Delhi-based journalist Meena Kotwal knows all about how the ancient prejudices surrounding caste continue to affect the lives of people in modern India.The 32-year-old, who runs a YouTube channel called The Mooknayak, or “leader of the voiceless”...

Research and development spending made up a record 2.4 per cent of China’s economy in 2020, according to government statistics, moving closer to levels of R&D intensity in other advanced economies as spending slowed down as a result of interruption...

Fossilised handprints of children from nearly 200,000 years ago were discovered in India and believed to be some of the world’s oldest art – providing evidence of the earliest human ancestors from the ice age.The impressions, likely of squished h...

A construction project near Beijing’s Forbidden City forced authorities to publicly debunk rumours that they had discovered one of China’s most famous lost artefacts.Last week, an excavator was spotted outside the Dong Hua Gate at night, sparking...

Property specialists have advocated measures such as reforming the town-planning process to ease Hong Kong’s housing woes, ahead of city leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s policy address on October 6.Shih Wing-ching, founder of one of the city�...

Delivering vaccines to Myanmar’s junta, but also to rebel groups that are the generals’ sworn enemies, China is playing both sides to fight the coronavirus and strengthen its hand in the messy politics of its southern neighbour.Beijing has alread...

Quan Hongchan exhaled and walked towards the end of the platform in the Xian Olympic Sports Centre for her final dive. Barely glancing at the pool 10 metres below, she turned around, balancing on the platform’s edge.Her back to the water, she spran...

Australia plans to open its international border by Christmas at the latest, unwinding one of the world’s strictest controls on overseas travel since the pandemic began.Australians will be able to travel abroad, with no restrictions on the destinat...

Hong Kong’s Covid-19 vaccination centres marked a lukewarm response on Wednesday with only a few first-time jab recipients showing up for a newly launched walk-in service aimed at boosting the city’s lagging inoculation rate.At about noon, the fa...

Isko Moreno, the popular mayor of the Philippines’ capital, said on Wednesday he will run for president in next year’s elections, the latest aspirant in what is expected to be a crowded race to succeed controversial leader Rodrigo Duterte.A child...

Hong Kong immigrants under the British National (Overseas) scheme are more likely to rent when they first set foot in the United Kingdom than rushing into buying residential property, brokers said.They are also unlikely to rush into purchase commitme...

France should not have been surprised that Australia cancelled a submarine contract, as major concerns about delays, cost overruns and suitability had been aired officially and publicly for years, Australian politicians said.Paris has recalled its am...

The Gurkhas are known for being among the most feared fighting men in the British and Indian armies. And, if London and New Delhi have their way, they could soon be known for being the most fearsome fighting women too.Both Britain and India had hoped...

A lack of international cooperation to compare vaccines will make it more difficult for China to come up with convincing data for future vaccines using new technologies or targeting new variants of Covid-19, although China is not alone, experts said....

The shifting tastes of China’s millennials and growing popularity of local brands means fast fashion retailers like H&M could have a tough sell ahead of them in the world’s second largest economy, as the Swedish company renews efforts to regain c...

Chinese state-sponsored hackers are believed to have infiltrated and stolen data from an Indian government agency and one of India’s largest media conglomerates, according to a new report by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future Inc. Both the governme...

The number of Covid-19 cases in China’s northeastern city Harbin rose to eight on Wednesday afternoon, according to the provincial health commission which reported five more cases.The city was already on high alert after recording three locally tra...

At a factory in China’s north, workers are busy testing an automated vehicle designed to move bulky items around industrial spaces, one of a new generation of robots Beijing wants to shift the country’s manufacturing up the value chain.The robot�...

Chinese consumer electronics firm Oppo, the world’s fourth-largest smartphone vendor in the past three quarters, has teamed up with Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson to pursue advances in 5G technology, with the goal to fill the void left b...

With only six per cent of junta-ruled Myanmar’s 54 million people vaccinated, the country’s shadow government is planning to channel much of its revenue from global crowdfunding campaigns towards inoculating as many residents as possible.The Nati...

Two activists based in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou – including one of China’s most well-known women’s rights campaigners, have lost contact with their friends, raising fears that the pair may have been detained by police.Friend Rober...

A rare earthquake rattled southeastern Australia early on Wednesday, shaking buildings, knocking down walls and sending panicked residents running into the streets of the country’s second-largest city.The shallow quake hit east of Melbourne just af...

China will launch its next manned space mission two days after National Day, with a woman astronaut among the crew to go into orbit to help build its new space station, sources said.Two sources familiar with China’s manned space programme said the ...

She lives in fear for herself and her young charges. The vulnerable children she cares for, in fact the entire household, are under the control of a terrifying man. She uses the threat of reporting to try to deter the father from more serious violenc...

Lithuania’s defence ministry recommended that consumers avoid buying Chinese mobile phones and advised people to throw away the ones they have now after a government report found the devices had built-in censorship capabilities.Flagship phones sold...

Bank of China (Hong Kong), the largest provider of financing for completed homes in the city, is teaming up with developers to offer cash rewards to mortgage applicants in residential developments with “green credentials.”The local unit of China�...

A body found in a US national park in Wyoming has been identified as Gabrielle “Gabby” Petito, the young woman who went missing during a road trip with her fiancé and that her death was a homicide, the FBI said on Tuesday.The confirmation is the...

The Taliban have asked to address world leaders at the United Nations in New York this week and nominated their Doha-based spokesman Suhail Shaheen as Afghanistan’s UN ambassador, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Tuesday.Taliban Foreign Min...

Espionage prosecutions in the US have punished Chinese and Asian defendants more severely, and may have falsely accused them more often than Western defendants, according to a new report.Sponsored by the Committee of 100 (C100), a non-profit organisa...

Delta has all but elbowed out the three other Covid-19 variants of concern, which now represent a tiny fraction of the samples being sequenced, the WHO said Tuesday.“Less than one per cent each of Alpha, Beta and Gamma are currently circulating. It...

Could the new Texas abortion law provide a road map for China’s anti-sanctions measures in Hong Kong? That’s not as far-fetched as it may seem.Texas recently enacted a law that allows private citizens to sue anyone who aids or abets an abortion o...

A US intelligence officer suffered symptoms linked to a series of suspected directed-energy attacks known as “Havana syndrome” while travelling with CIA Director William Burns in India this month.Experts are in the process of verifying the office...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Sam Sabin and Victoria Guida on politico.com on September 21, 2021.The US Treasury Department on Tuesday announced a crackdown on the use of digital currenc...

US President Joe Biden’s nominee to a post overseeing export policy on China said on Tuesday he sees Chinese telecoms firm Huawei Technologies Co as a national security threat and expects to keep the company on a trade blacklist unless “things ch...

A who’s who of Hong Kong showbiz talent joined top artists from mainland China, Taiwan and Macau to stage a concert in Shenzhen on Tuesday that featured many beloved Cantonese songs.The nearly three-hour Mid-Autumn Festival Concert in the Greater B...

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday reprimanded the world for the inequitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, describing it as an “obscenity” and giving the globe an “F in ethics”.“I am here to sound the alarm: T...

Beijing’s bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a multilateral trade pact covering modern issues such as digital trade, could prove complicated because of China’s new data security laws tha...

Families rushed to retrieve belongings from their homes and escape the advancing lava on Tuesday, as sirens sounded and helicopters flew overhead in air filled with smoke from an erupting volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma.One family of three ...

Chinese scientists have uncovered 142 bat coronaviruses related to the one that causes Sars, but none closely linked to the virus that causes Covid-19, according to the largest release of related research from within China since the start of the pand...

China moved closer to cracking the top 10 in the latest Global Innovation Index, with outstanding marks in hi-tech exports and patents. However, its overall score was held back by weaknesses in the institutional and regulatory environments. Hong Kon...

The leaders of the United States and China each pledged to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that they would help press the fight against virulent pandemics and global warming – even as they offered vastly different visions of the worl...

Around two-thirds of China’s overseas lending in the past decade posed risks to the environment, a new study has found.The findings highlight the need for the policy banks of China, a top source for global development finance, to build robust due d...

As the world grapples with the highly contagious and deadly Delta variant, the debate is heating up over whether vaccines alone can stop the Covid-19 pandemic.It is clear that vaccines can help to reduce deaths, as seen in a recent study by the Briti...

Two days after the Taliban seized Afghanistan’s Kabul last month, 26-year-old artist Sara took the terracotta plates she’d painted with images praising inspirational Afghan women – and hurled them to the ground.“Art, for me, was to be able to...

After more than 18 months of gloom brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival is lighting up Hong Kong, with illuminated installations springing up all around town.A glowing, three-dimensional moon 15 metres across sits...

For the most part, a series of articles in the main newspaper affiliated with the Communist Party’s top academy over the last three weeks read like the usual tributes to the country’s leader.Using interviews with former colleagues, Study Times, a...

Germany joined France on Tuesday in berating the United States for negotiating a security pact in secret with Australia and Britain that cost Paris a lucrative defence deal, while the EU’s top official said such behaviour was unacceptable.Germany�...

A Hong Kong group founded to support human rights lawyers in mainland China has announced it will disband, a decision coinciding with a deadline for the organisation to provide police with information requested on national security grounds.The China ...

Chinese consumers have pre-ordered millions of the new iPhone 13 across the country’s multiple e-commerce platforms, resulting in online traffic jams and viral social media discussions.Cupertino-based Apple last Friday opened pre-orders for its new...

Singapore’s Manpower Ministry on Tuesday said 18 people had been arrested over the past week on suspicion “of bringing foreigners” to the city state “on work passes obtained through false declarations”.The ministry last week mounted a 12-h...