An electrician apprentice jailed for possessing chilli oil spray and baseball bats during the 2019 anti-government protest movement has won an appeal to effectively reduce his 18-month prison term by more than two-thirds.Mr Justice Alex Lee Wan-tang ...

A World Health Organization team currently in China to probe the origins of the coronavirus pandemic has visited a hospital in Wuhan and talked to doctors who treated some of the first known Covid-19 patients.“Extremely important first site visit,�...

Hong Kong’s economy shrank by 6.1 per cent last year – the biggest annual contraction on record – as the coronavirus pandemic hammered key drivers of growth such as tourism and consumption.While forecasting positive growth in 2021, advanced est...

Gone are the days when Indonesian investors would flick through newspapers or news portals to identify investing trends, or even tune in to Bloomberg or CNBC to keep an eye on stock tickers. Now, beginners such as Rifky Adina Irawan go straight to...

After five decades on the run, the 83-year-old leader of a radical and violent communist group has resurfaced to blast Japan’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic – and call for revolution. Unfortunately for Takeo Shimizu, the elderly head of C...

Beijing has declared it will stop recognising British National (Overseas) passports as travel and identification documents from Sunday and warned of further actions in retaliation against Britain’s offer of a pathway to citizenship to 5.4 million e...

More than a dozen embassies, including the US and EU delegation, on Friday urged Myanmar to “adhere to democratic norms”, joining the UN in a chorus of international concern about a possible coup.Myanmar is just a decade out of nearly 50 years of...

Europe’s row with AstraZeneca worsened after Germany declined to recommend the firm’s coronavirus vaccine for older people, while the more contagious South African variant of the virus was detected for the first time in the already hard-hit Unite...

Hong Kong’s top health official overseeing the fight against Covid-19 has been replaced in an “unusual” lateral move and stripped of his anti-pandemic responsibilities amid turmoil at the contact-tracing agency.The Department of Health confirme...

All Hong Kong mobile phone users will have to provide their real name and personal details under proposals for compulsory SIM-card registration in the city, with officials blaming criminals for exploiting the current system.Mandatory registration cou...

A Tibetan activist sentenced to five years in prison by Chinese authorities for “inciting separatism” after appearing in a New York Times documentary has been released, his lawyer said.Tashi Wangchuk was sentenced in 2018 after prosecutors cited ...

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a whistle-stop tour to Edinburgh, Scotland on Thursday to highlight the government’s roll-out of Covid-19 vaccines in a bid to woo the country from secession. He may be well advised to make his next pro-unionist...

Authorities in Bangladesh sent a third group of Rohingya refugees to a newly developed island in the Bay of Bengal on Friday, despite calls by human rights groups for a halt to the process.The government insists the relocation plan is meant to offer ...

Veteran activist Guo Feixiong has been barred from leaving China to reunite with his wife who is ill with cancer in the United States.The 54-year-old former human rights lawyer was prevented from leaving the country from Shanghai Pudong International...

Hong Kong police arrested a suspected drug trafficker and seized nearly HK$10 million worth of cannabis when they raided an industrial building on Thursday night.Detectives believed the Kwai Cheong Road unit in Kwai Chung had been used as a base for ...

Farmers at major protest sites on the outskirts of India’s capital were defiant on Friday as authorities called for an end to their sit-in against agriculture reforms in the wake of a deadly riot in New Delhi.Thousands of farmers on tractors went o...

Hong Kong’s leader has defended the lockdown of four North Point tenement buildings as a necessary intervention to stop Covid-19 spreading in the area, after a district councillor questioned the effectiveness of an operation that did not identify a...

India’s President Ram Nath Kovind said the country had deployed additional forces to its disputed Himalayan border with China, as tensions over a months-long border stand-off continue to flare despite multiple rounds of talks.Kovind told a joint se...

With nearly 1.9 billion people living in South Asia, the eight-member South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) is clearly among the biggest regional organisations in the world by representative population, yet it has failed to unite m...

US President Joe Biden and aides showed touches of prickliness over growing scrutiny of the new president’s heavy reliance on executive orders in his first days in office.The president in just over a week has already signed more than three dozen ex...

The two Americans who helped former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn escape prosecution in Tokyo have failed in their latest effort to avoid criminal charges in Japan.After temporarily delaying the extradition, US District Judge Indira Talwani ruled on T...

Vietnam reported nine new Covid-19 infections early on Friday as the country’s first outbreak for nearly two months spread to Hanoi, the capital, where the ruling Communist Party is currently holding its key five-yearly congress.The new cases, incl...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Natasha Korecki, Theodoric Meyer and Tyler Page on politico.com on January 28, 2021.In the midst of his campaign for president, Joe Biden took his younger b...

The United States saw its sharpest contraction in growth since 1946 as the coronavirus pandemic hammered the economy last year, but while the country may be set for a recovery, it hasn’t arrived yet.The world’s largest economy shrunk by 3.5 per c...

Pressure is mounting on Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to decisively contain the fourth wave of coronavirus infections after her unprecedented virtual meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who expressed his worries about the pandemi...

China began its 40-day Lunar New Year holiday period on Thursday with measures in place aimed at limiting the spread of Covid-19 as it continued to battle sporadic outbreaks across the country.The authorities announced 54 new coronavirus infections o...

To anyone familiar with the celebrity portraits by Andy Warhol, Shanghai-based artist Zhang Chenchu’s current works are hardly experimental.Much like the late father of pop art, Zhang has an addiction to painting celebrities – from Chinese billio...

Local authorities of four major Chinese cities have erected barriers over the past week to prevent an unprecedented flood of cheap money unleashed by the central bank from buoying prices in the 17.4 trillion yuan (US$2.7 trillion) housing market.Shan...

The new British National (Overseas) visa will allow successful family applicants to stagger their arrivals so one parent can remain in Hong Kong to continue earning an income while the other goes over with their dependants.Such details of the much-an...

Beijing is sending new blood to its liaison office in Hong Kong as it seeks to tighten supervision and policy implementation in the city, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.One mainland source said about 200 new cadres had been transfe...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Benjamin Din on politico.com on January 28, 2021.Former US president Donald Trump met House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Thursday for what was later de...

Wearing thick winter coats and sitting close together on the floor, about 20 children without face masks sway back and forth, chanting prayers at the top of their voices. Elsewhere, maskless teenagers dance, jumping up and down and clapping their han...

A Pentagon spokesman on Thursday called remarks by his Chinese counterpart equating moves toward Taiwan independence with war “unfortunate” and reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to supporting the self-ruled island’s defence capability.“We ...

US biotech firm Novavax said Thursday its two-shot Covid-19 vaccine candidate showed 89.3 per cent efficacy in a major phase 3 clinical trial in Britain.But the positive news was offset by results that showed it was much less effective against a high...

The White House said it was “outraged” on Thursday after Pakistan’s top court upheld the acquittal and ordered the release of the militant convicted of masterminding the 2002 beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl.Joe Biden’s administration ...

President Xi Jinping has turned China into a dangerous, aggressive power, and the US should continue to view the country as a threat, leaders of a congressional advisory panel warned on Thursday.In the first public hearing during the Joe Biden admini...

Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan has defended his country’s dealings with China, saying they were based on an “assessment of national interests”, responding to his New Zealand counterpart suggesting that Canberra exercise a more diplomatic a...

Iraqi security forces have killed a senior commander of the Islamic State group, the prime minister said on Thursday, a week after the rare, twin suicide bombing by Isis militants killed dozens in Baghdad.The Islamic State group had quickly claimed r...

The United States has found its first cases of a potent coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa, health officials in the state of South Carolina said on Thursday.Viruses mutate frequently, and several mutated viruses have been identified. ...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday rejected calls for a second referendum on independence in Scotland, building his case for a continued United Kingdom on the joint effort to combat the coronavirus outbreak.Johnson praised Britain’s c...

China’s vice-minister of foreign affairs, Le Yucheng, called Thursday for Washington to take immediate action to repair its relations with Beijing, while assailing the now-departed Trump administration for pursuing a China policy that proved to be ...

AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine should only be given to people aged between 18 and 64, Germany’s vaccine committee said in a draft recommendation, a day ahead of a decision by European regulators on whether to approve the drugmaker’s shot.“The...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the country would release more locally made Covid-19 vaccines as New Delhi continues to save the lives of people in other countries by exporting medicines and vaccines.“So far only two made-in-India vaccines...

Beijing gave a stern warning to the new Joe Biden administration and Taiwan that the pursuit of independence for the self-ruled island “means war”.Chinese defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian said on Thursday that the People’s Liberation Army (PL...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Natasha Korecki on politico.com on January 28, 2021.As he entered his first week in office, President Joe Biden was handed a priceless gift: the blissful so...

Despite President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign boast that he would eliminate corruption in the Philippines, the country’s rating in Transparency International’s 2020 Corruption Perception Index remained at the same level as last year and one notc...

Beijing has formally approved the arrest of Wang Yong, a former leader of Hainan, signalling it aims to weed out corruption in the southern province that has been designated as the country’s largest free-trade zone.The Supreme People’s Procurator...

Hang Lung Properties, the Hong Kong buyer of the US government’s real estate asset in Hong Kong, may have up to HK$1.027 billion (US$132.5 million) in limbo, as its purchase has been caught up in the souring diplomatic relations between Washington ...

Domestic helpers on maternity leave should not be forced to stay with their employers, according to lawyers mounting a second judicial challenge against the Hong Kong government’s live-in policy for such workers.Counsel Kay Chan on Thursday said hi...