Hong Kong’s homebuyers piled into the real estate market and ignored a raging coronavirus outbreak in the Kowloon side of the city as they almost cleared out the second new launch of property projects this year.At least 160 of the 179 flats at the ...

US curbs on investors owning securities from a number of Chinese companies could affect as much as US$60 billion worth of bonds and spark hefty outflows through forced selling, JPMorgan wrote in a note to clients.Donald Trump’s White House issued a...

Portugal last week joined the ranks of countries hit hardest by Covid-19 infections, reporting on Thursday the world’s highest per capita seven-day average for new cases, according to Johns Hopkins University, mirroring a surge seen in other Europe...

Vietnam must navigate the troubled relationship between the United States and China – its two most important trade partners – at a particularly complex time, just as new leaderships emerge in both Hanoi and Washington.With Joe Biden’s inaugurat...

As the Chinese saying goes: for every measure from above, there will always be a countermeasure from below.That may explain why, for many years, despite local governments’ bests effort to cool off the overheating property market in major Chinese ci...

Hong Kong’s once-glittering movie industry has lost its shine, hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic which closed cinemas, shrank box office takings and resulted in fewer films made last year.Industry players expecting another bleak year ahead say the ...

Butch Bowers is used to defending public officials in ethics cases. But he has never faced anything quite like this.It’s up to Bowers, a South Carolina elections and ethics lawyer, to rise and defend former US President Donald Trump as the Senate s...

Chinese President Xi Jinping has reiterated the need to fight corruption if the country is to achieve its economic and political goals.Speaking on Friday at the annual conference of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), Xi said the...

Sri Lanka’s health minister, who publicly endorsed sorcery and magic potions to stop surging coronavirus infections in the island, has tested positive for the disease and will self-isolate, officials said Saturday.Pavithra Wanniarachchi had publicl...

Hong Kong exceeded 10,000 coronavirus cases on the first anniversary of the pandemic on Saturday after health authorities revealed 81 new infections and warned more were expected to emerge out of the Kowloon neighbourhood placed under an unprecedente...

After loading up with coal, the DZ Weihai slipped into the turquoise waters off the coast of Australia earlier this month and began a 14-day voyage to the southern Chinese port of Yangpu. How long the ship waits to discharge its cargo upon arrival is...

Hong Kong’s banks and stockbrokers are hiring more financiers from mainland China to use their Mandarin-speaking skills to pitch for initial public offers (IPOs) and other deals, as the city’s stock benchmark hovers at a 20-month high amid record...

Canada said its officials have spoken online with former diplomat Michael Kovrig, who has been held in China for more than two years in a case related to an executive of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.Canada’s Foreign Ministry said officials led by ...

Supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny were on Saturday preparing to rally in dozens of cities across Russia, even as authorities vowed a crackdown on protesters.Allies of Russia’s leading opposition figure – who was jailed upon retur...

A Pakistan-Chinese automotive joint venture recently sold out six months’ production of its first compact sedan car within five days of market launch, a success that investors and analysts believe could pave the way for Pakistan to become an export...

When Yue Zhongyi heard Wuhan was about to go into lockdown last year, he wanted to leave town.But it was already too late, so the 62-year-old retiree rushed to the supermarket instead and stocked up on huge bags of rice, 15kg of noodles, and bottled ...

US President Joe Biden made his first calls to foreign leaders as America’s commander in chief on Friday, dialling up Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a strained moment for Washington’s...

These domestic helpers might be tempted to have a lie-in on their one day off a week.But they have a grander vision: waking before dawn to scale some of Hong Kong’s hardest-to-reach peaks and help rid the countryside of litter.Before the Covid-19 p...

The social media firestorm ignited by an American “digital nomad” who promoted the perks of living in Bali for foreigners has revealed the frustrations that many Indonesians feel about the local government’s relentless pursuit of tourism to dri...

Chinese lifestyle goods retailer Miniso Group Holding says the industry needs to embrace digitalisation, as it expands its e-commerce business and uses online channels to develop new brands.The Guangzhou-based chain known for its fashionable but affo...

Hong Kong officially launched its battle with the coronavirus a year ago as the first cases, imported from epicentre Wuhan, were confirmed. One year on, the city is still mired in its war against Covid-19, recording nearly 10,000 infections and more ...

Authorities in the Chinese capital have started testing about 2 million people in the centre of the city after two cases of a strain of the coronavirus first detected in Britain were reported in Beijing.The rapid mass campaign started on Friday, a da...

Every Sunday morning Indonesian domestic helper Eni Lestari gets dressed, puts on some light make-up and takes a bus from her employer’s home in Yau Ma Tei to Victoria Park, where she meets her friends.This has long been her routine for her only da...

Vietnam’s Party Congress beginning on Monday will elect the country’s next leaders and unveil its economic goals. Held amid a pandemic and uncertain geopolitical winds, the once in five years event is also widely seen as a coming-of-age moment fo...

A South Korean court ruling that ordered the Japanese government to pay damages to a group of former “comfort women” over their treatment in Japanese military brothels became final Saturday as a deadline for Tokyo to appeal expired.The Japanese g...

President Joe Biden has directed law enforcement and intelligence officials in his administration to study the threat of domestic violent extremism in the United States, an undertaking being launched weeks after a mob of insurgents loyal to Donald Tr...

Huawei Technologies Co. must decentralise its operations, simplify product lines, focus on generating profit, and maintain pay levels for three to five years to survive US trade restrictions, according to a recently published speech from company foun...

China’s servicemen and women will get a significant pay rise later this year, according to three independent sources close to the world’s largest military force.The 40 per cent increase comes hard on the heels of a number of sweeping reforms inte...

Ten thousand residents in one of Hong Kong’s most densely populated districts woke up to police cordons and officer patrols on Saturday, as a large area was locked down in an unprecedented attempt to stem the spread of Covid-19 in the city.Resident...

Mainland Chinese immigrants in Australia have a harder time adjusting to their new environment than some of their East Asian counterparts, but any progress they have shown in closing the gap is potentially threatened by discrimination and pandemic-re...

A plan to monitor women’s expressions with facial recognition technology to prevent street harassment in a north Indian city will lead to intrusive policing and privacy violations, digital rights experts warned on Friday.In Lucknow, about 500km (31...

The first comprehensive internal inquiry on sex abuse allegations by a religious order in Spain has identified 81 children and 37 adult victims of 96 Jesuits since the late 1920s, a much higher number than the cases that had so far been publicly know...

A new strain of coronavirus reported in Britain may be more deadly than first thought, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, as he warned again that the country faces a long wait before it can emerge from lockdown.Speaking at a news conference Friday in...

Iran on Friday called on the new US administration to “unconditionally” lift sanctions imposed by Donald Trump on the Islamic republic to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal, warning against any concessions.Just two days after US President Joe Biden to...

The US government’s top infectious disease expert said on Friday that former president Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic “very likely” cost lives.“I don’t want that job to be a sound bite but … you could see that when ...

The US Senate confirmed retired general Lloyd Austin as secretary of defence on Friday, the second cabinet nominee of new President Joe Biden to gain approval and the first African American to lead the Pentagon.Austin sailed through with overwhelming...

The mob that stormed the US Capitol on January 6 once again put the American alternative-right (alt-right) on the radar. They have been staunch supporters of former president Donald Trump who, in turn, has been accused of inciting the alt-right to at...

Opening arguments in the US Senate impeachment trial for Donald Trump over the Capitol riot will begin the week of February 8, the first time a former president will face such charges after leaving office.Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announce...

Four men were given lengthy jail terms on Friday for the manslaughter of 39 Vietnamese men, women and children who suffocated to death in a stifling, airtight shipping container in 2019 as they tried to make their way to Britain.The discovery of so m...

Top Beijing officials have discussed proportionate ways to retaliate against London’s new pathway for Hong Kong residents to acquire British citizenship, as well as overhauling the city’s electoral system ahead of its next leadership race in 2022...

Italian prosecutors have opened a probe into the accidental death of a 10-year-old girl who allegedly took part in a “blackout challenge” on the video-sharing network TikTok.The girl died in a Palermo hospital after being discovered on Wednesday ...

A police sniper shot dead a knife-wielding man holding a boy hostage at a school in southwestern China on Friday.The man had earlier stabbed several pupils at the school in Kunming, Yunnan province, police said in a short statement.Seven people were ...

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had a stark warning at the agency’s annual board meeting in Geneva this week: the promise of fair access to Covid-19 vaccines was at serious risk.In peril, he said, was the WHO-backed Covax facility – a plan n...

A Chinese city boss has been sacked after slapping a subordinate in the face in public, according to state media.Zhang Zhanwei, the Communist Party chief of Jiyuan city in Henan province, was fired on Thursday, the official Xinhua news agency reporte...

Hong Kong’s anti-racism watchdog has spoken out against customers requesting that their takeaway food not be delivered by South Asian drivers during the coronavirus pandemic, but will take no action since such conduct is not illegal.Deliveroo on Fr...

The plan to impose a lockdown on parts of Hong Kong’s coronavirus-hit Yau Tsim Mong district from Saturday morning has caught residents unprepared, with some supporting the move and others doubting its effectiveness.While there was no sign of peopl...

The new head of Hong Kong’s Bar Association has called the arrest of 55 opposition figures an attempt to intimidate the city’s democratic movement, and warned against attacks on his colleagues in pro-Beijing media.Just hours after Paul Harris bec...

Richemont Chairman Johann Rupert received his first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine at a clinic his family has investment ties to in Switzerland, sparking a controversy in the country about who should get inoculated first.The South African billionaire got...

Hong Kong’s embattled public broadcaster has terminated the probation contract of a journalist known for her confrontational approach to questioning officials, offering her instead a temporary agreement that effectively erases her more than three y...

Scientists have warned that more research is needed to determine whether the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine is likely to be effective in coping with the coronavirus variant detected in Britain after studies offered conflicting results.The spread of...