China’s chip champion Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) has made good on its plans to offer top executives up to 23.6 million yuan (US$3.7 million) worth of shares at a 65 per cent discount as part of a talent retention scheme c...

South Korea on Monday confirmed it will for the first time take part in a major US-Australian joint military exercise next month that is widely seen as being aimed at countering an increasingly assertive China.The “Talisman Sabre” war games – c...

Hong Kong police have cited the pandemic as grounds for barring three groups from organising a march on July 1 to call for resistance against “political suppression, and the release of all political prisoners”.The three activist groups – the Le...

Australian police have fined two men who had to be rescued from a forest after they were startled by a deer while sunbathing naked on a beach.The duo called for help at about 6pm on Sunday after they became lost in the Royal National Park, south of S...

Binance Markets was banned by the UK’s financial watchdog from doing any regulated business in the country, one of the most significant moves to date by a regulator amid a global crackdown in the cryptocurrency industry.Binance Markets has until th...

Work-from-home restrictions were reimposed in Moscow on Monday as Russia tried to contain a deadly coronavirus wave fuelled by the Delta variant first detected in India.Russia has seen an explosion of new cases in the last two weeks because of this v...

A Hong Kong driver died after his tourist bus slammed into a tree and then toppled onto one side as heavy rain pounded the city on Monday.The crash took place on the Kwu Tung section of Castle Peak Road outside the North District Equestrian Events Me...

Hong Kong confirmed three new coronavirus cases but no local infections on Monday, hours after an overnight lockdown triggered by the discovery of a second Delta variant carrier in the community came to an end having turned up nothing.The new Covid-1...

Two of the world’s first one-gigawatt turbines started full power generation on Monday at the giant Baihetan hydropower station in southwestern China.According to state broadcaster CCTV, Baihetan started generating electricity on Monday, after a th...

Top legal professionals are among people who fell for Singapore’s biggest alleged investment fraud, as the unravelling scandal reveals more high-profile victims.Pek Siok Lan, general counsel for state-owned investor Temasek International, and Thio ...

Housing affordability, one of the issues fuelling political strife in Hong Kong over the past few years, is rearing its head again as low interest rates fuel a speculative real estate frenzy while the economy grapples with budding signs of recovery f...

Anti-vaccine messages in Indonesia are often spread by religious micro-influencers and sprinkled with conspiracy theories, anti-government narrative and anti-Chinese sentiment, a new report has found, posing a challenge for the Southeast Asian nation...

The collapse of a high-rise residential complex in Florida presented Miami-Dade Fire Rescue with search and rescue difficulties as multilayered as the rubble that used to be 12 floors of flats and a lobby.“This is the most complex situation we’ve...

A “heat dome” over western Canada and the US Pacific northwest has sent temperatures soaring to new highs, triggering heat warnings from Oregon to Canada’s Arctic territories.More than 40 new temperature highs were recorded in British Columbia ...

Two Saudi women’s rights campaigners have been released from prison, three years after a sweeping crackdown by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman targeting female activists who’d peacefully advocated for greater freedoms, rights groups said.It now ...

Shelved for 18 years, Article 23 of Hong Kong’s mini-constitution to safeguard national security returned to make headlines as newly minted ministers talked about it last week.So why is Beijing, which imposed a national security law on Hong Kong, s...

This is the third of a four-part series on the impact of the national security law, one year after it was imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing on June 30, 2020. Chris Lau and Laura Westbrook speak to legal scholars on the new precedents being set on bail,...

Malaysia’s third coronavirus lockdown will be maintained until 10 per cent of the country's population has received two vaccine doses and case numbers drop below 4,000 a day, the government said.“The graph on daily Covid-19 positive cases shows...

The United States said it carried out another round of air strikes against Iran-backed militia in Iraq and Syria, this time in response to drone attacks by the militia against US personnel and facilities in Iraq.In a statement, the US military on Sun...

John Langley creator of the long-running TV series Cops, has died during an off-road race in Mexico, a family spokeswoman said.Langley died in Baja, Mexico, of an apparent heart attack on Saturday during the Coast to Coast Ensenada-San Felipe 250 off...

Bangkok “tuk tuk” taxi driver Samran Thammasa, 39, had never heard of K-pop star Jessica Jung before the coronavirus pandemic, but now the singer’s Thai fans are helping him survive the loss of tourist customers.His bright green three-wheeled m...

Debbie Kwan Ho-kwan is determined to move forward in life and not let chronic health conditions hold her back.The 27-year-old was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus in 2012 and stiff person syndrome in 2019.According to the website of the Ge...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing.Landslides and severe flooding were reported in some areas of Hong Kong on Monday morning while public service...

New York prosecutors have told lawyers for former US president Donald Trump they must respond by Monday with any last arguments as to why criminal charges should not be filed against his family business, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.The Pos...

Hong Kong’s anti-corruption agency has warned of shady middlemen offering help with bank applications after arresting 36 people over suspected scams involving government-guaranteed loans totalling HK$40 million (US$5.2 million).The suspects are acc...

Everyone in North Korea is heartbroken over leader Kim Jong-un’s apparent weight loss, said an unidentified resident of Pyongyang quoted on the country’s tightly controlled state media, after watching recent video footage of Kim.The rare public c...

The United States remains the world’s pre-eminent cyber power and is likely to retain that position ahead of China at least until 2030 with the help of similarly advanced Western allies, according to a new report by the International Institute of S...

Hawkish British politicians and an American industrial lobby group have called on Western allies to form a “Nato for trade” to counter China’s “weaponisation of policy tools to punish any nation that does not kowtow to Beijing”.The proposal...

With the Communist Party’s centenary just days away, much of what is expected to be the biggest political celebration in China’s modern history remains shrouded in secrecy.Early this year, President Xi Jinping promised “grand celebrations” fo...

Before the Covid-19 pandemic forced countries to close their borders, Peggy Chung was a frequent traveller. The 52-year-old Hong Kong-based food merchant travelled within Asia regularly and sometimes to Europe and South America to meet clients.While ...

China’s Envision Group plans to spend as much as €2 billion (US$2.4 billion) on a battery plant in northern France to power an affordable range of Renault SA electric vehicles.The deal is part of the European carmaker’s EV strategy that will al...

The United States and some Western nations may have banned Chinese technology giant Huawei because of security concerns, but the Chinese telecoms giant is continuing to widen its reach in Africa.Senegal this week became the latest African nation to a...

Tens of thousands of migrant workers fled Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka on Sunday on the eve of a tightened lockdown that will curtail most economic activity and confine people to their homes as coronavirus infections soar.Restrictions on activities a...

At least seven people died and dozens were injured in an explosion on Sunday in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka.But authorities could not determine the nature of the explosion that damaged vehicles and surrounding buildings, the police and fire departme...

The death toll after the collapse of a Florida block of flats has risen to nine, the local mayor said on Sunday, more than three days after the building pancaked as residents slept.“We were able to recover four additional bodies in the rubble … S...

A senior editorial writer of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper was arrested at the airport on Sunday night while attempting to leave the city, according to sources, just as an online news portal acted to purge most of its commentaries over concerns...

Canola farmers in Canada hope the escalation of a complaint over restrictions placed on its seed exports to China, which have been in effect for over two years, can help resolve the issue that is estimated to have already cost the industry up to US$1...

Cambodian authorities on Sunday confiscated a pet lion after the defanged and declawed animal was seen in TikTok videos in a Phnom Penh villa.The 18-month-old male, weighing 70 kilograms, had been imported from overseas by the owner, a Chinese nation...

China’s top spy agency has honoured some of its veteran intelligence officers for their contributions to the Communist Party cause on “hidden front lines”, in some cases dating back to the war against Japan.In a rare public statement, the Minis...

Myanmar security forces punched, slapped and beat a US journalist and kept him blindfolded for more than a week of interrogation, he said after being deported to the United States following over three months in detention.Nathan Maung, 44, editor-in-c...

Huawei Technologies must remain open, continue to grow in international markets, and learn from the United States, even though the country continues to apply pressure, according to the latest published speech from company founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei...

Hong Kong and mainland Chinese authorities have arrested 13 people for their alleged roles in the laundering of more than HK$53 million (US$6.8 million) in criminal proceeds by tricking jobseekers into handing over their personal information. City p...

Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, has become the third city in China to open a second airport, following in the footsteps of Shanghai and Beijing.The first flight from Chengdu Tianfu International Airport, took off on Sunday bound for Beijing...

China has welcomed Ukraine’s withdrawal from a joint call for Beijing to grant the UN human rights chief access to Xinjiang amid reports that Beijing used vaccine diplomacy to persuade Kiev to make the switch.Ukraine was one of more than 40 countri...

Britain’s government on Sunday said it was investigating how secret defence documents, outlining the movements of a warship that led to Russia firing warning shots off the Crimean coast, were found at a bus stop in England.The Ministry of Defence s...

Hongkongers queued for hours on Sunday to take a final ride on the iconic burgundy carriages of the city’s iconic funicular railway before the attraction’s six-month closure as part of a HK$700 million (US$90 million) upgrade.The Peak Tramways Co...

A competition designed to promote unity among China’s different ethnic groups has become embroiled in controversy after some of the competitors wore traditional Islamic clothing to the event.The Go tournament – a traditional Chinese board game al...

The promotion of a pair of tough security officials to two of the city’s top jobs last week was to be expected but it still raised eyebrows.It marks a paradigm shift in Beijing’s governance style for Hong Kong, underscoring the need to expand a p...

China looks likely to allow more cotton imports than usual this year after a US ban on fibre from Xinjiang spurred some Western retailers to avoid material produced from the controversial region.Beijing may issue another batch of import quotas soon t...

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation may play a more active role in Afghanistan’s security after the planned US military withdrawal prompted an upsurge in violence that threatened to spill over into neighbouring countries, according to analysts.Le...