China has once again come to the rescue of the Republic of Congo, with President Xi Jinping agreeing to restructure the central African country’s US$2.4 billion worth of loans amid a debt crisis.In a call with Xi on Monday, President Denis Sassou N...

A woman who starved, assaulted and ultimately killed her domestic worker in Singapore was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Tuesday, with the judge describing the case as “among the worst types of culpable homicide”.The affluent city state is ho...

Olympic organisers in Japan have drawn criticism for plans to allow the sale of alcohol to spectators at next month’s delayed Games, as residents of the capital grapple with curbs on bars to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Alcohol will be serve...

In the final hours of the New York City mayoral campaign, candidate Andrew Yang doubled down on his comments on the mentally ill and homeless. Phoning into a radio show with billionaire John Catsimatidis on Monday, Yang complained that mentally ill ...

Two Hong Kong taxi drivers narrowly escaped injury on Tuesday when a tree measuring 13 metres (43 feet) collapsed onto their vehicles in Aberdeen.The tree fell across a stretch of Aberdeen Main Road near the local municipal services building at 7.48a...

Australia said on Tuesday it will strongly oppose a Unesco plan to list the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger” over deterioration caused by climate change.The UN body released a draft report on Monday recommending the reef’s World Heritage statu...

Hong Kong’s hotel industry has called for both clearer guidance and compensation after authorities confirmed that travellers entering the city will soon be able to spend less time in quarantine if they have been vaccinated against Covid-19.The sect...

Kim Jong-un’s powerful sister has dismissed prospects of North Korea returning to dialogue without preconditions, saying that US expectations for the early resumption of talks would “plunge them into a greater disappointment”.Kim Yo-jong made t...

Nasa has spent more than a week trying to fix the Hubble Telescope’s computer hardware issues.The problem: a 1980s-era payload computer, which is supposed to control and coordinate scientific instruments aboard the spacecraft and monitor them for h...

The United States said it could slow down its military withdrawal from Afghanistan due to the gains made by Taliban insurgents.Pentagon spokesman John Kirby stressed that US President Joe Biden’s deadline of a full withdrawal by September remained ...

Hong Kong’s leader has hit back at the United States over its condemnation of last week’s arrest of five Apple Daily executives, accusing it of attempting to “beautify” the tabloid’s behaviour and downplay the significance of breaching the ...

Three appeal court judges have unanimously upheld the Hong Kong justice minister’s decision to exclude a jury from the trial of the first person charged under the national security law.Tuesday’s ruling at the Court of Appeal means Tong Ying-kit, ...

Israel has used an airborne laser to shoot down drones in a series of tests, officials said, calling it a “milestone” to update its already powerful defence systems.During the tests, which took place “over the last week,” a prototype of the h...

After months of speculation, China’s longest-serving ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai confirmed on Tuesday that he would be leaving Washington, at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries.Cui, who held the key position for eight year...

Former US president Donald Trump pondered whether Covid-positive Americans abroad could be sent to Guantanamo Bay in the early days of the pandemic, according to a forthcoming book by two Washington Post reporters.“Don’t we have an island that we...

Britain’s newest aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is helping to take on the “lion’s share” of operations against Islamic State in Iraq, UK naval commanders said. It has also piqued the interest of Russian warplanes, who try to keep tabs...

Celeste Tang Chui-ying has held the hands of people going through one of life’s darkest moments – losing their loved ones. The volunteer and her colleagues at Hong Kong Red Cross’s Psychological Support Service have counselled distraught famil...

US President Joe Biden is delaying a target date for overseas shipments of 80 million doses of coronavirus vaccines donated by the US, with logistical hurdles and millions of shots produced by AstraZeneca still in a safety review.Biden’s White Hous...

Indonesia announced on Monday it would tighten movement restrictions amid a surge of coronavirus infections, fuelled by the Delta variant, that has brought the health system to the brink of collapse and put a question mark over plans to reopen parts ...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing.Hong Kong will start to relax quarantine arrangements for fully vaccinated people arriving from foreign countr...

A picture purportedly showing Sheikha Latifa at Madrid’s airport emerged on Monday, the latest in a series of images posted after the UN asked for proof the Emirati royal was still alive.The UN human rights office asked for evidence about Dubai’s...

Kenny Li’s garment factory works on a tight schedule: while factories usually have a month or two to make thousands of T-shirts for a brand, Li only has five days, as required by his client Shein, a mysterious Chinese online retailer that is helpin...

President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to jail people who refuse to be vaccinated against the coronavirus as the Philippines battles one of Asia’s worst outbreaks, with more than 1.3 million cases and more than 23,000 deaths.“You choose, vaccin...

This is the first of a four-part series on the impact of the national security law, one year after it was imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing on June 30, 2020. Natalie Wong speaks to protesters and politicians who sought asylum in Australia, Britain and ...

Ethiopia’s elections chief said complaints by the opposition of irregularities in two regions risked tarnishing polls on Monday billed by the government as the country’s first free and fair vote after decades of repression.Election board chief Bi...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Kelsey Tamborrino and Gavin Bade on politico.com on June 21, 2021.The Biden administration is considering banning imports into America of a critical solar p...

A Vancouver businesswoman has launched a lawsuit to recover about US$200,000 she says was lost when a scheme to thwart Chinese money control laws went awry.But the four defendants deny that the funds lost by plaintiff Sarah Wu ended up in their hands...

Germany’s biggest party remains divided on how to tackle China ahead of September’s crunch election, with a manifesto unveiled by the Christian Democratic Union on Monday clashing with comments made by the party’s candidate to be the next chanc...

Ever since the Trump administration targeted China as a strategic competitor, and with the Biden administration so far largely following Trump’s established rules against China, Sino-US competition and confrontation have become a feature of the tim...

A 40-year-old man has been arrested in Hong Kong after a pedestrian called police about a banner carrying a protest slogan deemed problematic by the authorities under the national security law.Police were alerted at about 2pm on Monday by the passer-...

A Cambodian court has charged four environmental activists with insulting the king and plotting against the government, an official said on Monday, after three of them were arrested for documenting waste run-off into a river.Use of royal defamation l...

China aims to become a dominant player in the world nuclear market in less than 30 years and have the highest safety standards and lowest costs, a government advisory body has said.For decades, China tried to catch up with safety standards in Western...

President-elect Ebrahim Raisi on Monday backed talks between Iran and six world powers to revive a 2015 nuclear deal but flatly rejected meeting US President Joe Biden, even if Washington removed all sanctions.In his first news conference since he wa...

Saif Ali Khan is fully vaccinated and all set to start a postgraduate engineering course in the United States – but he’s worried.The 22-year-old from Aurangabad has received two shots of Covaxin, India’s home-made vaccine, which the Michigan-ba...

A plan by Hong Kong’s government to further ease Covid-19 restrictions based mostly on vaccination status has received a lukewarm response from hard-hit business operators, with some dismissing the changes as too conservative and too late.While the...

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the world’s highest and largest, thousands of metres above sea level. But even one of the planet’s most remote and beautiful spots is not immune to garbage; in the region’s Kekexili nature reserve – a Unesco herit...

Taiwan will continue to offer services in Hong Kong and have exchanges with the city despite political pressure from Beijing, the island’s top official in charge of relations with mainland China said on Monday.Chiu Tai-san, head of the Mainland Aff...

Myanmar’s junta leader and a senior Russia security official on Monday committed to improving ties between their two countries, Russia’s Security Council said in a statement.Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military overthrew civilian leader...

The world’s space powers should find ways to overcome “political inertia” and work with China to explore worlds beyond Earth, according to Canadian astronaut who worked on both the Russian and American-led space programmes.Chris Hadfield, the f...

Only some 20,000 to 30,000 voters will be eligible to cast ballots for competitive seats on Hong Kong’s revamped Election Committee this year, a mere fraction of the 246,000 registered in the last race.Following a drastic, Beijing-led overhaul of t...

India’s Olympic body has slammed as “unfair” rules imposed by the Japanese government on athletes from several nations hit by Covid-19 for the Tokyo Games starting next month.Tokyo 2020 organisers said on Monday that additional measures will be...

An “unduly lenient” probation order imposed on a Hong Kong student who hurled a brick at a police vehicle during the city’s social unrest “certainly did him no good in the end”, Court of Appeal judges said on Monday, explaining why a detent...

The top UN human rights official on Monday said she hoped to agree terms for a visit this year to China, including its Xinjiang region, to look into reports of serious violations against Muslim Uygurs.It was the first time that Michelle Bachelet had ...

Hainan is tightening supervision of its business environment to ensure the tropical island does not become a tax haven, after Beijing outlined plans to turn it into a free-trade port that might one day rival Hong Kong and Singapore.China’s central ...

After reaching the milestone of administering 1 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine, China has revised up its estimate for achieving herd immunity. A top epidemiologist says 80 to 85 per cent of the population needs to be fully vaccinated – or more t...

Nine mainland Chinese men believed to have been recruited for a series of burglaries in Hong Kong over the past month were among 11 people arrested over the weekend, police said on Monday.A force insider said officers were investigating whether three...

A Father’s Day advertisement in China encouraging people to take advantage of the three-child policy is facing a public backlash, with critics saying the video only interviewed men and offered no substantial support for women.The video, by short vi...

China and North Korea have made a public show of solidarity, calling for regional stability amid signs from Washington that it is willing to hold talks with Pyongyang.In a rare opinion piece in Rodong Sinmun, the official mouthpiece of the Workers’...

Sweden’s government was toppled on Monday after Stefan Lofven became the country’s first prime minister to lose a no-confidence vote, meaning he can now either resign or trigger a snap election.The motion of no confidence passed with a majority o...