As India reels from a devastating second wave of Covid-19, some devotees with nowhere else to turn are seeking divine intervention at temples dedicated to “coronavirus goddesses”. Two “Corona Devi” idols – one crafted from sandalwood and t...

China is not on a mission to establish a “sphere of influence” through its cooperation with central and eastern European countries, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said after talks on the weekend with his Serbian and Polish counterparts.The meet...

India on Sunday reported its lowest daily rise in new coronavirus infections in 46 days at 165,553 cases during the previous 24 hours, while deaths rose by 3,460, after New Delhi announced measures to support children who have lost both their parents...

“I do hope the developers and big landlords in town realise clearly enough that the good old days for them are gone,” a former official recently told me.He was sharing his latest observations about Hong Kong’s political scene, and referring to ...

It was a boozy joyride captured for TikTok with a soundtrack provided by Justin Bieber and with a Tesla serving as the “designated driver” for the night.In the short video, three young men are shown dancing in their seats, beers nearby, as the ve...

Breathless, fevered and without the extra oxygen that could help keep them alive, the new coronavirus patients at a hospital near Myanmar’s border with India highlight the threat to a health system near collapse since February’s coup.To help her ...

Hong Kong’s civil servants will receive paid leave for each Covid-19 vaccine shot in a bid to boost the city’s sluggish inoculation rate, according to a government source.But they must be vaccinated before a date to be announced by the administra...

Hong Kong police are investigating the deaths of two men at a public housing estate in Fanling, with one suspected to have fallen from height.The force said it received a report of a man who was found lying opposite Wing Fok Centre in Fanling at 8.23...

The Chinese cargo ship Tianzhou 2 has docked with the Tianhe space station core module, paving the way for a crewed mission.The crew is expected to travel to the space station next month, and they plan to stay in Tianhe for three months to conduct eq...

Search and rescue teams are looking for a person still missing after hundreds were rescued from a passenger ferry that caught fire in Indonesia’s Maluku Sea, local officials said on Sunday. Passenger ferry KM Karya Indah was travelling in a remote...

As the world’s largest military, needing hundreds of thousands of new recruits each year, the People’s Liberation Army has been affected by China’s wider fertility and ageing issues, and tried to counter them.The gathering pace of the PLA’s m...

Mafae Ragua remembers March 15 of last year well. It was the day she and a few like-minded souls created a fan club for the South Korean actor Hyun Bin.The 38-year-old actor’s hit drama series, Crash Landing on You, had finished airing a few weeks ...

A hat shop in the US state of Tennessee has been hit with backlash after promoting a yellow star patch like those worn by Jews in Nazi-era Germany, labelled “not vaccinated”. It was the latest skirmish in the culture war surrounding Covid-19 vac...

China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003, 10 years after the launch of its space programme and four decades after the former Soviet Union and the United States had done the same.In the years since, the China National Space Administration (CN...

For the foreigners riding out the Covid-19 pandemic on Indonesia’s tourist island of Bali, the beaches of Seminyak and Canggu offer a lifestyle from 2019 – a time before social distancing and mask-wearing were the norm.In nightclubs on the south ...

Lewis Wong Kam-lang has been repairing industrial printers, machines and electrical appliances at his workshop at the Wang Cheong Factory Estate in Cheung Sha Wan for more than 10 years.“Workshops like mine are the emergency room for machines. We m...

Argentine rural producers threatened on Saturday to ramp up protest measures if the government did not back down on a meat export ban, an emergency measure taken in a bid to bolster domestic supply amid runaway inflation.Farmers in the South American...

China’s vaccine diplomacy seems to be hitting a home run in the most remote place from the homeland – at least for now. Globally, Latin America emerges as the biggest recipient of Chinese Covid-19 vaccines per capita than any other region.Accordi...

Gavin MacLeod, the veteran supporting actor who achieved stardom as Murray Slaughter, the sardonic TV news writer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, before going on to even bigger fame as the cheerful Captain Stubing on The Love Boat, has died. He was 90....

Uganda and Tanzania last week gave the go-ahead for the construction of an oil pipeline between the two countries, as environmentalists continued to push for it to be scrapped.State-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp, along with its partner Total...

The prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand will meet face-to-face for the first time in 15 months on Sunday, amid signs of division between the neighbours on how to manage relations with China.Scott Morrison and Jacinda Ardern will meet in Quee...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his fiancée Carrie Symonds married on Saturday in a small private ceremony in London, UK newspapers reported.Johnson’s office declined to comment on reports in The Mail on Sunday and The Sun that the couple...

As the Chinese Communist Party celebrates its centenary, now is a good time to look at the uses and abuses of history. On an immediately topical note, this month 100 years ago saw the first serious outbreak of communal violence between Arabs and Je...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Bianca Quilantan and Lauraine Genota on politico.com on May 29, 2021.A steadily growing pipeline of cash for US colleges and universities from international...

At least six people have died in overnight protests in the Colombian city of Cali, local media reported on Saturday.Newspaper El Tiempo reported six dead, while RCN Radio reported at least seven had died.Colombian President Ivan Duque on Friday night...

Hundreds of people in Warsaw on Saturday rallied in support of the Belarusian opposition, days after the regime in Minsk diverted a European passenger plane and arrested a dissident journalist on board.Among those at the rally were the Poland-based p...

Thousands of people, masked and tested for the coronavirus, packed inside a Paris arena for a concert on Saturday as part of a public health experiment to prepare France to host big events again.The show at AccorHotels Arena in eastern Paris featured...

The Duchess of Cambridge has received her first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine as Britain extends its inoculation programme to younger people.Kate, the 39-year-old wife of Prince William, received her vaccine at London’s Science Museum, a mass vaccinat...

A teenager from south London appeared in court Saturday on charges that he was involved in the shooting of a prominent member of the Black Lives Matter movement.Cameron Deriggs, 18, is charged with conspiracy to murder Sasha Johnson, who was shot in ...

A roadside bomb struck a minivan full of university lecturers and students in Afghanistan’s northern Kapisa province on Saturday, killing at least four and wounding 11 others, Afghan officials said.Interior ministry spokesman Tariq Arian said the m...

US goth rocker Marilyn Manson was on Friday hit with new allegations that he raped an ex-girlfriend and forced her to watch a video of him abusing a young fan.The latest lawsuit against Manson – real name Brian Warner – on behalf of an anonymous ...

Police in Italy are searching for the body of an 18-year-old girl suspected to have been killed by her Pakistani family after refusing an arranged Muslim marriage.The girl’s parents, an uncle and two cousins are under investigation for murder, lieu...

When Italy won the Eurovision Song Contest with an over-the-top glam-rock performance, the victory signalled more than just a psychological boost for one of the countries hardest hit by Covid-19: Held before a live, indoor audience of 3,500, the annu...

Two former senior Western politicians have warned Beijing and Washington to find ways to manage their differences or risk catastrophic consequences.The warnings were delivered at the International Finance Forum in Beijing on Saturday and reflected de...

China is one step closer to being the only nation with its own space station, with launch of a cargo spacecraft sending supplies to its orbital lab, a mission delayed for over a week for technical reasons.The Tianzhou 2 lifted off aboard a Long March...

China should be prepared for “unprecedented” scientific and technological competition, which has become the “the main battleground” of global power rivalry, President Xi Jinping has said in a rallying call to the country’s scientists.Xi sai...

The Pfizer vaccine is slightly less effective but appears to still protect against the more transmissible Covid-19 variant first identified in India, according to a study by France’s Pasteur Institute.“Despite slightly diminished efficacy, the Pf...

Hong Kong’s top judge has warned against “repeated and gratuitous” questioning of the city’s judicial independence, calling on senior counsel to speak up and defend the reputation of the courts at home and abroad.Shortly after Chief Justice A...

When Hilda Poon stood in front of her colleagues to tell them she was a lesbian, she was terrified.At 40, she had spent much of her working life keeping her sexual identity hidden from colleagues, worrying over whether to dress in a feminine way or w...

The authorities have shut down parts of a district in the capital of Guangdong as the southern Chinese province remains on high alert over the latest Covid-19 outbreak. Several streets in Guangzhou city’s Liwan district and some businesses were sh...

China has reached another milestone in its quest for a fusion reactor, with one of its “artificial suns” sustaining extreme temperatures for several times longer that its previous benchmark, according to state media.State news agency Xinhua repor...

They started suddenly about six months ago and nobody really knows why. In December, a herd of 15 elephants, including mothers with their young, left their tropical forest home of Puer prefecture in southwest China’s Yunnan province and started ma...

An Air India flight bound for the United States was forced to return to New Delhi after a bat flew through the cabin, it was reported on Saturday. Videos that have gone viral on Indian social sites showed crew and passengers reacting with shock and p...

At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, millions of people around the world felt the strain of being confined for weeks and months on end as lockdowns took hold. For Ghulam Mohammad Dar, 51, such restrictions have been a fact of life for 40 years....

Hong Kong has asked the World Trade Organization (WTO) to reverse a decision by the United States to require the city’s exports bound for America to be labelled “Made in China” in an escalation of a row between the trading partners.Commerce chi...

Hong Kong’s fourth wave of Covid-19 infections has finally ended, a government pandemic adviser has declared, while also warning the city to brace for a potential fifth one and not ease social-distancing rules.But Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, an infec...

Students staying in Hong Kong are guaranteed a “bright future”, the education minister has said, after recent statistics found thousands of pupils had withdrawn from schools and many were pursuing their studies abroad.“I can assure all parents ...

Ethiopia’s recent decision to open its telecoms market saw a Chinese-backed bid for a mobile licence lose out to a consortium that had US support, but the east African country is likely to remain an important market for Chinese companies.Last weeke...

Hong Kong’s government is offering to exempt fully vaccinated bankers from the city’s compulsory quarantine, easing the travel restrictions to and from Asia’s financial hub as coronavirus cases ebb.“Senior executives of licensed corporations ...

The organiser of Hong Kong’s annual vigil marking the Tiananmen Square crackdown has lost its final challenge to overturn a police ban of the event over Covid-19 risks.In upholding the force’s decision, an appeal board on Saturday pointed to the ...