Former defence minister Shigeru Ishiba is considering backing vaccination minister Taro Kono in the race for the leader of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), broadcaster TV Asahi said on Monday, without citing sources.Ishiba is popular ...

Alibaba Foundation, the charity backed by the world’s largest e-commerce group, has updated its philanthropic strategy to align with the Chinese government’s call for “common prosperity” and help narrow the nation’s wealth gap.The 10-year-o...

Britain’s senior climate change official has said he is looking forward to working with China towards a “successful multilateral outcome” at the next round of global climate talks, to be held in Glasgow in November.Alok Sharma, a British govern...

A new coronavirus variant that could be more vaccine resistant was detected over the summer by Hong Kong authorities after first being found in South America.Local health officials say the city has imposed stringent measures, including testing, conta...

More than 5,500 people, ranging from triad leaders to children as young as 11, were rounded up in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong province during a joint operation that spanned June to August, police revealed on Monday.The annual crackdown targeting t...

Taiwan could get up to 9 million doses of BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine this year, the founder of Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn said on Monday, laying out a delivery timetable for a vaccine order that became heavily politicised.Taiwan had blamed mainl...

China’s embassy in Guinea issued security warnings to its nationals in the West African country after special forces claimed to have seized power over the government in an apparent coup.The Chinese mission called on its citizens in the country to b...

Germany’s ambassador to China Jan Hecker – a confidant of Chancellor Angela Merkel – has died only a few days after taking up his post, Berlin’s foreign office said on Monday.“It is with deep sadness and dismay that we learned of the sudden...

Medical experts and critics of Tokyo hosting the 2020 Olympic Games have condemned the financial and material waste linked to the event, although many said they were not surprised.The organising committee for the Games last week issued an apology for...

The United Arab Emirates has announced a new class of visas, the latest step in a series of moves aimed at attracting talent and boosting growth.“Green Visas” will allow expatriates to apply for work without being sponsored by an employer, target...

Chinese health officials have called for an investigation into whether Covid-19 could have arrived in the country via frozen food, a theory that has prompted widespread international scepticism as Beijing faces mounting pressure to do more to help fi...

Covid-19’s Mu variant, which is potentially more resistant to vaccines, has not yet entered the Hong Kong community, a government coronavirus adviser has said, a success another expert credited to the city’s “zero-infection” strategy and toug...

The Taliban said on Monday it had taken control of Panjshir province north of Kabul, the Afghan capital. The province was the last holdout of anti-Taliban forces in the country and the only province the Taliban had not seized during their sweep last ...

Environmental protection group Greenpeace East Asia has found several workshops storing “waste mountains” in Hong Kong’s New Territories, breaching air pollution rules or suspected to be handling hazardous material illegally.Most are on “brow...

When Malaysian retirees Adeline Chang and Zai Saimon began volunteering with a tiny non-profit group called The Lost Food Project in 2016, they never imagined the scale of their work on behalf of the poor could be tangibly measured – let alone in t...

I suspect that those anticipating Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s swansong policy address scheduled for next month are not so much interested to see what the chief executive has planned for the city but rather, whether Lam would be dropping any hints ...

Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Authority needs more land, not money, from the government to do a better job of boosting the city’s housing supply, according to chairman Chow Chung-kong.Having the necessary land would free the statutory body to build h...

The Taliban on Sunday pledged to guarantee the safety of humanitarian workers and aid access in Afghanistan in a meeting with the United Nations humanitarian chief in Kabul, a UN spokesman said.Martin Griffiths was in the Afghan capital on Sunday for...

Police arrested 14 protesters and about 50 people were injured during clashes on Sunday as the new head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro was inaugurated.Bishop Joanikije arrived by helicopter under the protection of police who dispersed p...

The plan was launched three years ago with the goal of protecting a quarter of China’s land and sea areas and reversing some of the air and water pollution brought about by breakneck growth.Using a series of “red lines”, various zones were dema...

Libyan authorities on Sunday released one of Muammar Gaddafi’s sons after more than seven years of detention in the capital of Tripoli following his extradition from neighbouring Niger.Mohamed Hamouda, a spokesman for the transitional government, s...

A World Cup qualifier between Brazil and Argentina was suspended on Sunday after Brazilian health officials objected to the participation of three Argentine players they say broke quarantine rules.Officials with Brazil’s health regulator Anvisa wal...

Australia’s government should increase its efforts to phase out coal or else climate change will dramatically damage the country’s economy, Selwin Hart, the United Nations special adviser on climate change, said on Sunday.Australia’s reliance o...

Israel says it will soon reopen its gates to foreign tour groups – even as it battles one of the world’s highest rates of coronavirus infections.The country’s tourism ministry on Sunday said it will begin allowing organised tour groups into the...

Guinean special forces seized power in a coup on Sunday, arresting the president and imposing an indefinite curfew in the poor west African country.“We have decided, after having taken the president, to dissolve the constitution,” said a uniforme...

The health ministers of the world's 20 leading economies have agreed to work towards more equity in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines at a Sunday meeting in Rome on the next steps in the effort to contain the coronavirus.The conditions are in pla...

As two Canadians mark 1,000 days in separate Chinese prisons, their supporters are marching Ottawa to push for their freedom.Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were detained in China in what critics labelled “hostage politics” after Cana...

Taliban militants have allegedly killed a pregnant woman who worked as a police officer in Afghanistan’s western province of Ghor before the militia took control of the country, sources said on Sunday.Negarah, who was a prison worker, was killed in...

South Africa’s jailed former president Jacob Zuma has been placed on medical parole because of his ill health, the government’s correctional services department said on Sunday.Last month prison authorities said Zuma, serving a 15-month sentence i...

America’s “ignominious exit” from Afghanistan reflects, according to one US columnist, “the failure of America’s foreign policy establishment at both prediction and policymaking”. Although probably not as spectacular, another US foreign p...

Singer Sarah Harding, whose group Girls Aloud was one of Britain’s most successful female bands, died on Sunday just over a year after revealing she had breast cancer. She was 39.Her mother Marie announced the news on Instagram, alongside a black-a...

Described as the “foundation” that will determine China’s “strength and its future position in the world”, manufacturing is once again taking over as the main engine of economic growth that could help challenge the United States as the worl...

The remaining directors of Next Digital, founded by jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, have tendered their resignations and called for the company’s liquidation to pay former staff and creditors after a crackdown by authorities made it imposs...

Tens of thousands of farmers rallied near India’s capital on Sunday, vowing to remain defiant against the government over controversial agriculture laws they say will destroy their livelihoods.Chanting “farmer, labourer, unity!”, the men and wo...

A former aide to Prince Charles has temporarily stepped down from his role heading a charity founded by the British heir after newspaper revelations about his links to a Saudi businessman.The Prince’s Foundation said chief executive Michael Fawcett...

The withdrawal of Hong Kong’s wealthiest man, Li Ka-shing, from the race to join the revamped Election Committee reflects behind-the-scenes efforts by Beijing to reduce the political clout of the city’s tycoons, according to insiders.The richest ...

The deadly terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, prompted an outcry from around the world: “We are all Americans.” But before the dust had settled around the World Trade Centre, Washington’s policies had realigned a...

When was Wang Wentao born, and where was he educated?Wang Wentao was born in the city of Nantong in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu in May 1964.He graduated from Fudan University in Shanghai in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, b...

At least four paramilitary soldiers were killed and 20 wounded in a suicide attack in the southwest of Pakistan on Sunday, officials said, part of a spike in attacks on security forces in recent weeks as neighbouring Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.T...

Hollywood star Nicole Kidman, who caused an outcry when she was exempted from strict quarantine rules upon arriving in Hong Kong for a shoot last month, has reportedly left the city.The star had been in town filming the new Amazon drama Expats, but w...

Migrant workers’ groups and employment agencies have accused the Hong Kong government of discriminating against foreign domestic helpers by only allowing them to use one designated quarantine hotel when they arrive in the city.Thirty-six quarantine...

What is Mofcom?China’s Ministry of Commerce (Mofcom) was established in March 2003 as part of an all-around institutional reorganisation conducted by the State Council, the country’s top administrative body.Forming the ministry was a move to help...

A long-running current affairs show that has been popular for facilitating public debate is getting the axe after 41 years on the air following a programming decision by Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK, the Post has learned.City Forum, which first ...

Taiwan’s air force scrambled on Sunday in response to renewed mainland Chinese military activity, with its defence ministry reporting that 19 aircraft including nuclear-capable bombers had flown into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone.Taiwa...

Almost a third of former Chinese lawyers and judges who continued to practise law were found to have violated the rules on conflicts of interest in a crackdown targeting the legal sector. The campaign was part of a wider drive to clean up the judici...

Hong Kong’s stringent quarantine requirements have created a brand new and growing market for pandemic-battered cruise operator Genting Hong Kong: expats who are unable to travel.In the last month Dream Cruises, one of the lines owned by Genting, h...

Police in Indian-controlled Kashmir charged family members of late resistance leader Syed Ali Geelani under a harsh anti-terror law for raising anti-India slogans and wrapping his body in the Pakistani flag, officials said on Sunday.Geelani, who died...

When Indonesia’s foreign minister Retno Marsudi met her American counterpart Antony Blinken in Washington last month, she remarked that Jakarta had entered a “new era of bilateral relations” with the United States.This indication of closer ties...

Hong Kong confirmed eight new Covid-19 infections on Sunday, but while all were imported, two of the patients had been in the community during their incubation period.The pair, a 60-year-old man and a 43-year-old woman, tested positive on arrival aft...

Britain should drop sanctions on Chinese officials, pipe down on human rights, and stop taking its talking points from the Trump wing of the US Republican Party, according to former business secretary Sir Vince Cable, one of a small coterie of politi...