing.Mank, about Citi...

China called on Myanmar’s military to stop attacks on Chinese-invested factories after dozens went up in flames in Yangon on Sunday – Beijing’s strongest comments yet on the crisis gripping its Southeast Asian neighbour.In one of the deadliest ...

The Vatican on Monday said the Catholic Church does not have the power to bless same-sex unions despite their “positive elements”, calling it impossible for God to “bless sin”.The Vatican’s powerful office responsible for church doctrine, T...

With visitor arrivals to Hong Kong still stuck in the doldrums more than a year after the coronavirus pandemic first struck the once-mighty tourism hub, industry leaders have expressed hopes that the roll-out of vaccines will speed-up the resumption ...

A paralegal has been jailed for 5½ years for a rapid string of assaults and disorderly conduct which included biting off a Hong Kong police sergeant’s fingertip during an anti-government protest in 2019. District Judge Johnny Chan Jong-herng on M...

A 60-year old Danish woman who died of a blood clot after receiving AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine had “highly unusual” symptoms, according to the Danish Medicines Agency.The woman had a low number of blood platelets and clots in small and larg...

Prolonged abuse sapped the immune system of a five-year-old girl to the point that she died of an infection by a “very weak” bacteria that would have posed little threat to a healthy individual, a leading paediatrician testified at the murder tri...

Beijing’s immigration procedures for foreign workers returned to pre-pandemic levels on Monday, but only for those from selected countries who can show they have been injected with a Chinese vaccine.“Foreign nationals and their family members vis...

Andrix Serrano studies alone inside a Manila slum shack he shares with his street-sweeper grandmother. Like many in his fourth-grade class, he has no internet for his closed school’s online lessons.A year after the coronavirus pandemic sent the Phi...