Lithuania’s foreign minister has called on European nations to cut their reliance on China as tensions simmer between Vilnius and Beijing over Taiwan.In a discussion on Friday on the European Union’s relations with China, Gabrielius Landsbergis s...

China aims to work with Iran in the reconstruction of their mutual neighbour Afghanistan, China’s foreign minister told his Iranian counterpart in a phone call on Friday.In the call to mark 50 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries...

India’s joint drills with the Quad and nations in South China Sea disputes with China reflects its growing wariness of Beijing, observers said.Four Indian warships were sent to the Indo-Pacific last month on a two-month deployment, with two of t...

Hong Kong has “stringent measures” in place to prevent the spread of a new Covid-19 variant that could be more vaccine resistant, the health secretary has said. Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan Siu-chee was being questioned as to why the...

China’s zero-tolerance Covid-19 strategy will not change until the authorities are confident that its vaccination campaign has been effective enough to ease restrictions, a senior health official said on Friday.Zheng Zhongwei, head of medical scien...

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed on Saturday to tighten counterterrorism laws this month after a knife-wielding militant known to the authorities stabbed and wounded seven people in a supermarket.Police shot dead the 32-year-old attack...

A teachers’ union in Hong Kong that has decided to disband is selling a property where one of its supermarkets was located to a medical group for HK$175 million (US$22.5 million).The deal was announced a week after the Professional Teachers’ Unio...

The United States has left Afghanistan after 20 years of war, and thousands of Afghans are desperate to follow suit, as they fear for their lives under Taliban rule. But Nadima, a Kabul-based Canadian-Afghan comedian and social influencer, is urging ...

China is under pressure to set more ambitious climate targets ahead of November’s United Nations COP26 summit in Glasgow, with diplomats and negotiators calling on the country to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 – a decade earlier than pledged b...

Google has temporarily locked down an unspecified number of Afghan government email accounts, according to a person familiar with the matter, as fears grow over the digital paper trail left by former officials and their international partners.In the ...

At a bar in Hong Kong’s nightlife hub Lan Kwai Fong, 22-year-old Joanne Li* said she is not vaccinated against Covid-19 but that has not stopped her enjoying an evening out.She has not been asked to show proof of vaccination to get into her favouri...

The Taiwan Strait may be the next major diplomatic problem after China’s clampdown on Hong Kong, according to former Japanese foreign minister Fumio Kishida, one of at least two candidates likely to vie to become the next premier.Speaking in an int...

When software engineer Bruce Wang quit his job at food delivery giant Meituan last year, he gave himself two options: become a bitcoin investor or join a private tutoring company.Both were promising industries, with the cryptocurrency and tutoring st...

China’s meetings in July with Taliban leaders who now look set to rule in Afghanistan generated speculation that Chinese investment and influence would flow into the country after the departure of the US and its allies.However, if China – as Afgh...

Ismail Sabri Yaakob, Malaysia’s new prime minister, is the country’s third premier in as many years. His appointment follows the resignation of his beleaguered predecessor, Muhyiddin Yassin, who was in office for 17 months, the shortest tenure si...

US President Joe Biden on Friday ordered the Department of Justice to review documents from the FBI’s probe into the September 11, 2001, attacks for declassification and release.“When I ran for president, I made a commitment to ensuring transpare...

When Ronna Chao returned to her family’s yarn spinning business in 2010 after stints at Goldman Sachs and Tommy Hilfiger, Hong Kong was spewing out about 234 tonnes of textile waste every day, most of them either going into landfills or being incin...

When the directorof a small art exhibition in Hong Kong wanted to buy an unassuming illustration, which showed a woman holding up an umbrella under a sky of abstract black and white shapes, he had no idea how empowering that small act would be for it...

A webpage seeking tips from the public to enforce Texas’s severe new abortion restrictions has been told to find a new company to host its site or go offline.GoDaddy said in a statement on Friday it had informed prolifewhistleblower.com on Thursday...

New Zealand reported on Saturday the first death from the Delta variant of the coronavirus and 20 further daily infections, all in Auckland, the epicentre of the outbreak.The woman who died was in her 90s and had a number of underlying health conditi...

Sitara left Afghanistan for Hong Kong on August 8, just a week before the Taliban overran the capital, Kabul.The University of Hong Kong student had returned to the city for two months to see her family, still grieving over the death of her older bro...

Deprived of their preferred food source – the bananas, peanuts and other goodies brought in by tourists now kept away by the coronavirus – hungry monkeys on the Indonesian resort island of Bali have taken to raiding villagers’ homes in their se...

A competition designed to promote unity among China’s ethnic groups became embroiled in controversy in June after some participants wore traditional Islamic clothing to the event.The headscarves of female competitors sparked online complaints about...

The United States has sanctioned four Iranian intelligence operatives behind a failed plot to kidnap a US journalist and human rights activist, the US Treasury Department said on Friday.The sanctions come after US prosecutors in July charged the four...

In mid-August, Ahmad got an urgent call from his nephew, Zia, telling him to come immediately to Kabul airport to try to get on an evacuation flight.Members of the Taliban had been to Ahmad’s house in the capital looking for Zia, who had worked wit...

Kabirat Olokunde, a Nigerian migrant worker, planned to spend her birthday with friends in the city of Abu Dhabi. Instead, she turned 28 in a frigid prison cell, one of about 700 Africans imprisoned by Emirati authorities.In unparalleled mass arrests...

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus the king of Ephyra is condemned by the gods to painstakingly push a huge boulder up a hill only to have it roll down once he reached the top. To add to his misfortune, he was doomed to this laborious task for eternity.The...

Hong Kong authorities detected African swine fever in a wild boar for the first time on Friday, sparking concern among local pig farmers that the deadly disease could spread to their herds.The carcass of the infected animal was found at Cape Collinso...

In an unprecedented session attended by more than 200 university students and secondary school pupils in Hong Kong on Friday, eight of them asked questions of three astronauts – Liu Boming, Nie Haisheng and Tang Hongbo in space – and senior Chine...

Beijing has rebuffed American calls to make more public pledges on climate change before a UN climate summit in November, insisting it should follow its own plan rather than bowing to US pressure, according to a person familiar with the two countries...

Hong Kong’s education minister has insisted there was “not a significant drop” in the number of pupils enrolled in primary schools, although official figures show more than 60 classes have been cut citywide amid a wave of emigration over the pa...

Apple Inc said on Friday it would take more time to collect feedback and improve proposed child safety features after the criticism of the system on privacy and other grounds both inside and outside the company.Apple’s promise last month to check U...

When a little-known Chinese blogger described Beijing’s recent regulatory crackdowns as a “profound revolution”, the article went viral in no time. But media operators have pushed back, slamming the argument as “misleading” and “exaggerat...

Lithuania on Friday recalled its ambassador to China following the Baltic country’s decision in July to allow self-governing Taiwan to open an office in its capital under its own name.The foreign ministry said ambassador Diana Mickeviciene had been...

Authorities in central Poland are investigating the mushroom poisoning of an Afghan family evacuated from Kabul last month, including two boys who died after the family made soup from death cap mushrooms they found in a Polish forest.A six-year-old b...

A senior cadre with a background in poverty alleviation work will take over as head of the Communist Party’s human resources unit in the sensitive Xinjiang region, according to a government source.Zhang Zhu is the latest senior official to be sent ...

Banning e-cigarettes and similar smoking products in Hong Kong will do little to encourage people who use heated tobacco products to give up the habit, a survey suggests, with nine out of 10 users saying they will simply switch to regular cigarettes....

As New Delhi anxiously looks on at a new Taliban regime in Afghanistan, early signs are emerging that its worries are set to multiply, especially in the troubled Jammu & Kashmir region.On Thursday, the Taliban said it had “the right to raise our vo...

Smartphone makers in China, most of whom currently rely on imported chips, are expected to see rising costs as major chip foundries, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Samsung Electronics rush to raise wafer prices amid a...

The radical Civic Passion political party known for advocating Hong Kong localism disbanded on Friday following the unseating of its chairman from the Legislative Council last week and the resignations of two district councillors.Chairman Cheng Chung...

Hong Kong police arrested a 15-year-old boy on Thursday on suspicion of indecently assaulting two teenage girls in separate incidents in the space of 15 minutes.The attacks took place in two different buildings on the same public housing estate in Sa...

Further cases of economic data fraud by local governments in China have been reported by the country’s top anti-corruption agency following a two-year investigation.The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) conducted two separate rounds of statistica...

The failure of an American intelligence report to determine how the virus that causes Covid-19 emerged has not stopped a backlash against it from China, as the search for the origins of the novel coronavirus has become caught up in tensions between t...

International schools in Hong Kong will have to raise the Chinese national emblem higher than any other country’s symbol during flag-raising ceremonies, education authorities have said.At the Legislative Council on Friday, the Education Bureau also...

President Vladimir Putin said Russia is setting up a tax-free zone to attract investment to four islands at the centre of a decades-long territorial dispute with Japan.“We are creating an unprecedented set of benefits and incentives on the Kuril Is...

Ensuring equal opportunities for all is how Hong Kong officials hope to alleviate poverty in the city, the finance chief has said, even though that differs from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s idea of achieving common prosperity.Financial Secretary ...

Afghanistan will continue to participate in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the Taliban have said, expressing hopes to rely on Beijing’s investment and support to rebuild the war-ravaged country while promising to protect Chinese interests ther...

Singapore will this month begin administering Covid-19 booster shots for certain residents, officials confirmed on Friday, as governments around the world weigh the need for a third vaccine dose.Trade minister Gan Kim Yong, who co-chairs Singapore’...

A new stock exchange planned for Beijing could provide a financial lifeline for innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that have often struggled to access financing, as Chinese President Xi Jinping seeks to further develop the mainland�...

Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar will lead a new Afghan government set to be announced soon, sources in the Islamist group said on Friday, as its fighters battled forces loyal to the vanquished republic in the Panjsher Valley north of Kabul.The new ...