Myanmar’s junta chief on Sunday said elections would be held and a state of emergency lifted by August 2023, extending the military’s initial timeline given when it deposed Aung San Suu Kyi six months ago.The country has been in turmoil since the...

In the past week, events in Malaysia and Tunisia have highlighted the unprecedented challenges faced by two young democracies, brought on by complex domestic politics and leadership struggling to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.In Malaysia, the s...

After a British court declared fugitive Indian billionaire Vijay Mallya bankrupt last week, Indian social media was abuzz with discussions about the 65-year-old’s spectacular downfall and what would happen next. Once known as the “King of Good T...

Chinese scientists have obtained the world’s first high-resolution, 3D image of a monkey brain, which they say could be used for research to treat human diseases such as Parkinson’s.Though smaller, a monkey brain is among the closest to the human...

Spending of the first batch of coupons under the Hong Kong government’s HK$5,000 (US$643) e-voucher scheme kicked off on Sunday with residents across the city going on shopping sprees and flocking to restaurants.Shoppers were seen snapping up every...

The European Union has criticised China over its decision to bar more than 20 candidates from standing for election in Macau.On Saturday the top court in the former Portuguese colony, now a special administrative region (SAR) of China, rejected an ap...

Zhengzhou, the central Chinese city that suffered devastating floods last month, has started mass nucleic acid testing after a spike in Covid-19 cases at a local hospital.The city reported 12 local confirmed cases and 20 asymptomatic cases on Saturda...

Two weeks after a bus blast in northern Pakistan killed 12 people, including nine Chinese nationals, Pakistani security authorities are hunting for two people and the silver Toyota Corolla car they were driving.The pair are thought to have coordinate...

A Chinese activist who has spent the last eight months in detention has been charged with subversion in another sign of the shrinking space for dissent in China.Ou Biaofeng, 40, from Hunan province is known for his support for Dong Yaoqiong, also kno...

North Korea’s autocratic leadership is not known for drawing attention to problems within the hermit kingdom, where a popular children’s song proclaims “we have nothing to envy in the world”.So when Kim Jong-un used a recent commemoration of ...

As part of its ambitions to turn the Greater Bay Area (GBA) into an innovation powerhouse, China is building a new university focusing on science and technology in the Southern Chinese region and has enlisted industry veterans from one of the nati...

Asian airlines risk losing access to airports in Europe if strict Covid-19 restrictions at home prevent them from increasing international flights by the end of the year, the head of an aviation industry trade group has said.International Air Transpo...

Country music legend Willie Nelson led more than a thousand spectators in singing “vote them out” on Saturday from the steps of the Texas Capitol during a rally wrapping up a four-day march in support of Democratic state legislators who bolted fo...

Two decades ago, the United States was the big player in Africa and China was a relative minnow.US partners accounted for 15.5 per cent of trade with the continent, nearly four times the 4 per cent Chinese parties claimed.Not any more.Twenty years, a...

Florida has reported 21,683 new cases of Covid-19, the state’s highest one-day total since the start of the pandemic, according to federal health data released on Saturday.The state has become the new national epicentre for the virus, accounting fo...

France was convulsed for the third weekend in a row on Saturday as mass protests against a planned tightening of coronavirus restrictions continue to anger segments of the public.The Interior Ministry said about 204,000 people joined about 180 protes...

US congresswoman Cori Bush, who was evicted three times and lived in her car with her two children before her career in politics, spent a sleepless night on the US Capitol steps to protest against the end on Saturday of a pandemic freeze on evictions...

Panicked tourists in Turkey hurried to the seashore to wait for rescue boats on Saturday after being told to evacuate some hotels in the Aegean Sea resort of Bodrum owing to the dangers posed by nearby wildfires, Turkish media reported.Coastguard uni...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet virtually with Southeast Asian officials every day next week, a senior state department official said on Saturday, as Washington seeks to show the region it is a US priority while also addressing the cri...

Afghan and Taliban forces clashed again on the outskirts of Herat on Saturday, a day after a police guard was killed when a United Nations compound in the western city came under attack.Violence has surged across the country since early May, when the...

Britain’s state-run health care service warned on Saturday that devices used by people with Covid-19 to monitor blood-oxygen levels at home may give inaccurate readings for people with darker skin.The warning concerned pulse oximeters, currently be...

An Illinois tax agency has ruled that former President Donald Trump is due a US$1 million refund on the 2011 tax bill for his downtown Chicago skyscraper, but local officials are trying to block the refund.The Chicago Sun-Times newspaper reports that...

China is building a modern socialist state with Chinese characteristics. The paradigm shift of reform and opening is now spearheaded by innovation, while historical Chinese experience is applied in the context of the current global environment.In rej...

Star rapper and singer Kris Wu Yifan was detained by the police in Beijing on suspicion of rape, the latest development in a scandal that has torpedoed the career of one of China’s most influential young celebrities.A statement on the microblogging...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s wife, Carrie, said on Saturday she is expecting the couple’s second child.Carrie Johnson announced her pregnancy in a post on Instagram in which she also revealed that she suffered a miscarriage earlier this...

Hong Kong has slammed “irresponsible” remarks by the United States and European Union criticising the sentencing of the first person to be convicted under the city’s national security law.The war of words erupted after Leon Tong Ying-kit, 24, w...

The Russian hackers behind the massive SolarWinds cyber espionage campaign broke into the email accounts of some of the most prominent federal prosecutors’ offices around the US last year, the Justice Department said.The department said 80 per cent...

The presence of Britain’s new aircraft carrier and scheduled permanent deployment of two warships to Asia reflects the country’s ambition to become a major global player and its commitment to US plans to contain China, according to military analy...

The shutdown of a nuclear reactor at a power plant in southern China could signal extra caution over a cutting-edge system that its developers plan to roll out in other countries, according to industry analysts.China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN)...

The Catholic Church in Britain has pledged to do more to welcome and support Hong Kong immigrants following an appeal from church leaders in the former colony.Heads of 22 dioceses across England and Wales have been asked to anticipate the arrival of ...

Israel is pressing for international action against Iran over a deadly attack on a ship managed by an Israeli billionaire, branding Tehran an “exporter of terrorism” after the likely drone strike.The MT Mercer Street tanker was struck on Thursday...

Biel Crystal Holdings Limited, the world’s largest maker of smartphone screens, said it applied to raise capital in Hong Kong, reviving the initial public offering (IPO) that was scuttled three years ago amid the escalating trade war between the Un...

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for a greater focus on national defence and the military in a speech given on the eve of an important military anniversary and as the nation faces a growing range of security risks.After giving a spirited sp...

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, facing calls to resign after a rare public reprimand by the king, has indefinitely postponed the resumption of a parliamentary session that was disrupted last week.Muhyiddin’s decision – revealed in a...

Closer relations between Washington and Taipei look set to continue, with the US signalling firm support for the self-ruled island in this week’s high-level talks in China.US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman showed no sign of compromise o...

Newly reported Covid-19 cases in Olympic host city Tokyo surged to a record high of 4,058 on Saturday, the metropolitan government said, exceeding 4,000 for the first time and overshadowing the Games.The record comes a day after Japan decided to exte...

Hundreds of black-clad Malaysians staged an anti-government protest Saturday in defiance of a ban on public gatherings under coronavirus curbs, piling pressure on the embattled prime minister to resign.The protesters, wearing masks and keeping a dist...

Sharolika Parvin, a 16-year-old from Kurigram, a border district in Bangladesh, enjoyed playing football and took part in tournaments at a national level. Three years ago, she was even named the best player in the Bangamata Gold Cup primary school fo...

As I sat glued to the television watching the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, the words of Thomas Bach, the International Olympic Committee president, struck a strong chord with me. The speech was peppered with words like “solidarity”, �...

Three days after Hong Kong won fencing gold at the Tokyo Olympics, Dylan Wong, a 28-year-old clerk, was still revelling in the victory – so much so he decided to give the sport a try himself.The Hongkonger was watching on Monday evening with collea...

The Hong Kong Sports Institute is planning to build a new fencing stadium ahead of the 2024 Olympics, as interest in the sport soars in the wake of Edgar Cheung Ka-long’s historic gold medal win at the Tokyo Games this week.Lam Tai-fai, head of the...

The United States has seized a Singapore-owned oil tanker that was used to make illegal oil deliveries to North Korea, the Justice Department said.A New York federal judge issued a judgment of forfeiture authorising the US to take ownership of the M/...

Hong Kong’s Education Bureau is taking the unprecedented step of cutting all ties with the city’s largest teachers’ union and stripping it of its status as a professional group after two Communist Party mouthpieces branded the body a “maligna...

The spread of the highly infectious Delta variant of Covid-19 shows no signs of slowing down in China as a case emerged in the flood-hit city of Zhengzhou.The National Health Commission reported a total of 55 daily cases from Friday, including 25 imp...

Life is harsh and people can be so nasty to one another, it’s hard not to be a cynic. And with Covid-19 refusing to back down even after more than a year of disruption to every aspect of our lives, it’s hard not to be a defeatist. But a toxic wor...

Until two years ago, Aamir Ataullah said his future as a merchant in the Indian town of Uri, close to the border with Pakistan, seemed bright.The 28-year-old was among hundreds of barter traders plying their goods along the Line of Control that divid...

China has opened the doors on what it bills as the world’s largest planetarium, a slick new Shanghai facility showcasing the nation’s recent extraterrestrial exploits while downplaying those of space pioneers like the United States.Beijing has sp...

Former US President Donald Trump suffered twin setbacks on Friday when the Justice Department cleared the way to release his tax records and disclosed a memo showing he had urged top officials last year to falsely claim his election defeat was “cor...

When Indonesian national Maria Caritas went to the city of Surabaya two weeks ago to get her first shot of Covid-19 vaccine, she was turned away.Staff at the vaccination centre told the 21-year-old fresh university graduate that she needed a “lette...

China’s factory activity expanded in July at the slowest pace in 17 months as higher raw material costs, equipment maintenance and extreme weather weighed on business activity, adding to concerns about a slowdown in the world’s second-biggest eco...