Several of China’s provincial governments have released their economic growth targets for 2021, but policy advisers say that as in 2020, the central government is unlikely to set a national goal for the year.Beijing said last week that the Chinese ...

A second round of testing may be required for residents currently subject to Hong Kong’s first Covid-19 lockdown if the initial operation identifies more than a handful of infections, according to a government pandemic adviser.Professor David Hui S...

It started as a diplomatic compromise, but the arrangement seems to be coming to an end because the consensus has been broken. That is the likely fate of the British National (Overseas) status in Hong Kong.Accusing Beijing of violating the city’s f...

Almost four decades after the first workers arrived in Japan to work at “Philippine pubs”, the Filipino community has become one of the most rooted in the East Asian country – but one that still remains largely female.Filipinos are the fourth-l...

China’s construction of a new village in an area of Arunachal Pradesh that has been at the centre of the country’s long-running border dispute with India was part of a national poverty alleviation programme, according to a source close to the Chi...

When Sim Tze Wei began working to raise awareness of the Hokkien language, he never expected he would be accused of trying to divide the Chinese people. “Han Chinese nationalists everywhere are keen to equate Mandarin to [real] Chinese,” said Si...

New Zealand has reported its first case of coronavirus community transmission in more than two months, although there was no immediate evidence that the disease was spreading.Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said Sunday the case was a 56-...

China’s military is increasing its use of joint operations and officer cross-training to boost its readiness for war, according to insiders quoted in a newspaper report.A five-year overhaul of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which ended last ...

Denia Esitianti has long suffered from climate anxiety – the mix of depression and affliction arising from confronting the facts that the globe is heading towards a climate catastrophe. The feelings grew stronger after she became a parent.“What�...

Japan’s Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi and his newly appointed US counterpart Lloyd Austin agreed on Sunday to enhance their countries’ alliance amid China’s growing maritime assertiveness.“We agreed to oppose any unilateral attempts to change ...

Senior Hong Kong officials say they are confident the Covid-19 lockdown imposed in one of the city’s most crowded districts can be lifted on Monday morning, after nearly 7,000 residents were tested on the operation’s first day.The Centre for Heal...

Eleven workers trapped for two weeks by an explosion inside a Chinese gold mine were brought safely to the surface on Sunday.State broadcaster CCTV showed them being hauled up one-by-one in baskets on Sunday afternoon, their eyes shielded to protect ...

The alleged ringleader of Asia’s biggest crime syndicate and one of the world’s most wanted men has been arrested in the Netherlands, with Australian authorities pushing for his extradition to face trial.Tse Chi Lop, a Chinese-born Canadian natio...

“Vaccination? Not me, I don’t want it,” said Carlito Cristo Niniado, 68, a carpenter in Manila.He said he had read that 23 people abroad died after receiving Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine. “If I don’t die of Covid, I’ll die of vaccinatio...

Lim Jia Hui was a year old when her elder sister Lim Shiow Rong went missing in 1995. Then aged seven, Shiow Rong was last seen at a coffee shop on June 24 in the central Singaporean district of Toa Payoh. She had gone off to find her father’s frie...

Political leaders around the world have gambled on the arrival of Covid-19 vaccines, hoping the battle with the coronavirus will be brought to an end soon. In the final of a two-part series marking the first anniversary of the Covid-19 epidemic in Ho...

The snow this winter on Japan’s ski runs and the powder on the off-piste is probably the best it has been in a decade. Unfortunately, there is virtually no one to enjoy it as foreign winter sports fans are not permitted to enter the country due to ...

Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co, facing US sanctions that have hobbled its core networking business, is targeting the new growth area of smart vehicles, setting the goal of “bringing the digital world to every car”.Huawei’s move into ...

Former President Donald Trump will not see his name on the airport in his home turf of Palm Beach County – and it also might be difficult to engrave it anywhere else in South Florida.A majority of Palm Beach County commissioners told the South Flor...

Jennifer Ellis has never met Bernie Sanders but she is enjoying a taste of his celebrity as the woman behind the mittens that gave the Vermont senator his viral moment at President Joe Biden’s inauguration.Ellis, a 42-year-old junior school teacher...

US President Joe Biden has spoken to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in his first call to a European leader since his inauguration, discussing the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and security.Johnson said it was “great” to speak to Bide...

In 1986, Joe Biden, then a Democratic senator from the state of Delaware, challenged the US government’s ambiguous policy towards the apartheid regime in South Africa.Pressing for passage of anti-apartheid legislation, Biden described the suffering...

Spain’s chief of the defence staff resigned on Saturday, the armed forces said, after a row over him getting the coronavirus vaccination despite not being on a priority list.General Miguel Angel Villarroya’s resignation came as a scandal brews ov...

It’s a club Donald Trump was never really interested in joining and certainly not so soon: the cadre of former commanders in chief who revere the presidency enough to put aside often bitter political differences and even join together in common cau...

Children are more resilient than we give them credit for, but we still need to teach them how to manage challenges like the one we have all been facing over the past year.The Covid-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on children in many ways. It ha...

France will tighten its laws on incest, President Emmanuel Macron said in a series of tweets on Saturday, after publication of a book accusing a top French political commentator of abusing his stepson sparked outrage across the country.Macron said on...

Police detained more than 3,300 people and used force to break up rallies across Russia on Saturday as tens of thousands of protesters ignored extreme cold and police warnings to demand the release of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.The authorities had...

Two top Brazilian indigenous leaders have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate President Jair Bolsonaro for “crimes against humanity”, accusing him of unprecedented environmental damage, killings and persecution.Chief Raoni...

A warning from AstraZeneca that initial supplies of its Covid-19 vaccines to Europe will be lower than expected has sparked new concern over the roll-out of inoculations, with some countries planning for a sharp drop in deliveries.Friday’s announce...

President Joe Biden benefited from a record-breaking amount of donations from anonymous donors to outside groups backing him, meaning the public will never have a full accounting of who helped him win the White House.Biden’s winning campaign was ba...

District councillors have slammed the food arrangements for a heavily populated Hong Kong neighbourhood locked down for Covid-19 testing, saying the government had overlooked the special needs of elderly residents.About 10,000 residents in an estimat...

Hong Kong’s former leader Leung Chun-ying has defended his call to choose the next chief executive through consultation rather than election, warning that the city might have to “swallow bitter fruit” as the political ground had changed in rece...

Military-to-military communication between China and the United States needs to improve under American President Joe Biden because both sides require a stable relationship to prevent security crises, analysts said.Confrontations between the world’s...

Larry King, who quizzed thousands of world leaders, politicians and entertainers for CNN and other news outlets in a career spanning more than six decades, has died at age 87, his media company said in a statement on Saturday.King had been hospitalis...

The Chinese embassy in the United States has denied reports that it had sent a letter proposing a meeting between senior officials to discuss a summit between Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday...

Eight mainland Chinese bomber planes and four fighter jets entered the southwestern corner of Taiwan’s air defence identification zone on Saturday, and Taiwan’s air force deployed missiles to “monitor” the incursion, the island’s defence mi...

Glow-in-the-dark rabbit ears, pulsating beats and a flexible attitude to masks: nightlife in Wuhan is back with a vengeance a year after a lockdown brought life to a standstill in the central China city of 11 million.As the rest of the world continue...

China has risked stoking tensions with its neighbours after it passed a law that for the first time explicitly allows its coastguards to fire on foreign vessels and demolish structures built in disputed waters.The coastguard law, passed on Friday by ...

The death toll from the novel coronavirus in Japan surpassed 5,000 on Saturday as the country struggles to curb a third wave of infections, according to a Kyodo News tally.The pace of deaths linked to the virus has accelerated recently, forcing Prime...

The coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan 12 months ago brought a new kind of fame to the Chinese author who goes by the pen name Fang Fang.She wrote what became known as Wuhan Diary , a book about life in the city of 11 million during a lockdown to contain ...

China has approved Kenya’s request for a payment holiday on US$245 million worth of debt that was due between January and June, giving the East African nation breathing space to revive its economy, which has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic...

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.Nan Fung Group and MTR Corporation so...

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...