An information war over the Indo-Pacific region is expected to intensify with the US military’s decision to set up a task force aimed at stifling China’s influence and information operations.Military and security analysts said the creation of the...

Hong Kong’s retail rebound lost steam in March, posting a 20.1 per cent year-on-year increase that was significantly lower than February’s figure, despite the easing of Covid-19 social-distancing rules.Provisional figures released by the Census a...

The governors of nine Japanese prefectures believe the Tokyo Olympic Games should be postponed again or cancelled outright if the present surge in coronavirus cases cannot be brought under control.The Mainichi newspaper interviewed the governors of a...

A Hong Kong secondary school teacher has been jailed for 10 months for illegally detaining a woman she accused of taking pictures of anti-government protesters during 2019’s civil unrest.In sentencing Jessica So Wai-sin and two other co-defendants,...

A well-known New Zealand businessman who was found with hundreds of child sex abuse images gave up his knighthood Tuesday before it was stripped from him.Ron Brierley last month pleaded guilty to three charges in an Australian court, sparking a rarel...

China’s US ambassador called for stronger diplomatic efforts to resolve the confrontation in Myanmar on Monday, warning that further violence could lead to a chaotic situation “and even a civil war.”Zhang Jun also warned that “any wrong handl...

Bill and Melinda Gates have filed for divorce after 27 years of marriage. Here are details about their wealth and philanthropic activities. Bill Gates Bill Gates is the world’s fourth-richest person with a net worth of US$130.5 billion, according...

Hong Kong’s leader has said the city’s embattled public broadcaster, home to a recent flurry of staffing and programming changes, can still produce shows critical of her administration – provided it does so in an objective and fair manner.But ...

It’s not just India. Fierce new Covid-19 waves are enveloping other developing countries across the world, placing severe strain on their health care systems and prompting appeals for help.Nations ranging from Laos, Vietnam and Thailand in Southeas...

A police constable used a baton to smash the window of a car and arrest its driver, who refused to leave the vehicle after being intercepted during an anti-narcotics operation in a Hong Kong public housing estate on Tuesday.The 27-year-old man was sp...

An elevated section of the Mexico City subway collapsed, sending a train car plunging toward a busy boulevard late Monday, killing at least 20 people and injuring about 70, city officials said.Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said 49 of the injured were hospi...

The United States was expected to authorise the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for children age 12 and up by early next week, US media reported.Pfizer has applied for emergency use authorisation for its Covid-19 vaccine for children and teenagers b...

By the standards of an entertainment industry that likes to play it safe, Park Na-rae stood out as risqué. The South Korean comedian riffed on sex and relationships in a 2019 Netflix special that billed her as “sassier and dirtier than ever before...

India’s total Covid-19 caseload soared past 20 million on Tuesday, official data showed as the pandemic continued to wreak havoc in the country’s hospitals.In the past 24 hours, India added 357,229 cases, taking the total to 20.3 million, accordi...

Some fully vaccinated Hong Kong residents now in mandatory quarantine for three weeks after a mutated coronavirus variant was discovered in their housing block are questioning why they have not been exempted from the measure after testing negative.Re...

From muddy streets in South Africa’s townships to cocktail parties at Davos – Bill and Melinda Gates came as a pair.Together, they built a charitable empire through Bill’s technology company Microsoft and the massive non-profit they co-founded ...

With a population of under 1 million, Djibouti on the Horn of Africa is one of the smallest countries on the continent.But what it lacks in size, it makes up for with its strategic location, overlooking the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a choke point between...

Hong Kong’s leader has suspended a tough new policy requiring all foreign domestic workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 before their contracts can be renewed following a diplomatic backlash and accusations of discrimination.Chief Executive Car...

There are few film lines that are more iconic than “may the Force with you”. Say it a few times fast (or make a young child say it a few times) and it can sound like “may the Fourth be with you”.Apparently enough people said it this way that ...

Blasts from at least one parcel bomb in Myanmar have killed five people, including an ousted lawmaker and three police officers who had joined a civil disobedience movement opposing military rule, media reported on Tuesday.Since the elected governmen...

Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday said it was “highly unlikely” travellers from coronavirus-ravaged India would face the maximum penalties of five years’ jail and a A$66,000 (US$51,000) fine for breaking border rules as he face...

Suited up in blue protective gear and wearing a face shield under his bright yellow turban, Jitender Singh Shunty sprays disinfectant on bodies at the Seemapuri cremation ground in northeast Delhi.He has to be quick as corpses are arriving faster tha...

Wuhan’s Communist Party chief Wang Zhonglin is on track to become the governor of Hubei province after rising up the party hierarchy.Wang, 59, who was appointed to the Wuhan role last year at the height of the Covid-19 outbreak, has been appointed ...

A 36-year-old CIA employee also wants you to know how else she sees herself – that she is proudly a “woman of colour,” is “intersectional” and is a “cisgender millennial”.But a video featuring the young Latina woman to promote diversity...

It was one of those midnight musings, so common during adulthood, when the regrets and triumphs of our lives become vibrant characters dancing in our minds.Liu Fang wrote a simple statement on Weibo that read: “What I regret most in my life is gett...

Pointing to a row of shophouses along Singapore’s Pagoda Street leading up to Chinatown MRT Station, a heavily tattooed man tells the group behind him that the shops used to be opium dens in the 19th century.It was a frequent haunt of early Chinese...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will participate alongside his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in a United Nations Security Council summit on Friday to discuss global cooperation and multilateral institutions, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Monda...

A government plan to build a new town near the border with mainland China was “shockingly” rushed and presented to the legislature for a funding bid, rural leaders and groups in Hong Kong have said, insisting they have not been properly consulted...

Chinese energy experts are optimistic the country will reach peak carbon emissions by 2025 – five years ahead of the target pledged by President Xi Jinping to the UN General Assembly in September.Researchers say China’s coal consumption has alrea...

Suspected jihadists killed around 30 people in an attack Monday in eastern Burkina Faso, local and security sources said, in what would be one of the worst such attacks in the country’s history.“A large number of armed individuals attacked the vi...

My full name, Hong Kong identity card number, fingerprints and face scan – I’m protective of them all. Yet the government wants each one if I register to use its iAm Smart app, a so-called “one-stop personalised digital services platform” to ...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Lara Seligman and Andrew Desiderio on politico.com on May 3, 2021.The suspected directed-energy attacks on US government personnel worldwide are “an act o...

Billionaire benefactors Bill and Melinda Gates, co-founders of one of the world’s largest private charitable foundations, filed for divorce on Monday after 27 years of marriage, saying they had reached an agreement on how to divide their assets.At ...

A new foundation formed by prominent Asian-American business leaders announced on Monday a US$250 million initiative to fund work on a range of problems affecting the community including a rise in violence and harassment tied to the coronavirus pande...

The Australian government may have to pay taxpayer-funded compensation to a Chinese company if its lease contract of Darwin Port is overturned on national security grounds, but experts say the government has no “immediate imperative” to terminate...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Nick Niedzwiadek on politico.com on May 3, 2021.US congresswoman Liz Cheney on Monday escalated her feud with Donald Trump and his supporters in Congress, i...

An Asian woman walking in Midtown Manhattan was bashed in the head with a hammer by a stranger demanding the victim remove her mask, police said on Monday.The NYPD is investigating the attack as a possible hate crime, the latest in a string of bias-f...

Chew Shou Zi, the newly-appointed chief executive of ByteDance-owned TikTok, has just taken on one of the biggest jobs in tech and steering the globally successful short video app through choppy political waters will prove a daunting task, say analys...

In an announcement sure to be welcomed by travellers worldwide, EU officials on Monday proposed easing restrictions on visiting the 27-nation bloc as vaccination campaigns across the continent gather speed.Travel to the European Union is currently ex...

Over the next two weeks, US armed forces will crawl through, drive over, fly above and shovel into Alaska’s thawing tundra, training to defend this sparsely populated state from a power whose ambitions increasingly defy geography.Some 10,000 unifor...

More than a dozen street vendors and business owners facing eviction from an old Hong Kong neighbourhood to make way for the city’s largest-ever redevelopment project have labelled the relocation and compensation packages on offer as unsatisfactory...

Pupils at a Hong Kong secondary school have spoken up against what they said was an unfair and disproportionate lifetime ban on a teacher accused by authorities of using “one-sided and biased” materials.The former teacher at Lung Cheung Governmen...

A social media post by a Chinese Communist Party organ that mocked India’s Covid-19 death toll was deleted after it triggered an intense backlash at home and abroad.As India continues to grapple with massive surges of Covid-19 cases, Beijing has so...

The pending resolution of a lawsuit between internet giant Tencent Holdings and the operator of a virtual item trading platform in China could determine who really owns the in-game currency and various merchandise, including weapons and armour, that ...

The Philippines has taken the gloves off in its dispute with Beijing over the South China Sea, with its top diplomat dropping the F-bomb as he demanded the withdrawal of Chinese vessels near the Scarborough Shoal.Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jnr ...

Hong Kong health officials have uncovered the missing link between three previously confirmed local Covid-19 cases involving mutated strains, saying all of the patients had visited a Tung Chung shopping centre.With the city on heightened alert for mo...

German police said on Monday they had shut down “one of the biggest darknet child pornography platforms in the world” and arrested four of its members in a series of raids in mid-April.The platform, named as “Boystown”, had existed since 2019...

Former Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying has urged the city’s residents to seize opportunities brought about by the country’s development blueprint for the next five years, warning this could be their last chance to catch up with mainland China.Le...

Hong Kong’s legislature will proceed with a second debate on May 26 over laws to implement a Beijing-decreed electoral overhaul, after a speedy approval in the first round from a bills committee dominated by the pro-establishment camp.A Legislative...

China’s top statistics bureau missed its own schedule for releasing the results of its latest once-in-a-decade census, with the delay prompting people to wonder why.One simple explanation is that China’s statisticians are taking additional time t...