China’s digital yuan will help banks become more competitive in the payments sector after steadily losing out to popular technology platforms over the years, according to Moody’s Investors Service.“We expect adoption of [China’s digital yuan]...

Ma Mingliang rarely encountered wild elephants while growing up in southwestern China, after centuries of hunting and deforestation nearly eradicated them. Today, the 42-year-old village chief barricades his community to keep them out.A wandering her...

Hong Kong authorities have confirmed that Hollywood star Nicole Kidman was granted exemption from quarantine following her arrival from Australia last week to film a new drama series in the city.Under mounting public pressure to explain the preferent...

Seven Hong Kong opposition activists and former lawmakers have pleaded guilty to charges of organising and inciting others to take part in an unauthorised march during anti-government protests in 2019.On Thursday, the District Court heard police had ...

The Chinese Olympic Committee (COC) has demanded businesses stop illegally using the names of Olympians from the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games on their products after the names of dozens of athletes were registered as trademarks on everything from office ...

Security camera footage has led to the arrest of a 37-year-old man suspected of assaulting and robbing a Hong Kong sex worker, police said on Thursday.The suspect was tracked to his subdivided flat in Causeway Bay and taken into custody at 5.30pm on ...

A British man was sentenced to six weeks’ jail in Singapore for not wearing a mask and harassing police, officials confirmed Thursday.The city state, which has had comparatively mild Covid-19 outbreaks, has taken a tough line against people breakin...

The number of babies born in China this year may drop to the lowest since at least 1950, according to Jefferies Financial Group, one of the reasons why the government is cracking down on industries like education to bring down costs and promote bigge...

Taliban forces have reportedly seized US military biometric devices that can scan irises, fingers, and faces, which could help them identify Afghans who assisted coalition forces.The devices, known as HIIDE, or Handheld Interagency Identity Detection...

Cathay Pacific will only allow fully vaccinated aircrew to operate passenger flights to “high-risk” and “medium-risk” countries from Friday and, in exchange, crew members will only have to quarantine for seven days, the Post has learned.The c...

Asian airlines are reporting high vaccination take-up rates among pilots and cabin crew as they wait for the region’s tight pandemic-related border controls to be relaxed.International travel in the Asia-Pacific region remains down about 95 per cen...

China plans to set up a state pension company with registered capital of 11.15 billion yuan (US$1.72 billion), a filing showed on Thursday, the latest step by the world’s most populous nation to boost funds for its citizens’ retirement.China is w...

China said the Afghanistan Taliban had become more rational than it was two decades ago and called on other nations to be more “objective” in judging the situation facing Afghanistan – while at the same time demanding the insurgent group be ver...

The US armed forces destroyed and sank a warship this weekend amid a massive military exercise, demonstrating how the joint force could destroy enemy ships in a high-end fight.The ex-USS Ingraham, a US Navy guided-missile frigate that was decommissio...

In the weeks before the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, Beijing made efforts to strengthen its ties with the militant group by receiving a delegation and referring to it as an important political and military force.But in talks with the Taliban�...

North Korea issued a no-sail zone for ships off its east coast earlier this week, indicating possible missile or artillery tests in response to joint South Korea-US military exercises. No further action has been reported, leading experts to suggest P...

An enthusiastic, if relatively modest, crowd of Hongkongers braved cloudy skies in Kowloon on Thursday to cheer on an open-top bus parade celebrating the record-breaking performance of the city’s athletes at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.The Games, ...

The Taliban’s top political leader, who made a triumphal return to Afghanistan this week, battled the US and its allies for decades but then signed a landmark peace agreement with the Trump administration.Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is now expected ...

While a broad spectrum of Singapore-based academics feel unencumbered in conducting research, a minority of scholars who study “politically sensitive” topics say they feel constrained from exploring certain topics or having public discussions abo...

A Hong Kong activist who spent seven months in jail in mainland China after a failed bid to flee to Taiwan last summer has admitted to colluding with foreign forces in a conspiracy linked to jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying.In the first such c...

As government help trickles into southwest Haiti after Saturday’s 7.2-magnitude earthquake, some Haitians are braving gang-controlled roads to bring in aid on their own.Widler “Wid” Octavius, a Haitian singer-songwriter, arrived in the coastal ...

Four University of Hong Kong undergraduates were charged with advocating terrorism under the national security law on Thursday over a student union council motion that praised the “sacrifice” of a man who stabbed a police officer before killing h...

Shenzhen-based tech giant Tencent Holdings said on Wednesday that it has created a 50 billion yuan (US$7.7 billion) fund dedicated to “common prosperity”, one day after Chinese President Xi Jinping made it a key economic and social goal for the c...

A study funded by Pfizer-BioNTech showed the efficacy of its Covid-19 vaccine – while still high – declined by 13 percentage points over six months after the second dose, suggesting there could be a need for booster shots in the future.More than ...

Jin-hui, a cream-coloured Pomeranian, was buried alive and left for dead in 2018 in the South Korean port city of Busan.No charges were filed against his owner at the time, but animal abusers and those who abandon pets will soon face harsher punishme...

Hong Kong police have arrested an 87-year-old man in connection with an assault on protesters and commuters at a Hong Kong railway station two years ago.The man, surnamed Wong, was taken into custody from his village house at Tai Wai Tsuen off Long W...

At least two US diplomats in Germany have complained of symptoms that point to so-called Havana syndrome, German news magazine Der Spiegel and The Wall Street Journal reported.Citing unnamed US diplomats, the Journal said the diplomats exhibited symp...

GlobalFoundries has filed confidentially with U.S regulators for an initial public offering (IPO) in New York that could value the chip maker at around US$25 billion (HK$194 billion), people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.The move is the ...

As the Taliban retake Afghanistan for the first time in 20 years following a blitz-style seizure of the country, which ended in the fall of Kabul on Sunday, vandalised posters of women underscore a deep anxiety many female Afghans have for their futu...

Mehmood Mazhar was in panic mode this week when Hong Kong announced sudden changes to Covid-19 quarantine rules for inbound travellers, delaying his start at a local university by at least a month.The 19-year-old international bachelor’s student fr...

Even though an accelerated Covid-19 vaccine roll-out called Operation Surge Capacity has given Malaysia’s strained health care system some measure of relief in recent days, frontline medical workers have described how the emotional toll of the late...

Dozens of mainland entertainers, including some of the country’s most famous people, took part in an “ethical training session” hosted by the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) amid a rape case involving Kris Wu, one of the mos...

Humanity’s need to tackle climate change is more pressing than ever, with the United Nations warning last week that global warming would accelerate at a faster-than-expected pace over the next 20 years. In this four-part series, the Post examines i...

The US Transportation Department on Wednesday said it will limit some flights from Chinese carriers to 40 per cent passenger capacity for four weeks after the Chinese government imposed similar limits on four United Airlines flights.China told United...

A 4,600 sq ft luxury penthouse in Hong Kong, which was previously owned by the debt-laden mainland Chinese conglomerate HNA Group, has been put up for sale by creditors.The fully furnished four-bedroom flat is on the 45th floor of 39 Conduit Road, Mi...

The International Monetary Fund said that the new government in Afghanistan is cut off from using fund reserve assets days before the nation was set to receive almost US$500 million, depriving the Taliban of key resources.The country has been in line...

The Chinese capital Beijing and its neighbouring smog-prone province of Hebei have recorded their best monthly air quality since records began in 2013, as China vows to tackle pollution.The monthly average concentration of small, lung-damaging partic...

China’s fiscal policy is at a turning point and Beijing must shift focus to long-term development, such as enhancing human capital to boost international competitiveness, rather than prioritising short-term growth, the country’s top think tank sa...

China is pushing for a bigger role in the Middle East, with President Xi Jinping engaging the Iranian and Iraqi leaders with pledges of help, as the United States beats a hasty retreat from Afghanistan and remains in a deadlock with Iran.In a phone c...

Findings from a study involving survivors of Sars who received two shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech inoculation have raised hopes of what researchers say is a potential “dream vaccine” that can counter Covid-19, its variants and future coronaviruses ...

The Pentagon said on Wednesday that the US military does not currently have the ability to reach people beyond the Kabul airport seeking to evacuate Afghanistan, as President Joe Biden said US troops may stay in the country past an August 31 deadline...

Meng Wanzhou first walked into a Canadian courtroom on December 5, 2018, an anonymous figure dressed in a dark green prison tracksuit.Four days earlier, the Huawei Technologies’ executive had been arrested at Vancouver International Airport, settin...

R. Kelly is a “predator” who demanded absolute fealty from the many women and underage girls he recruited for sex in a two-decade racketeering scheme, a federal prosecutor said on Wednesday as the R&B superstar’s sex abuse trial began.Assistant...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Erin Banco on politico.com on August 18, 2021.The Biden administration is recommending that Americans receive Covid-19 booster shots eight months after comp...

The travel and tourism industry has become a key driver of China’s domestic economy since the 1980s, after the government embarked on its era of reform and opening up. Both the nation’s growing domestic middle class and accommodating government ...

The head of finance at Hong Kong’s arts hub authority stepped down on Wednesday in the latest upheaval to the top ranks of the troubled organisation.The departure of Kitty Fung Kit-yi from the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority came less than...

New Delhi-based journalist Sonia Sarkar arrived in Kabul last week intending to report on the implications of the conflict between Afghan forces and the Taliban on the back of the US troop withdrawal. After the Taliban entered Kabul on Sunday, sparki...

“One more second” for the “elder”, called Chinese netizens, as they found creative ways to wish Jiang Zemin good health and a long life on his 95th birthday.The former president of China turned 95 on Tuesday, but there was no official celebra...

Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani said on Wednesday that he was “in talks to return” home after seeking refuge in the United Arab Emirates.In a video streamed on Facebook, his first public comments since it was confirmed he was in the UAE, Gha...

An estimated 780 million pieces of plastic packaging were used for goods bought online in Hong Kong last year as more consumers shopped from home amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a green group which called for regulations to deal with the ...