Hong Kong financial chief Paul Chan Mo-po has expressed reservations about a fresh round of cash handouts for struggling residents amid the Covid-19 pandemic, citing challenges ahead in the first half of the year.Chan told a Saturday radio programme ...

A police officer has been suspended after he was accused of raping a woman in a Tsim Sha Tsui hotel while he was off duty on Thursday.The incident, involving a 25-year-old woman, occurred at around 1am that day at a Tsim Sha Tsui hotel, according to ...

As millions of Indians wait to get inoculated against Covid-19, New Delhi is also keen to supply vaccines to its neighbours to bolster its geopolitical importance in the region. But it is also facing criticism about the potential risks involved in pu...

The People’s Liberation Army marked the start of the new year by revealing a new variant of the powerful rockets it has targeting Taiwan.The PCL-191 long-range multiple launch rocket system (MLRS), capable of firing 370mm rockets 350km (217 miles) ...

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was heckled by a crowd at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Friday after breaking with President Donald Trump following the riots at the US Capitol building.Videos show several people yelling at the South ...

Hong Kong confirmed 59 Covid-19 cases on Saturday, with the figure marking a new high for the year, while a senior official said more affordable hotels would be added to the government’s list of quarantine facilities.Fifty-three of the new cases we...

China on Saturday issued a new order to prohibit firms from complying with foreign laws banning transactions with Chinese companies and individuals, effective immediately.The so-called Rules on Counteracting Unjustified Extraterritorial Application o...

After a pandemic-hit year characterised by movement restrictions and social distancing, Indian wedding planners and families are getting more creative with ideas for the big day – with a live-streamed event creating a huge buzz on social media.Shiv...

Chinese homebuyers, the fifth-biggest group of foreign investors in Australian property in 2019 before relations went into a deep freeze, are turning their backs on the tax rebates and other entreaties offered to lure them back, as they stay on the s...

The United States has announced a strategy to integrate its maritime forces, including its coastguard, to counter China’s growing presence in the contested South China Sea.In the new American maritime warfare strategy for the next decade, the US Na...

As far as cultural appropriation goes, the recent case of a Dallas-based company, founded by three Caucasian women, giving mahjong tiles a “modern makeover” has got to take the cake. Upon hearing the news, I instinctively shouted out “blasphem...

The unprecedented arrests of 53 Hong Kong opposition figures under the national security law this week made international headlines, but left many surprised that after the shock and awe of the dawn raids across the city, no one was charged immediatel...

Acknowledging its error in not stating that TraceTogether data is not exempt from the Criminal Procedure Code, the Singaporean government on Friday said it will pass legislation next month formalising its assurance that data collected for criminal i...

The Student of the Year Awards, organised by the South China Morning Post and sponsored by the Hong Kong Jockey Club, with support from the Education Bureau, are among the city’s most prestigious honours for local youths. This year, there were 11 ...

Most of us think of cities as ancient things, places that grew into urban centres over centuries and may often have played outsize roles in the development of their nations. As someone who writes about cities from San Francisco to Moscow and Seoul, t...

The Student of the Year Awards, organised by the South China Morning Post and sponsored by the Hong Kong Jockey Club, with support from the Education Bureau, are among the city’s most prestigious honours for local youths.This year, there were 11 aw...

Twitter permanently disabled the account of US President Donald Trump on Friday, saying the posts he sent during the day were “likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts” that took place during the deadly storming of the US Capitol Bu...

Much has changed in Hong Kong since the day Geoffrey Ma Tao-li took office in 2010 as the city’s chief justice.The past two years, especially, have seen massive anti-government protests, increasingly polarised politics and the arrival of a new nati...

The northern Chinese province of Hebei reported 33 new locally transmitted coronavirus cases and 39 asymptomatic ones for Thursday, taking the province’s total to 310 and compounding concern in neighbouring Beijing.The Hebei outbreak is the biggest...

For the past three years, Cavin Cheong has been sending his two primary school-aged children to the Confucius Institute (CI) in southwest Singapore for weekly Chinese enrichment classes.He said the two – aged seven and nine – liked the learning e...

US President-elect Joe Biden said Americans need more economic relief from the coronavirus pandemic now and that he will deliver a plan costing “trillions” of dollars next week.Biden, introducing several members of his economic team, spoke on Fri...

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down at a bakery in the western German town of Dortmund, which is marking the year of the coronavirus vaccine with syringe-shaped cakes.It is not the first time Schuerner’s Baking Paradise has sold coronavi...

It was over the Christmas break five years ago that, with little better to do, I set myself a mind-numbing challenge. I ploughed through all the policy addresses from 1998 to 2015, and counted the number of times chief executives Tung Chee-hwa, Donal...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for more advanced nuclear weapons and said the United States is “our biggest enemy”, state media said on Saturday, presenting a stark challenge to President-elect Joe Biden just days before he takes office.W...

Police arrested three people in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on Friday for beating an endangered dolphin to death with an axe.In a video shared widely in the Indian press and on social media, a group of men are shown beating the Gangeti...

China’s hack-proof quantum communication technology is “primarily ready” for practical use after a 4,600km (2,858 mile) network was put through two years of experimental service, researchers announced.Since early 2019, the integrated space-to-g...

The head of the World Health Organization said on Friday there is a “clear problem” that low- and middle-income countries are not yet receiving supplies of Covid-19 vaccines and urged countries to stop striking bilateral deals with manufacturers....

A newlywed woman in China has walked out on her husband and demanded a divorce – all because of a row over lingerie.The furious bride pulled the pin on their wedding celebration at the eleventh hour and declared she was filing for divorce after bei...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Josh Gerstein on politico.com on January 8, 2021.A man who joined in the breach of the Capitol on Wednesday and posted a photo of himself on social media si...

US Attorney’s Office of Middle Tennessee on Friday said US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents have been searching the homes and offices of state lawmakers.The searches included the homes of former House Speaker Glen Casada and state Repre...

Police will investigate anyone, regardless of nationality, who helps an offender to abscond from Hong Kong, the government has warned, after it was reported the city was looking into prosecuting two Danish politicians who aided former opposition lawm...

US lawmakers say they will move to impeach President Donald Trump, perhaps as soon as Monday, accusing the commander in chief of inciting insurrection against the US government after thousands of his supporters violently stormed the Capitol on Wednes...

Canada will not accept “anything less than a comprehensive and honest explanation” from Iran on what led its military to mistakenly shoot down a Ukrainian passenger plane a year ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday. In a statement o...

US President-elect Joe Biden plans to add a senior official overseeing global health security as he remakes the White House National Security Council, restoring a government function cut by the Trump administration before the Covid-19 pandemic, his o...

Beijing’s latest crackdown on Douyin, a popular short video sharing app run by Chinese internet giant ByteDance, is meant to send an important message to the country’s Big Tech companies that they must redouble efforts to toe the government line ...

Advocates for Hong Kong’s underprivileged and ethnic minority communities have expressed grave concerns over the recent mass arrests of 53 former lawmakers and activists – including two respected rights figures – with one group accusing authori...

The southern Chinese province of Guangdong has tightened its quarantine control measures to prevent imported cases of Covid-19 and taken steps to reduce the mass movement of people ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday.Guangdong officials unveiled a ra...

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan declared a major incident in the British capital on Friday, saying hospitals in the city were at risk of being overwhelmed if people do not stay at home.Khan warned that the number of hospital beds will run out in the next ...

Authorities have shut down all 155 official religious venues in the Chinese capital after “a number of” coronavirus patients from neighbouring Hebei province reportedly attended religious gatherings.As of Thursday, about 300 people had been confi...

Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine is as effective against new strains of the virus raging in Britain and South Africa as it is against previously detected ones, according to new research.Pfizer released the results of a joint study conducted with the Unive...

Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine appeared to work against a key mutation in the highly transmissible new variants of the coronavirus discovered in Britain and South Africa, according to a laboratory study conducted by the US drug maker.The st...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has trimmed back its growth projection for the Chinese economy in 2021, citing headwinds from technological decoupling with the United States and domestic financial risks, to restrictions on fundraising via Hong ...

China’s leading search engine, Baidu, has entered the fray to take on Tesla and a clutch of domestic smart electric car makers through a new partnership with vehicle manufacturer Geely. Baidu, which already runs one of the world’s largest open a...

Congressional Democrats on Friday weighed impeaching President Donald Trump for a second time, two days after his false claims of election fraud helped encourage a group of protesters that stormed the US Capitol.Democratic leaders including House of ...

Beijing eye doctor Tao Yong became a household name in China last year when he was brutally stabbed by a patient in a knife attack that left him fighting for his life.The 40-year-old doctor, the head of ophthalmology at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, spe...

As if China’s biggest outbreak of coronavirus in months were not enough, the coldest temperatures in the capital and surrounding areas in years are delaying the delivery of critical supplies of coal, in addition to steel.“A rise in the number of ...

Beijing can expect American social divisions to play into the next US administration’s policies on China, diplomatic observers said as Chinese state media kept up its portrayal of the United States as “messed up” and “torn apart” society.Th...

As soon as Wang Yufeng heard that Shijiazhuang was about to go into lockdown because of a spike in coronavirus cases, she got to work sending parcels by courier.The 33-year-old has a clothing business in the northern city in Hebei province, and she w...

Surging Covid-19 numbers in Malaysia have alarmed public health experts, who are urging the government to take swift action amid speculation another nationwide lockdown will be instituted to throttle the spread of the disease.The country on Thursday ...

Chinese authorities are adopting a “forward-looking” investment strategy for the country’s massive foreign-exchange reserves, with plans to “dynamically optimise” its portfolio even as the value of its reserves assets have climbed to a four...