India’s entire delegation to the Group of Seven summit in London is self-isolating after two of its members tested positive for Covid-19, the British government said on Wednesday.“Two delegates tested positive so the entire delegation is now self...

Covid-19 specimen collection kits bearing the Hong Kong government logo – meant to be given away free of charge – are being sold online for as much as HK$30 (US$3.80), the Post has found.The sale of the kits has raised concerns about whether peop...

Eyebrows are being raised after a small port town in northern Japan splashed out over 25 million yen (US$229,000) in government subsidies meant for the community on a gigantic statue of a squid.The local authority in the town of Noto, in Ishikawa Pre...

Ever since fighting ended in the Korean war nearly seven decades ago, Baengnyeong has been a key location for US allies in Seoul to spy on North Korea. Yet now the island is on China’s radar.China spooked South Korea in December by sending a warshi...

A detained former leader of Hong Kong’s biggest opposition party has been barred from attending his father’s funeral, but authorities have said he will be allowed to watch the ceremony online.The Democratic Party’s Wu Chi-wai, currently in jail...

Police are investigating the cause of a blaze that broke out in a Hong Kong residential block on Wednesday, sending a woman to hospital and forcing more than 30 to flee from their homes.Emergency personnel were sent to the six-storey building on Cant...

Before heading into Taiwan’s mountains with his home-made rifle, indigenous hunter Tama Talum often chants prayers and makes offerings of rice wine and betel nut to the spirits.Talum, 62, was one of the hundreds from his Bunun tribe taking part las...

Scientists around the world have been bamboozled this week by a fictitious asteroid heading toward Earth.A group of experts from US and European space agencies attended a week-long exercise led by Nasa in which they faced a hypothetical scenario: an ...

India’s coronavirus deaths rose by a record 3,780 during the last 24 hours, a day after it became the second country to cross the grim milestone of 20 million infections after the United States.Daily infections rose by 382,315 on Wednesday, health ...

People in China are flocking to sites across the country in large numbers as the authorities look to boost the domestic tourism industry in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.While the authorities had urged people not to make unnecessary journeys duri...

Fears are mounting in Hong Kong over the spread of a mutated coronavirus strain that has prompted authorities to order the quarantine of hundreds of residents across three districts.As the city confirmed six new cases on Wednesday, local health exper...

The internet was set ablaze after former president Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter’s non-profit, the Carter Center, shared a curious-looking photo of President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden posing with the former first couple last...

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) has decided to water down its proposal to drastically raise the profit qualification for a Main Board listing in the world’s third-largest stock market, yielding to strong opposition to the plan, acco...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has again chosen trade experts from China and the United States as deputies for its director general, maintaining a delicate geopolitical balancing act which also keeps two fractious powers close at hand.Two out of ...

Japan has begun providing the Philippine military with life-saving equipment adopted by the Self-Defence Forces, said defence and foreign ministry officials, making it the first time Tokyo has offered SDF equipment to a foreign armed force using its ...

The international community decried what the UN described as an “excessive use of force” by security officers in Colombia after numerous deaths during days of anti-government protests.The United Nations, United States, European Union and rights b...

A senior Hong Kong police officer has been barred from leaving the city as part of his bail conditions after being charged with fraudulently obtaining HK$6 million (US$772,000) in housing and mortgage loans for a luxury property.Superintendent Lung S...

Vietnam has ordered a strict border control after lengthening the quarantine period as it traces the recent flare-up in coronavirus cases to overseas travellers.During a virus task force meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam ordered an intensifie...

With the Bill and Melinda Gates divorce bombshell still echoing, so begins the process of divvying up the fourth-largest fortune in the world.Forbes puts the Microsoft Corp co-founder's net worth at just north of US$130 billion, a massive sum that in...

Police in San Francisco have arrested a man who they say is suspected of stabbing two Asian-American women without warning in the city’s Mid-Market area.Officers were sent to 4th and Stockton streets shortly before 5pm on Tuesday and found the woun...

The United States should prepare for the possibility that its strategy to rally allies to confront China may not succeed in pressuring Beijing to alter its behaviour, the White House’s top Asia official said on Tuesday.One abiding belief held by Ch...

Former US president Donald Trump wants to communicate with his supporters via his own website after being banned from major social media platforms.Trump launched a blog page on his site on Tuesday, which is visually similar to Twitter but contains o...

This is the second in a series of reports on Chinese intellectual property as Beijing seeks to make IP protection a central part of its new development strategy.If the phase one trade deal between the US and China were to be judged on Beijing’s int...

The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Wednesday said it had seized a shipment of 3.97 million nitrile disposable gloves from Malaysia’s Top Glove Corp Bhd estimated to be worth US$518,000, on indications they were made by forced labour.CBP ...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Rishika Dugyala on politico.com on May 4, 2021.Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders are dramatically under-represented in elected office and particularly i...

Following the Asean Leaders Meeting (ALM) in Jakarta on April 24, the group issued a “five-point consensus” on Myanmar.It calls for an immediate cessation of violence, a constructive dialogue among all parties facilitated by a Special Envoy of th...

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern plans to marry her long-time partner during the southern summer.In an interview on a radio breakfast show, Ardern said she and Clarke Gayford have finally set a date for their wedding after announcing they we...

A pair of Indonesian lawyers are planning to sue a state-owned pharmaceutical firm after it was discovered to have allegedly reused nasal swabs for coronavirus tests for thousands of people.Last week, police arrested five workers at Kimia Farma, incl...

Swiss private bank Julius Baer will move into Swire Properties’ new 41-floor skyscraper, Two Taikoo Place in Quarry Bay, in what Colliers described as the largest “decentralisation deal” in more than two years in Hong Kong.The bank, currently b...

Hong Kong celebrities and influencers are being sought by officials to boost the city’s sluggish Covid-19 vaccination drive, with communication veterans underscoring the importance of leveraging on “credible” figures amid distrust in the govern...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Bryan Bender on politico.com on May 4, 2021.The Pentagon's inspector general is looking into the actions the military has taken to address the spate of UFO ...

It could have been a scene from a Sherlock Holmes novel; two intrepid sleuths arrived at an apartment building, one with a flashlight in hand, the other with a device for finding their charge. They began scanning the place for life.Soon enough, they ...

HKR International, the home builder behind Discovery Bay, is focusing more on redeveloping older buildings in urban areas as the city’s famous shortage of land forces developers to try new strategies in order to tap rising home prices.It has spent ...

The defence lawyer for the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of killing George Floyd has requested a new trial, saying the court abused its discretion on several points and that the verdict should be impeached because of jury misconduct, ac...

On a muggy workday afternoon in April, dozens of businessmen streamed into a government service centre in Hainan’s Jiangdong New Area, an urban zone about 20km east of downtown Haikou, the island’s capital.Clutching business licenses, they besieg...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mandate to form a government following an inconclusive election expired on Wednesday, giving his rivals a chance to take power and end the divisive premier’s record tenure.Netanyahu, on trial over corru...

A South Korean publisher’s defiant move to release the memoirs of the North’s founder Kim Il-sung has triggered a heated debate over Seoul’s decades-old ban on Pyongyang’s propaganda under national security laws.Critics of the measure say Sou...

It’s a chilly morning on Valentine’s Day 2012, and a huddle of about 10 young women are making their way down Beijing’s northeast Second Ring Road.Just south of Tiananmen Square, they come to a halt. Three of those fronting the group, their fac...

China’s far-west frontier region of Xinjiang is a vast territory of deserts, mountains and grasslands about three times the size of France that makes up almost 18 per cent of China’s entire land mass. According to human rights groups and a Unite...

If a bottle of Petrus 2000 that Christie’s is selling tastes out of this world it might be because it aged for 14 months aboard the International Space Station.Christie’s hopes the bottle, now up for grabs in a private sale, will fetch US$1 milli...

When Australian citizen Vikas Mahajan travelled to India in February with his wife and two small children to help look after his elderly parents, he did not expect to be caught up in the country’s devastating second wave – or to be banned from re...

Wu Xi owns two screw shops on e-commerce platform Tmall. Launched in 2017, they currently employ 25 people and bring in about 2 million yuan (US$308,937) every month, which by law requires him to pay taxes on each transaction.Wu says he has never tho...

President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced a goal to have 70 per cent of US adults vaccinated with at least one Covid-19 shot by the July 4 Independence Day holiday, and urged young people in their 20s and 30s in particular to get inoculated.The presid...

A Belgian farmer risked triggering an international incident by moving an old stone boundary marker that has denoted his country’s border with France since the 1820 Treaty of Kortrijk.According to the mayor of the Belgian town of Erquelines, David ...

The fate of the European Union’s investment deal with China fell further into doubt after an EU spokeswoman was forced to deny a report on Tuesday saying it had suspended the treaty’s passage to ratification.The French news agency AFP quoted EU t...

Britain and India announced £1 billion (US$1.39 billion) of private-sector investment and committed to seek a free trade deal as Prime Minister Boris Johnson hailed a new era in bilateral relations on Tuesday.Johnson held a virtual meeting with Indi...

A group seeking election to the student union of Hong Kong’s oldest university has revealed it plans to adopt a more discreet approach to political issues under the shadow of the national security law, striking a balance between staying true to its...

The Philippines’ top diplomat has apologised for a foul-mouthed rant on Twitter in which he told China where to go – after being informed that only the president can use curse words.Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jnr issued a public apology on ...

Assessments of Chinese-developed Covid-19 vaccines posted by the World Health Organization give a fuller picture of their safety and efficacy. But they also expose limits of the data for older and at-risk groups.The WHO released the information about...

China topped the agenda as the G7 foreign ministers met in London on Tuesday with the world’s major democracies trying to reaffirm their global leadership in the face of Beijing’s increasing assertiveness.The coronavirus pandemic and its geopolit...