Britain said on Thursday it had imposed asset freezes on Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich and Igor Sechin, the chief executive of Russian oil group Rosneft, plus five other Russian oligarchs. In total Britain said the seven figures added t...

The Chinese defence ministry has rejected speculation over any “hidden military spending”, emphasising that China’s defence budget still lags far behind that of the United States.The comments from ministry spokesman Wu Qian came after Beijing r...

Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation posted profits of HK$9.55 billion (US$1.22 billion) for last year, a marked turnaround from its record losses in 2020, with earnings buoyed by the temporary lull in coronavirus infections.But the rail giant warned on Thu...

Thailand’s purchase of a Chinese-made Yuan Class S26T submarine worth 13.5 billion baht (US$408 million) has stalled over the manufacturer’s failure to obtain German-made diesel engines as stipulated in the contract.State-owned conglomerate China...

Hong Kong confirmed more than 31,000 new coronavirus infections on Thursday as a health official revealed caseloads had already peaked, while the city’s security minister warned residents that refusing to go to an isolation facility could result in...

A Hong Kong pro-establishment lawmaker has reported being targeted in an apparent scam in which a “middleman” claiming to work for the central government offered him a national-level post in exchange for a “service fee” of HK$500,000 (US$63,9...

A Hong Kong private tutor has been jailed for 27 years for orchestrating a failed plot to murder his business partner more than three years ago, with the sentencing judge calling him “a major threat to society”.Stephen So Hon-to returned to the H...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party is set to keep control of India’s most populous state with a big majority, according to the count on Thursday of a state assembly vote that could offer clues to the national mood before a 2024 general election...

South Korea’s president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol on Thursday said he would sternly deal with North Korea’s misbehaviour and reset ties with China, hinting he would shift back to the hardline posture taken under his conservative predecessors.United Sta...

The Philippine president is ready to open the country’s “facilities” to American forces under a 1951 mutual defence treaty if Russia’s war against Ukraine turns for the worse and embroils the United States in the fighting, Manila’s ambassad...

China reported 402 locally transmitted Covid-19 cases for Wednesday, nearly double the previous day’s count.Of the new local symptomatic infections, 165 were in Jilin province, marking the highest daily count for the northeastern province since Chi...

Pfizer’s Covid-19 pill is one step closer to clinical use in China, with state-owned China Meheco Corp securing a deal with Pfizer to commercialise the drug within the year.The Chinese company had signed a contract with Pfizer and was authorised to...

Financial markets do not seem to be pricing in the full risks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The absence of any meaningful negative response in equity, corporate debt and sovereign debt markets in Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan would...

Russia’s defence ministry acknowledged that some conscripts were taking part in the conflict with Ukraine after President Vladimir Putin denied this on various occasions, saying only professional soldiers and officers had been sent in.The ministry ...

Dense smoke billowed into the sky near a major Hong Kong shipping terminal after some styrofoam boxes and various other items burst into flames along a roadside in Kwai Chung on Thursday.Eight fire engines and one ambulance were called to the scene a...

A UK government watchdog and Christian church leaders slammed the interior ministry for its handling of visa applications for Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion – with a Holocaust survivor said to be among those held up.Parliamentary and Health...

The White House has denounced Beijing’s amplification of “preposterous” claims by Moscow that Washington is funding biological weapons research in Ukraine, compounding US-China tensions over Beijing’s position on Russia’s invasion of the co...

Researchers have discovered the remarkably well-preserved wreck of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, in 10,000 feet (about 3,000 metres) of icy water, a century after it was swallowed up by Antarctic ice during what proved to be o...

Timothy Liu has remained unusually quiet since the Ukrainian war began.The 25-year-old postgraduate student at a leading university in Beijing has not posted any messages about the war on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, for almost two weeks o...

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor offered an update on new community isolation facilities being built for Covid-19 patients and explained a recent decision to issue a mass emergency alert at her second-ever daily epidemic press con...

Pursuing a “dynamic zero” strategy in Hong Kong’s coronavirus battle is not about aiming for zero infections, but saving lives first, and the city can achieve it in stages with firm, clear actions while ensuring economic and social stability, a...

Indonesia’s Mount Merapi volcano spewed avalanches of hot clouds in eruptions overnight on Thursday that forced about 250 residents to flee to temporary shelters and left ash blanketing nearby villages and towns. No casualties were reported.The vol...

A plane carrying Donald Trump back to his Florida home made an emergency landing in New Orleans when one of its engines failed.The Washington Post reported that the Dassault Falcon 900 flew about 120km (75 miles) after departing New Orleans Lakefront...

VTB Bank is offering a Chinese yuan savings account with a maximum interest rate of 8 per cent, as the Russian lender faces strict sanctions from the US and UK as those nations look to financially isolate Russia through widening penalties.Deposits ca...

A private zoo in Taizhou, Jiangsu, southeastern China, is under fire after some of its employees were caught putting make-up on monkeys in live streams to try and sell cosmetics.An internet user reported to the local online information management aut...

Australia will boost its defence force personnel by some 30 per cent by 2040, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on Thursday, describing it as the largest military build-up in peacetime.The defence forces would grow by 18,500 personnel to 80,000...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underscores the need to increase US military vigilance in the Indo-Pacific given the risk that Beijing might decide to attack Taiwan, top US defence officials told Congress on Wednesday.Lessons from Russian President Vl...

A gentle tune from a violin played by a musician who has been dubbed Ukraine’s “cellar violinist” is a lullaby for a child sheltered in the dark basement of an apartment building in the besieged Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.Vera Lytovchenko has be...

Ryan Coogler, director of Hollywood blockbusters Black Panther and Creed, was erroneously handcuffed after an Atlanta bank teller grew concerned of a potential robbery, police said.The incident occurred on January 18 when Coogler asked to withdraw mo...

The US called on China on Wednesday to ensure that a planned visit by UN human rights chief Michele Bachelet includes “unhindered and unsupervised access” to all areas of the Xinjiang region to investigate alleged abuses of Uygurs.Bachelet announ...

US President Joe Biden urged Congress on Wednesday to hurry up and pass a final, compromise version of sweeping legislation meant to strengthen US competitiveness against China.“The bottom line is this bipartisan innovation bill will allow us to st...

The sudden announcement that China’s central bank will transfer 1 trillion yuan (US$158.3 billion) to help fuel the government’s fiscal-expansion goals has given rise to questions about the breadth of Beijing’s policy toolkit.And analysts are w...

Denmark’s prime minister on Wednesday delivered a face-to-face apology to six living victims of a 1950s social experiment in which 22 Greenlandic children were taken from their families and sent to Denmark to be integrated into Danish society.The I...

Former prosecutor Yoon Suk-yeol has emerged the winner of South Korea’s bitterly contested election on Thursday, after a neck and neck race against ex-mayor and lawyer Lee Jae-myung.After close to all of the ballots had been counted as of 5.30am lo...

The first person to receive a heart transplant from a genetically modified pig has died two months after the medical milestone, the hospital that carried out the surgery said Wednesday.The procedure raised hopes that advances in cross-species organ d...

Two directors of Huawei Technologies Co.’s British subsidiary have resigned after the telecommunications giant declined to directly condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Andrew Cahn and Ken Olisa notified the company on Wednesday that they planned...

An apparent Russian air strike destroyed a children’s hospital in the besieged Ukrainian port of Mariupol, triggering renewed global outrage as Moscow’s war with its ex-Soviet neighbour entered its third week.The strike came as Mariupol’s mayor...

[Sponsored Article] The four-year part-time program, which accepted its first cohort in September 2021, is taught by top-tier professors and combines coursework on the frontiers of different disciplines with independent research for a thesis that ha...

Hong Kong police are searching for a male suspect in connection with an assault on an elderly man at an upscale shopping centre in Admiralty on Wednesday night.A force spokeswoman said the victim, who was in his 70s, sustained injuries to his face in...

The European Commission on Tuesday outlined a plan to cut gas imports from Russia by two-thirds before the end of the year, as the EU looks to move away from Russian energy sources following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.The European Union is heavil...

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has told his successor that Manila must honour an agreement his administration made with China to jointly explore an area in the disputed South China Sea for oil and gas deposits – or face possible conflict.He s...

Wild swings in the prices of energy, metals and other raw materials triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may start to weigh on China’s economy as inflation concerns outweigh worries over production costs and supply chain disruptions, accordi...

Britain said Wednesday it was preparing to send more portable missile systems to help Ukrainian forces destroy Russian tanks and aircraft, but denied it was escalating the conflict.Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the UK had so far delivered 3,615 ...

About 5,000 staff members from Hong Kong’s government schools will be roped in to support Covid-19 testing centres when the city rolls out its mass screening drive, education authorities have revealed.In a press briefing on Wednesday, Chief Executi...

A rental deferment proposal by Hong Kong’s financial secretary to help struggling business tenants may be in jeopardy, as the chief executive is consulting her cabinet on whether to support or abort the controversial scheme amid mounting opposition...

A total of 9,000 beds at public hospitals will be dedicated to Covid-19 patients with severe symptoms, while the transformation of four more hospitals into designated coronavirus facilities will bring the total number of converted medical centres to ...

Hong Kong’s care homes will run under a “closed-loop” system that restricts staff movement to curb Covid-19 outbreaks, but operators and carers have warned of an employee exodus amid an already severe personnel shortage.Chief Executive Carrie L...

China’s state news agency has accused the US government of feeding “slanderous news” to the media and denied reports that Beijing had direct knowledge of Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine.In an editorial published on Wednesday, Xinhua, the sta...

The mastermind behind Sweden’s Covid-19 strategy that triggered widespread criticism at home and abroad has been hired by the WHO as a vaccine coordinator.Anders Tegnell will leave his position as state epidemiologist on March 14 and become “a se...

Proposals for matchmaking committees within local trade unions and a drive to encourage more graduate students to have children triggered a frosty reception on social media in China, as officials brainstormed ways to raise the country’s plunging bi...