Hong Kong police have arrested a suspected drug trafficker and seized HK$35 million (US$4.5 million) worth of cannabis buds smuggled into the city from North America disguised as cereal.The 168kg haul was discovered when officers raided a mini storag...

From key players including Anwar Ibrahim and Mahathir Mohamad to the 1MDB scandal, here are the top things you may not know about Malaysian politics. 1. Will Anwar ever be PM? A lightning-quick reversal of fortunes cannot be ruled out. Learn more ...

China’s central bank has called for attention to be focused on policy rates rather than liquidity operations as concerns over the country’s exit from its coronavirus-driven stimulus package hang over the world’s second-largest capital market.Ma...

Beijing’s top advisers on Hong Kong affairs have ramped up calls for an overhaul of the city’s political system, citing loopholes posing threats to national security and amplifying the official line that only patriots should be put in public offi...

Canada’s main opposition party called on Thursday for the House of Commons to formally declare that China is committing genocide against more than 1 million Uygurs in the western Xinjiang region.Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole said a signa...

The coronavirus pandemic has encouraged more cash-loving Japanese to move away from banknotes and coins, giving a boost for banks in their drive toward digitalisation, the industry’s lobby group chief said.“A trend toward cashless payments, which...

Joe Biden will make his presidential debut on the world stage on Friday as America’s G7 partners refocus their collective heft on pandemic recovery and climate change after the psychodramas of the Trump era.UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, this yea...

The nomination of a drinks expert to the highest ranks of academia has sparked a heated debate in China, with many questioning the objectivity and fairness of the honours system.The chief engineer of China’s leading alcohol brand Kweichow Moutai Co...

China’s air passenger traffic fell over Lunar New Year, but a surge of over 200 per cent in the number of international cargo flights during seven-day holiday showed that signs of a quick recovery are emerging due to the country’s success in curb...

Police have arrested a laboratory assistant accused of tampering with specimens for Covid-19 tests at the Hong Kong offices of the private lab BGI.The 24-year-old man, who joined the company last November, was captured by security cameras appearing t...

When a 22-year-old Japanese university student launched an online campaign against the powerful Tokyo Olympics chief and the sexist remarks he made, she was not sure it would go very far.But in less than two weeks, Momoko Nojo’s #DontBeSilent campa...

The first 1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine finally arrived in Hong Kong on Friday afternoon, amid talks between medical experts on the potential safety issues of vaccinating elderly people with the Sinovac jab.Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yue...

A civic group in Thailand is petitioning the country’s financial institutions to withhold construction loans for the Luang Prabang dam project along the Mekong River in Laos amid warnings about the negative environmental risks the dams pose and the...

Even as China overtook the United States as the European Union’s biggest trading partner last year, the services sector offers untapped potentials to grow the relationship which reached €586 billion (US$707 billion) in 2020, according to the pres...

Brazil became the third country in the world to breach 10 million coronavirus cases, with infections picking up speed in recent weeks as a new variant spreads amid a shortage of vaccines.Latin America’s largest nation reported 51,879 new cases Thur...

Japan confirmed a new coronavirus strain, and an infection cluster emerged at a Tokyo immigration facility, presenting new challenges as the country tries to overcome a third wave of the pandemic.The new variant has been found in 91 cases in the Kant...

China has for the first time revealed that four of its soldiers were killed, and one seriously wounded, in last year’s Himalayan border clash with India.Previously unknown details of the violent brawl, which broke out between PLA and Indian troops ...

Malaysia’s highest court on Friday found news portal Malaysiakini in contempt of court over comments posted by readers deemed offensive to the judiciary, in a case widely seen as a test of media freedom in the Southeast Asian nation.Last year, Mala...

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi secured final parliamentary approval for his government of national unity, allowing him to focus on his country’s unprecedented health and economic crisis.The lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, on Thursday bac...

A young woman who was last week shot in the head by police during a protest against the military’s takeover of power in Myanmar died on Friday morning, her brother said.Mya Thwet Thwet Khine was shot during a demonstration in the capital Naypyitaw ...

Three climbers lost on Pakistan’s K2 are believed to have died on the mountain, an official said on Thursday, more than a week after the group went missing while trying to summit the world’s second highest peak.Climbers John Snorri from Iceland, ...

Hong Kong’s embattled public broadcaster RTHK has come under fire for both poor internal controls and a lack of editorial accountability in a blistering new government report released barely an hour after news emerged its chief would be stepping do...

The United States will keep tariffs imposed on Chinese goods by the former Trump administration in place for now, but will evaluate how to proceed after a thorough review, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNBC on Thursday.“For the moment, we ha...

Nicaragua has created a new National Ministry for Extraterrestrial Space Affairs, The Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, which is drawing amused reactions on social media in a nation that has been struggling since anti-government protests three years a...

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday vowed to press ahead with laws to force Facebook to pay news outlets for content, saying he had received support from world leaders after the social media giant blacked out all media.Facebook strippe...

Claims by Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou that she is the victim of a politicised abuse of process, and that an American bid for her extradition should therefore be thrown out, are “moot” because Donald Trump is no longer US president,...

New national rules requiring clergy to embrace the leadership of the Communist Party and China’s socialist system are expected to compound limits on religious freedom in the country, according to analysts.The new rules – Measures for the Administ...

Hongkongers experienced the joy of sitting down to an evening meal in a restaurant for the first time in more than two months on Thursday, but the industry remained cautious about the future as the Covid-19 crisis forced new contact-tracing measures ...

Singapore’s “Year of Celebrating SG Women” – a national effort in 2021 to review issues affecting women and spark a mindset change in society on values such as gender equality and respect – has not started on a promising note.When a Singapo...

US President Joe Biden’s administration offered talks with Iran led by European allies and reversed two largely symbolic steps against Tehran imposed by Donald Trump, as it sought to salvage a nuclear deal on the brink of collapse.Three days before...

Hong Kong’s latest budget will be unveiled next week. Despite calls for cash handouts and relief measures from both the pro-democracy and pro-establishment camps, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po has signalled that they are not likely to happen....

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Doug Palmer on politico.com on February 18, 2021.US farm exports to China are expected to hit a record US$31.5 billion during President Joe Biden’s first ...

The Chinese retail market is poised to become the first in the world to be dominated by e-commerce transactions as Lunar New Year retail sales beat expectations amid a pandemic-driven economic slowdown.Research firm eMarketer expects 52.1 per cent of...

Facebook’s decision to ban media organisations from posting links to news articles on the social media giant’s platform comes less than a week before Australia’s Covid-19 vaccine roll-out begins. The ban also prevented many health organisations...

The tempestuous weeks following Joe Biden’s election as US president gave rise to numerous fact-free conspiracy theories. Among them: a claim the CIA director was captured by US special forces and flown to Guantanamo Bay to face charges relating to...

Nasa’s science rover Perseverance, the most advanced astrobiology laboratory ever sent to another world, streaked through the Martian atmosphere on Thursday and landed safely on the floor of a vast crater, its first stop on a search for traces of a...

Nearly four years after an Australian current-affairs television programme aired a report alleging that Chinese-Australian billionaire Chau Chak Wing was a corrupt lobbyist acting for the Chinese government, his name was finally cleared.The Australia...

China has been ranked the world’s worst offender for its invasive use of biometric data, according to a study of 96 countries by a UK-based technology firm.Costa Rica, Iran and the United States were the second, third and fourth worst offenders. Af...

Donald Trump says he is open to running for president again in 2024, but there are no immediate plans under way to turn the family into a political dynasty like the Kennedys or the Bushes.Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, called Florida Senator Marco Rubio...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a virtual meeting on Thursday with his counterparts from Australia, India and Japan, a group of Pacific allies known as “the Quad” that Washington sees as a vital countering force against an increasingly ...

Democrats unveiled legislation on Thursday for President Joe Biden’s plan to create a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, saying there is no justification for denying them a permanent home in the United States.Top Democrats ...

Fran Goldman inspired the nation this week after she walked six miles (9.7km) round trip through snow in Seattle to get her first shot of the Covid-19 vaccine. What’s more, she did it at 90 years old.“Her secret is a combination of good genes and...

The US House of Representatives has reintroduced sweeping legislation that would ban the import of all goods sourced in China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, over concerns of widespread, state-backed forced labour there.Lawmakers filed the bill...

The European Union unveiled on Thursday what it called a new, more assertive foreign trade policy that signals greater cooperation with Washington and warns of unspecified measures it reserves the right to take against China to blunt “negative spil...

Britain and Canada imposed sanctions on Myanmar’s ruling generals on Thursday for toppling the civilian-led government while Japan said it had agreed with the United States, India and Australia that democracy must be restored there quickly.Western ...

Senator Ted Cruz returned to Texas after coming under harsh criticism for flying to Cancun, Mexico with his family while the state he represents is dealing with widespread power outages in the wake of a historic winter storm.The Republican arrived at...

[Sponsored Article] Most students at the Faculty of Humanities of The Education University of Hong Kong are expected to spend time overseas as a key part of their undergraduate degrees.  These exchanges and immersion programmes, arranged at any on...

A study of residents in the ski resort of Ischgl, the site of Austria’s worst coronavirus outbreak, found that at least eight months after contracting the virus the vast majority of people remained immune, scientists who conducted it said on Thursd...

International discord over the Covid-19 response played backdrop to the latest UN Security Council talks, as the world enters a second year of grappling with a pandemic that has been marked by geopolitical tensions and a lack of global coordination.U...