As India slowly begins to emerge from the horrors of its second Covid-19 wave, it looks as though New Delhi may on June 1 become the first city to take tentative steps out of lockdown. After extending its sweeping coronavirus restrictions on a week-...

China’s capital city is paving the way for more robots on the road as the country’s pool of cheap labour shrinks and working conditions in delivery companies come under scrutiny.E-commerce platform JD.com, on-demand service platform Meituan, and ...

First came billions of dollars of investment, then millions of doses of vaccines. Now there’s a campaign for Serbia to thank China in a way that harks back to a bygone era: by building a statue to “Comrade Xi”.The proposal for a monument of Chi...

The words “Hong Kong” and “independent”, which appeared next to each other on a sculpture at a popular waterfront park in Sai Kung, have been removed in a redesign of the installation.The Leisure and Cultural Services Department on Wednesday ...

With its economy hit hard by the pandemic, Tunisia is counting on Russians and eastern Europeans to salvage its tourism sector whose employees fear hunger more than Covid-19.“The need to work is stronger than the fear of being contaminated,” said...

The plague of mice attacking parts of Australia is turning into a horror story, with the rodents threatening to invade Sydney, reports of the vermin eating their own, and the farming industry being thrown into turmoil.A family in New South Wales this...

China is bracing for a heavy flood season with 71 rivers already exceeding warning levels, the state news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday, as meteorological authorities warned that global warming is fuelling more extreme weather.Rain in some parts ...

South Korea on Wednesday said people who have received at least one Covid-19 shot will be able to go outdoors mask-free from July.Those fully inoculated will be exempt from private gathering bans and the occupancy ceiling rule at restaurants and cafe...

Hong Kong’s expected Covid-19 vaccine surplus could weaken its bargaining power when negotiating the procurement of more jabs in the future, the health minister warned on Wednesday, while officials said they would need drug manufacturers’ consent...

Taiwanese authorities are searching for more than 300 people who tested positive for Covid-19 amid a worsening outbreak on the island which saw a further 635 infections and 11 deaths reported on Wednesday. The number of deaths reported for one day w...

Polling stations on Wednesday opened across Syria for an election where few doubt that Bashar al-Assad will extend his grip on power for a fourth term, in a war-battered country mired in economic crisis.The controversial vote is the second election s...

A powerful storm lashed India’s east coast on Wednesday, flattening houses, uprooting trees and electric poles, breaking down sea embankments and flooding large tracts of land.The entire process of landfall was expected to be completed by after noo...

Hong Kong police have arrested a man on suspicion of trafficking HK$26.7 million (US$3.4 million) worth of cannabis concealed in a load of dog food in Yuen Long.The force’s narcotics bureau on Wednesday said officers acting on intelligence intercep...

Nuclear-armed North Korea is advancing on the front lines of cyberwarfare, analysts say, stealing billions of dollars and presenting a clearer and more present danger than its banned weapons programmes.Pyongyang is under multiple international sancti...

US efforts to address competition with China progressed on Tuesday when the chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee introduced sweeping legislation to boost economic competitiveness and push Beijing on human rights.Represen...

A former assistant to the chairwoman of Hong Kong’s largest pro-establishment party has been jailed for eight months for bribing voters to back its candidate in a Legislative Council by-election three years ago.Wong Wai-ha’s application for bail ...

Amazon.com was sued by the attorney general for Washington for allegedly engaging in anticompetitive practices that have raised prices for consumers.The antitrust lawsuit, the first to target Amazon in the US, opens a new front in the campaign agains...

Hongkongers will be allowed to holiday at sea as early as July when the government launches so-called cruises to nowhere, with officials imposing strict health controls on operators, passengers and crew.Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development...

The United States said it was still trying to set up dialogue with Chinese military chiefs after talks between the two militaries were prevented by protocol disagreements.Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said US officials “certainly desire to have a d...

Two stolen hand-carved religious artefacts, sandstone lintels dating back to the 9th and 10th centuries, were returned to the Thai government on Tuesday in a ceremony more than 50 years overdue.The 680kg antiquities had been stolen and exported from ...

Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, an official partner of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, called for the Games to be cancelled in an editorial on Wednesday, citing risks to public safety and strains on the medical system from the Covid-19 pandemic.“We ask Prime Min...

A property agent in Shenzhen that attempted to circumvent government pricing guidelines by using fruit symbols as a code for home prices has received a warning from the authorities for its “misconduct”.The Macalline Aijia agency inflated the pric...

Sara* was exhilarated to learn the Hong Kong government was expanding its Covid-19 vaccination programme to her and fellow torture claimants, the city’s version of asylum seeker status.For the first time since the start of Hong Kong’s pandemic ba...

Hong Kong is experiencing a boom in transactions involving industrial buildings as rising demand for storage space from businesses and homeowners lures local and foreign funds.US private equity giant Blackstone Group teamed up with StoreFriendly Self...

When viewers first meet 35-year-old Wenxia, she had suffered through two failed in vitro fertilisation [IVF] attempts. Her only goal was to have a child, but that was not enough for her husband, who still wanted a divorce over the failed pregnancies....

British businesses see China’s cybersecurity and data restrictions as among the biggest challenges to operating in the world’s second largest economy, adding to long-standing obstacles like market access and competition with state-owned enterpris...

The census results released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics earlier this month confirmed a challenging reality for the country – its population growth is slowing, and quickly.China’s population still grew over 5 per cent between 2010 a...

Health experts have suggested selling millions of Hong Kong’s unused Covid-19 vaccines or pausing the phased supply from manufacturers to minimise waste, as the government explores donating the shots while expiry dates loom.Nearly 4 million jabs fr...

A growing number of Hongkongers leaving for Britain under the British National (Overseas) passports scheme are ending up in short-term housing that typically cost more than traditional flats because of the scarcity of readily available abodes, accord...

Tourists from mainland China flooded into Macau last September, when Chinese authorities resumed allowing visits to the gambling hub once it had reined in the coronavirus.At the same time, the Chinese island of Hainan, which last year extended duty-f...

Hundreds of Chinese fishing boats operating illegally along the sea border between South and North Korea are decimating local catches and damaging the environment, according to South Korean authorities and fishermen. In a development that has reigni...

China’s economy is not at risk of overshooting on economic stimulus, despite the recent strong rise in commodity prices, and any attempts to aggressively taper economic support would be more detrimental than helpful, according to economists.The dom...

Steve Bannon’s criminal indictment for fraud has been dismissed by a judge who ruled the action was required by former President Donald Trump’s pardon of his one-time adviser.US prosecutors opposed the move, although they didn’t dispute the val...

China’s place at the centre of global bitcoin mining is fading as Beijing ramps up the pressure on heavy energy-use practices amid growing green ambitions and rising concerns over the financial risks posed by cryptocurrencies, according to experts....

This is the sixth in the South China Morning Post’s series of explainers about China’s Communist Party in the lead-up to the party’s centenary in July. In this piece, Zhuang Pinghui explains the importance of young people to the party amid Chin...

The anniversary of George Floyd’s death was supposed to be a milestone moment, a time to mark passage of legislation to “root out systemic racism” in the criminal justice system, in the words of President Joe Biden.Instead, Floyd’s family vis...

China’s foreign minister criticised the European Union’s parliament on Tuesday for freezing the ratification of a bilateral investment treaty, adding that Beijing also felt blindsided by the EU’s decision to sanction Chinese officials over alle...

The first man in the world to receive a clinically approved Covid-19 vaccine has died of an unrelated illness, British officials said.The 81-year-old Englishman, named William Shakespeare, was the first man and second person to get a Pfizer jab after...

Hong Kong police are investigating a suspected murder-suicide case involving a young man and woman at a Tung Chung public housing flat.The force said the pair, both 22, were found in the man’s flat in Mun Tung Estate on Tuesday after a concerned fr...

Mali’s former coup leader Assimi Goita took control of the West African country again Tuesday after firing the president and prime minister of the transitional government, a move France decried as a coup d’etat.While Goita pledged to go ahead wit...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov for the first time on May 20, marking the commencement of high-level diplomatic exchanges between the two countries in the Joe Biden era. Washington’s relations with Mos...

The controversial case of a young woman, who became an iconic figure for the Hong Kong anti-government protest movement of 2019 when she claimed to have been shot in the eye with a police beanbag round, is back in the news again with the revelation t...

French media and social networks were abuzz on Tuesday with speculation about a mysterious offer to influencers and YouTube personalities asking them to publicly denigrate the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in return for money.Those targeted by the...

Misunderstandings and protocol disagreements have affected dialogue between the Chinese and US militaries, but without causing an immediate crisis, analysts and sources said.A Chinese military source said there was misunderstanding when US Defence Se...

Hong Kong police have arrested a lawyer on suspicion of providing false information following an investigation into a complaint he filed saying he was assaulted by three officers last November.Inspector Chan Ching-yin of the Complaints Against Police...

US President Joe Biden and Russia’s Vladimir Putin will hold their first summit next month in Geneva, both sides said on Tuesday, setting the stage for a new chapter in their fraught relationship.The meeting in the Swiss city will be on June 16, Wh...

India, the world’s largest vaccine producing nation, has fully vaccinated only about 43.3 million people, less than 4 per cent of its nearly 1.4 billion population.In the past month, amid a wave of new infections, 100,000 Indians have died, bringin...

At 49, Fang Qin says she is content with life without a child.She has plenty of freedom in how she spends her money and time, and more importantly, her parents are not pushing her to have a baby.“DINK – double income, no kids – families like mi...

A US court has awarded a total of US$5.43 million to seven Chinese workers who were forced to endure “extreme, dangerous and inhumane work conditions” at the construction site of a casino and resort on the Pacific island of Saipan.Chief Judge Ram...

The US has renewed its call for another investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, with China again rejecting the possibility of a leak from one of its laboratories.Addressing the World Health Assembly on Tuesday, US Health and Human...