The Chinese Communist Party demands that its members hang on every word of the party’s general secretary, President Xi Jinping, and submit their reflections to their superiors.But for those who lack the time or inclination to do so, the spirit of f...

Chinese volleyball star Zhu Ting has been named as the country’s first female flag-bearer at the Summer Olympics.Zhu Ting, the captain of the women’s team, will jointly carry the national flag with male taekwondo champion Zhao Shuai at the openin...

Hong Kong’s police chief has said the force will work with the city’s rail operator, shopping centres and hotels to conduct anti-terrorism drills, and urged the public to join the fight against those endangering national security.Commissioner of ...

A year after China-India border clashes erupted in Ladakh in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, the tourism-reliant Indian territory is reopening to visitors even as uncertainty lingers and the region remains heavily fortified.Chinese and Indian tr...

Hong Kong has been aggressively pursuing the goal of zero Covid-19 infections as it seeks to ease travel restrictions with mainland China. The city closed all but three border checkpoints in February last year as part of pandemic measures.Chief Execu...

Tokyo Olympics organisers on Sunday reported three new cases of Covid-19 infections among athletes, as the population of the Olympic Village swells ahead of the start of the pandemic-hit Games next week.Organisers reported 10 new cases in total conne...

Hong Kong unemployment is expected to continue falling but the city is not yet out of the woods and wider Covid-19 vaccination uptake is needed to improve the economic outlook, the finance chief has said.Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said on Su...

Having become a parent, I have learned the importance of taking time to recognise and celebrate life’s victories, big or small. Please give a big round of applause to our students for completing this school year as it was no less challenging than t...

Seventy per cent of Hongkongers will have received their first shots of a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of September if the city can continue administering them at its current rate of 30,000 a day for the next two months, according to a top official.Pa...

It was a sunny spring afternoon last year when Tisiphone, 25, received a phone call from a male friend that turned her life upside down.“He told me that I was on Pornhub. Of course, my first reaction was that it must be a mistake. How could it be m...

Asian giants China and Japan are uneasy neighbours. While they set aside historical animosity and mistrust in the early days of the pandemic – Japan sending boxes of masks to China bearing a line of classical poetry that they “share the wind and ...

China has historically taken a back seat in Afghanistan but in recent decades has still played a role in some of the country’s major turning points.Afghanistan’s diplomatic value has also changed for China, growing in importance as Beijing expand...

Sunny Lau Chak-chun leads a self-designed community tour of Sai Ying Pun, encapsulating more than 100 years of the Hong Kong neighbourhood’s history within an area of 300 metres.“Sai Ying Pun is a place that is full of history and contrasts, incl...

At a hotel in Wa State, near the Myanmar-China border, Chinese national Li Jiajie is growing increasingly desperate by the day.The 24-year-old has been surviving on his savings since last month when he quit his job as an assistant chef after Chinese ...

Three Chinese nationals and two Mauritanians were kidnapped in southwest Mali on Saturday, the country’s armed forces said, in the latest attack in the war-torn Sahel state.Armed men attacked a construction site 55 kilometres (34 miles) from the to...

What is the similarity between diseases such as Spanish flu, Ebola and severe acute respiratory syndrome? There is a high likelihood that all three diseases were caused by the spread of viruses from animals to humans.However, humanity seems to have p...

One exclusive clubhouse, three top law enforcement officials, six unknown guests, a hotpot dinner with an undisclosed price tag, and Covid-19 restrictions on gatherings tossed aside.These are the sizzling ingredients of a scandal that has kept Hong K...

European Union leaders on Saturday celebrated their coronavirus vaccination programme reaching a higher proportion of its people than in the US, which had outpaced the bloc for months.“We promised it and it’s done. The EU this week overtook the U...

“The Mekong massacre,” says journalist Jeff Howe, “was one of the largest killings of Chinese nationals outside China since World War II.”And it was this slaying of 13 sailors aboard two cargo vessels on the morning of October 5, 2011, that r...

Facebook on Saturday defended itself against US President Joe Biden’s assertion that the social media platform is “killing people” by allowing misinformation about coronavirus vaccines to proliferate, saying the facts tell a different story.“...

Recent air force sorties by the People’s Liberation Army near Taiwan indicate the Chinese military may be training its pilots in new combat tactics, with a key role for the J-16 fighter bomber helped by early warning and electronic warfare aircraft...

US President Joe Biden on Saturday denounced as “deeply disappointing” a federal judge’s decision curbing a programme that protects undocumented migrants brought to the country as children.In a statement from the White House, Biden said the Jus...

The awards ceremony for the 74th Cannes Film Festival started where it should have ended, with jury president Spike Lee mistakenly announcing that the serial killer odyssey Titane as the winner of the festival’s top honour, the Palme d’Or.If conf...

Raul Castro was among thousands who attended a government-organised rally in Havana on Saturday to denounce the US trade embargo and reaffirm their support for Cuba’s revolution, a week after unprecedented protests rocked the communist-run country....

President Bashar al-Assad took the oath of office for a fourth term in war-ravaged Syria on Saturday, after officially winning 95 per cent of the vote in an election dismissed abroad.It was the second presidential poll since the start of a decade-lon...

Austria said on Saturday it was working with US authorities to investigate reports of diplomats and other officials falling sick with health problems similar to the so-called “Havana syndrome”.US senators in May said that the government was inves...

Cannabis was first domesticated around 12,000 years ago in China, researchers found, after analysing the genomes of plants from across the world.The study, published in the journal Science Advances on Friday, said the genomic history of cannabis dome...

China has sent criminal investigation specialists to Pakistan to look into last week’s fatal bus blast that killed 13 people, including nine Chinese citizens.In an emergency phone call on Saturday, Chinese Public Security Minister Zhao Kezhi told P...

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, thousands of residents of this resource-rich central African nation, including children, toil and even fight to extract metals like cobalt – an essential component for making lithium-ion batteries that power sma...

British health minister Sajid Javid on Saturday said he had tested positive for Covid-19, but that his symptoms were mild and he had two doses of vaccine against the disease. Javid, who has been health secretary for three weeks, has backed Prime Min...

When the northeastern European country of Lithuania confirmed it would set up a trade office in Taiwan later this year, its foreign minister said that apart from strengthening exports to the self-ruled island, the country wanted to “promote democra...

University of Hong Kong student leaders being investigated under the national security law for passing a resolution that “appreciated the sacrifice” of a man who stabbed a police officer before killing himself will be put on a watch list and inte...

A Chinese construction firm announced the suspension of work on a hydropower project in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, days after a deadly attack on a bus in which 12 people, including nine Chinese workers were killed.The China Gezhouba Group Com...

Stepping into ELCHK Hung Hom Lutheran Primary School in Kowloon, pupils pass through a traditional red Chinese door and decorative eaves to get to their classrooms.The co-educational school, run by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hong Kong, is amo...

As countries weigh up making Covid-19 vaccination mandatory in certain circumstances, heated debate has erupted in China over orders issued by some cities to deny the unvaccinated entry to places such as shops and schools. Some say such hardline mea...

Rescuers scrambled on Saturday to find survivors and victims of the devastation wreaked by the worst floods to hit western Europe in living memory, which have already left more than 170 people dead and dozens more missing.Western Germany has suffered...

The head of a powerful vetting committee tasked with ensuring Hong Kong election candidates pose no threat to national security has vowed to weed out those “faking” allegiance to the city. Chief Secretary John Lee Ka-chiu said on Saturday the ca...

In Athens, a Covid-19 vaccine will help get you into a bar. In Prague, it might win you an iPhone. But in some places, you’ll need it to keep your job. As governments across Europe push to get everyday life back to normal, the carrot-and-stick app...

US ground forces conducted their first test of an advanced mobile rocket launcher during a recent large-scale joint exercise with their Japanese counterparts, indicating it could be deployed in the region as part of preparations for a potential confl...

A 17-year-old Hong Kong high school pupil who spearheaded an initiative to donate hundreds of 3D-printed face shields to hospitals overseas when the Covid-19 pandemic first struck has scooped the top prize in this year’s Student of the Year Awards....

Eight workers died after a residential building under construction collapsed in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian on Friday. The building in Dahu township came down at about midday, trapping 10 workers in the rubble. Rescuers pulled all 1...

Negotiations between Beijing and its neighbours for a code of conduct on activities in the South China Sea are facing more uncertainty as tensions rise over the contested waterway, with one observer saying the process “could even end in a stalemate...

At an Indian restaurant in Amsterdam, Peter Hoffman, a German who works in logistics in the Netherlands, looks forward to his weekly meal. He orders yellow dal (lentils), fragrant, steamed basmati rice and aloo jeera (potato curry) – comfort food a...

The Tokyo Olympics are just around the corner. Among the Olympic hopefuls who have started on their journey to Tokyo is our windsurfing team, who became the first batch of Hong Kong athletes to arrive in Japan.But the Tokyo Olympics, which were delay...

A Hong Kong scientist is leading a worldwide study of coastal pollution, particularly by drugs that have contributed to the worsening problem of treatment-resistant superbugs.The Global Estuaries Monitoring Programme, run by Professor Kenneth Leung M...

The American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong (AmCham), one of the city’s most influential business groups, has bought an office in the heart of the city, its top representative has said, showing its long-term commitment at a time when Washington i...

China vowed to deal a “head-on blow” to the United States after it imposed more sanctions on mainland Chinese officials over Hong Kong and warned American companies of the hazards of doing business in the city.Beijing’s liaison office in Hong K...

Thailand has tightened coronavirus restrictions and warned of further measures as daily cases surpassed 10,000 for the first time and the death toll hit a record 141 on Saturday despite an overnight curfew in Bangkok and several other provinces.The s...

Most healthy Hong Kong residents can skip a third Covid-19 vaccine dose, but those with weaker immune systems may need one, according to the convenor of an advisory panel on the jabs.Professor Wallace Lau Chak-sing also maintained on Saturday that th...

The written confession of Lu Wei, China’s disgraced internet tsar who once rubbed shoulders with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, was put on display by Beijing in an exhibition dedicated to its efforts to fight corruption.Lu, 61, became the first ...