Taiwan’s government on Monday delayed imposing further water curbs that would have affected major chip-making hubs after heavy rain began replenishing reservoirs on the drought-struck island.Sub-tropical Taiwan is dealing with its worst drought in ...

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Monday said the country’s latest Covid-19 outbreak – which earlier this month triggered a fresh set of lockdown-like conditions – appeared to be “on track” to be brought under control, and out...

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday warned efforts to divide Australia and New Zealand would fail, as the countries’ leaders used their first face-to-face meeting in 15 months to play down signs of division over China.Morrison said t...

China will allow each couple to have three children in a major policy overhaul to address the challenges of its ageing population. The decision was announced after a Communist Party Politburo meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping on Monday. The s...

A Hong Kong lawyer has been released on HK$2,000 (US$258) bail after being charged with misleading a police officer by making false accusations against the force. Muhammad Kamran Chaudhry, 42, made his first appearance at Eastern Court on Monday for...

Michael Flynn, who served as Donald Trump's national security adviser, told a crowd at a QAnon conference in Dallas, Texas, this weekend that the US should have a coup like the one in Myanmar.On February 1, Myanmar's military overthrew its democratic...

Taiwan’s authorities have defended their decision to buy 20 million doses of domestically developed Covid-19 vaccines even though they are still undergoing clinical trials, saying the island must address the acute vaccine shortage.The announcement ...

South Korea is facing mounting pressure to boycott the Tokyo Olympics over an official map that marks a group of disputed islets as Japan’s territory.The Korea-controlled Dokdo islets, which Japan claims and calls Takeshima, are indicated with a ba...

Naftali Bennett, Israel’s potential next prime minister, is a self-made tech millionaire who dreams of annexing most of the occupied West Bank.Bennett has said that creation of a Palestinian state would be suicide for Israel, citing security reason...

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that his country will return to stricter lockdown measures in the face of a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases that indicate the virus is “surging again” in Africa’s worst-affected nation.Positive cas...

American writer Peter Hessler – best known for his books on China – is returning to the US after Sichuan University declined to renew his teaching contract.Hessler said on Monday he had hoped to continue teaching at the Sichuan University-Pittsbu...

Hong Kong’s stock exchange operator has scrapped the trading and settlement fees of fixed-income index funds traded on the exchange to spur the local bond market, two months before a higher stamp duty on equities is expected to cast a pall over Asi...

Unvaccinated Hongkongers could be banned from “high-risk” premises such as restaurants, schools, hostels, cinemas, performance halls and sports venues if a fifth coronavirus wave were to hit the city, the government warned on Monday as it announc...

For 30 years, Hong Kong teacher Peter Lee gathered his students together every June 4 to tell them what happened that day in Beijing in 1989, showing them photographs, news clippings and video footage.Last year, he had to skip his annual lesson about...

A fast-spreading strain of Covid-19 first found in India is causing a mini-outbreak in Guangdong, with the southern Chinese province reporting 20 new confirmed cases on Sunday.Measures to restrict travellers leaving the province were announced as Gua...

New Zealand’s participation in the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement panel over Australia’s barley trade row with China is not a sign that Wellington is taking Canberra’s side, International trade lawyers and experts said.The WT...

Gunmen kidnapped scores of children from an Islamic seminary in central Nigeria, officials said, the latest in a string of such incidents plaguing the populous African nation.Some 200 children were at the school in Niger state on Sunday during the at...

A Hong Kong opposition activist known as “Grandma Wong” has been arrested on suspicion of taking part in an unauthorised assembly and inciting others to join as she marched solo to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown following a police ban...

Anushree Pandey lost her brother to Covid-19 two weeks ago. But the 35-year-old has had no time to process her grief, what with the exhaustion of searching for hospital beds and oxygen for her elderly parents. She had to arrange her brother’s funer...

The UN called for an independent investigation as more than a dozen people were reported dead in fresh clashes a month into anti-government protests in Colombia that triggered a military deployment to the city of Cali.Clashes late Friday pitted polic...

Former US president Donald Trump is frustrated over mounting legal bills amid two ongoing New York investigations into his business, according to a report by the Daily Beast.Earlier this month, the New York attorney general's office announced that it...

The “rosy picture” of China’s economic activity as it stabilised in May faces multiple challenges ahead as high commodity prices, chip shortages, the uncertainty of the yuan’s direction and a resurgence of coronavirus cases in the key factory...

Beijing is cracking the whip on the mainland’s cutthroat tutoring market by introducing tighter regulations. At the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference meeting in March, President Xi Jinping described the country’s market for aft...

The Covid-19 pandemic sent hordes of Hongkongers exploring the city’s wide open spaces, but many suffered mishaps and needed rescuing while hiking on unfamiliar, hilly terrain.The number of Fire Services Department operations to rescue trapped hike...

China’s warning earlier this month that it intended to curb bitcoin trading and mining was the latest indication that the world’s growing army of cryptocurrency backers face bigger headaches than Elon Musk changing his tune and saying Tesla would...

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s most populous metropolis, is preparing to test all of its 13 million residents for the coronavirus after a steep rise in community transmissions, according to state media.A mass testing programme will see 100,000 tests e...

North Korea’s state media on Monday criticised the recent termination of a pact between the United States and South Korea that capped the development of South Korea’s ballistic missiles, calling it a sign of Washington’s “shameful double-deal...

At least 25 people have died after drinking toxic alcohol in northern India, police said on Sunday.Police have arrested 10 men for selling the alcohol in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.“So far 25 persons have died and a few others are...

This is the 14th in a series of stories about China’s once-a-decade census, which was conducted in 2020. The world’s most populous nation released its national demographic data in May and the figures will have far-reaching social policy and econo...

The US National Security Agency (NSA) used a partnership with Denmark’s foreign intelligence unit to spy on senior officials of neighbouring countries, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Danish state broadcaster DR said.The findings are the...

Israeli nationalist hardliner Naftali Bennett said he would join a potential coalition government that could end the rule of the country’s longest-serving leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Lawmakers opposed to right-wing Netanyahu have been...

The British government may require National Health Service workers to be inoculated against Covid-19 – a contentious proposal that was immediately criticised by opposition leaders as counterproductive.The UK government’s vaccine minister, Nadhim ...

Malaysian police have taken in for questioning a leading figure in conspiracy circles who is wanted in France over the kidnapping of an eight-year-old girl, sources close to the case said on Sunday.French prosecutors last month issued an internationa...

Hundreds of thousands of displaced people who fled Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo after a volcanic eruption are at risk of infection by cholera, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warned on Sunday.After the Nyiragongo volcano rumbled to life a ...

Naomi Osaka has been warned she faces being thrown out of the French Open should she continue her media boycott.The four-time grand slam champion announced on social media ahead of the tournament that she would not be doing any press at Roland Garros...

Swiss Moto3 rider Jason Dupasquier has died as a result of injuries sustained in an accident, MotoGP announced on Sunday.The 19-year-old was hit by another bike after falling from his own and slid down the track during qualifying on Saturday at Mugel...

When I first heard that Britain was deploying its new aircraft carrier to the South China Sea, I assumed I was having a “senior moment” – one of those episodes where a retired person mixes up dates, names and other key facts. Had I got confused...

A popular internet news site in one of Belarus’ largest cities says its chief editor has been seized.The report of the detention of Hrodna.life editor Aliaksei Shota comes amid a crackdown on independent journalists and opponents of authoritarian P...

China is looking at ways to improve relations with the European Union after a series of setbacks in recent weeks, according to diplomatic observers.In an effort to reach out to Europe, Beijing invited the foreign ministers of Poland, Ireland and Hung...

Two people were killed and at least 20 injured on Sunday when three shooters fired indiscriminately into a crowd outside a concert in Miami, Florida, local police said.Gunfire erupted during the early hours outside a billiards hall in a row of busine...

Seven people were wounded, some critically, in an attack in eastern China on Saturday night that police said was aimed at revenge at the alleged attacker’s former wife.Police said that during the attack in downtown Nanjing, Jiangsu province, a 41-y...

The southern Chinese province of Guangdong reinforced its front lines against the coronavirus as the number of cases continued to climb over the weekend.In scorching temperatures, public health workers covered in protective equipment ramped up screen...

At least four British nationals under detention in Hong Kong have allegedly been mistreated or tortured since 2019, compared to just one such case before that, according to the British government which has offered consular assistance to these individ...

Two central government offices overseeing Hong Kong have joined the city’s justice department and legal sector in decrying threats made against a local judge after her sentencing of media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying and nine opposition figures over ...

Chinese financial watchdogs have called for tougher international oversight to stop big flows of hot money across borders in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.Addressing the International Finance Forum in Beijing over the weekend, regulators ...

Shenzhen, China’s southern technology capital, is doing away with incentives and preferential policies designed to attract highly educated workers as its population grows faster than expected. Beginning in September, the tech hub will no longer of...

Rap songs referencing hardships from a century ago. Videos featuring hit songs over footage of soldiers’ training and everyday lives, praising them for protecting the borders.A drama series educating navy officers about online gaming addiction and ...

The Taiwanese medical authorities reported 355 new local cases of Covid-19 and 11 deaths on Sunday, as a pro-Beijing school said a mainland-based organisation had offered to send it millions of vaccines.However, any donations still need to be approve...

The organiser behind the city’s annual Tiananmen Square vigil is opening its museum to people wishing to lay floral tributes to those killed in the 1989 crackdown after authorities banned its large-scale gathering for the second year in a row.Leade...

Australian writer Yang Hengjun, facing trial in Beijing on espionage charges that he denies, asked the judge to exclude evidence obtained in interrogations where he says he was tortured, according to a message conveyed to family and friends.In his fi...