Hong Kong’s leader has back-pedalled on a suggestion that the city’s main provider of public housing pay cash handouts to those on its years-long waiting list, but kept up pressure on the body to accelerate the delivery of new homes by taking adv...

The 63-year-old company director of three Hong Kong beauty chains that closed abruptly last month was arrested on Tuesday morning by customs officials for wrongly accepting payments worth HK$30 million for services never provided.While customs did no...

China will donate 1.5 billion yuan (US$232.5 million) to set up a new fund to help developing countries conserve biodiversity, President Xi Jinping has pledged at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15).“China will take the lead and cont...

A Taiwanese official has asked Australia to support its bid to join the CPTPP pan-Pacific trade pact, which China opposes, saying Taiwan can boost hi-tech trade flows and demand for Australian minerals.Support for Taiwan’s bid would also “send a ...

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has thanked mainland Chinese officials for their recent outreach efforts to local residents, but suggested the results of a survey they conducted is likely to confirm facts already known to the administrati...

Widely available marijuana once drew thousands of hippies to Nepal, where its use was not only accepted but embedded in both the culture and religion.But the country followed other nations in outlawing marijuana in the late 1970s and chased away the ...

Packed bars, few masks and almost no restrictions – in Serbia it seems the pandemic is over. But it’s a cruel illusion, as the Balkan country currently tops the global charts for infection rates.Despite having a variety of jabs available, the cou...

The British government waited too long to impose a lockdown in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, missing a chance to contain the disease and leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths, a parliamentary report concluded Tuesday.In a damning asse...

Relaxed containment measures and loosened restrictions on cross-border travel overseas pose new challenges for China, which has so far managed to contain the Covid-19 pandemic this year, according to Chinese Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan.In a meeting with...

Close to two-thirds of public health facilities in Afghanistan are facing a shortage of medicine, while 63 per cent of their staff have not been paid for the past four months, a new survey has revealed.The study, carried out last month by Integrity W...

At least nine people were killed and 11 others were missing after heavy rain across the Philippines flooded villages and triggered landslides, authorities said on Tuesday.Severe Tropical Storm Kompasu drenched swathes of the most populous island of L...

A manhunt is under way after a Hong Kong taxi driver was killed in the early morning hours, allegedly struck in the neck with a hard object during a dispute in Sai Wan.A force spokeswoman said a few residents called police at 4.54am reporting they ha...

Hong Kong’s leader offered a spirited defence of her administration’s contentious quarantine policy on Tuesday, arguing it was precisely the city’s tough coronavirus pandemic measures that allowed residents to continue living and working largel...

At least 15 people have died during unseasonably heavy rain and flooding in northern China’s Shanxi province earlier this month, local officials said on Tuesday, after the normally dry region received three months’ rain in one week.The flooding h...

No fewer than eight of this year’s 13 Nobel winners were American citizens, extending a historic trend tied to the strength of US academia and its ability to attract top world talent.American universities consistently dominate “Global top 100” ...

With Taiwan often seen as a potential trigger for “hot conflict” between Beijing and Washington, a crucial question is whether the nuclear-armed powers know what level of pressure is just right as both try and lay down firm markers amid their fla...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing.The Hong Kong Observatory is expected to raise its No 8 warning signal at or before 5.20pm on Tuesday and all ...

Faster than a speeding bullet, change is coming to the Superman comics.Jon Kent, the son of original Superman Clark Kent and journalist Lois Lane, turns out to be bisexual in DC Comics’ latest iteration of the superhero’s adventures.The young man...

The Chinese military warned of its determination to crush any attempt to separate Taiwan from mainland China on Tuesday, after it carried out beach landing and assault drills in the province directly across the sea from the island.A PLA Daily comment...

The rift between the two of the richest men on Earth continues to grow after SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk again took to Twitter and remind Jeff Bezos that the gap between the two of them is growing.Musk's wealth increased rapidly over the last ...

An interpreter who helped rescue US President Joe Biden in a 2008 Afghan snowstorm has escaped Afghanistan with his family after hiding from the Taliban for weeks, the State Department confirmed on Monday.After crossing into Pakistan over land, Aman ...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has blamed the United States for tensions on the peninsula and accused South Korea of hypocrisy, state media reported on Tuesday, as he opened an exhibition showcasing his nuclear-armed country’s weapons.The US is th...

From five-star hotels to stand-alone restaurants and streetside cafes, Japanese cuisine is catching on in India as more of the country’s food lovers and chefs experiment with sushi and other favourites.The growing popularity can be seen in famed Ja...

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Christopher Cadelago and Laura Barron-Lopez on politico.com on October 11, 2021.In a focus group last week, Pennsylvania Democrats one after another articul...

Beijing pledged to roll out a more ambitious national action plan on biodiversity conservation, as it launched its presidency of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) on Monday.“We will compose a national strategy and action plan for b...

The revelation that most of the newly-hired teachers at a high school in China hold PhD degrees has triggered a national debate about the intensely competitive job market and the national obsession with higher academic qualifications.Among the seven ...

Indonesian police have seized 35kg of the high explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP) – also known as “The Mother of Satan” by terrorist groups – from a mountain hideout in West Java following a tip-off from a convicted militant who had been...

With barely six months to go until Hong Kong chooses its next leader, residents still do not know with any certainty who is running. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor is expected to seek a second term but has so far refused to confirm her ca...

Thailand plans to fully reopen to vaccinated tourists from countries deemed low risk from November 1, the country’s leader said on Monday, citing the urgent need to save the kingdom’s ailing economy.Before the pandemic, Thailand attracted nearly ...

Chinese scientists say they have tested a monitoring device in the South China Sea that can improve detection of underwater currents believed to be a big danger to submarines.In a paper in the domestic peer-reviewed journal Earth Science Frontiers on...

A twin-engine plane that killed at least two people and left a swath of destruction in a San Diego suburb nose-dived into the ground after repeated warnings that it was flying dangerously low, according to a recording.The Cessna 340 smashed into a UP...

Twenty-four new countries – including Germany, Canada, France, Israel, Japan, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines – have joined an initiative of the EU and the US to reduce emissions of climate-damaging methane.The expansion of the pact was ann...

The political movement of Iraq’s influential Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr on Monday said it had retained the biggest share of seats in the country’s parliament, after elections with a record low voter turnout.A Sadrist official who asked not to be ...

Moderna has no plans to share the recipe for its Covid-19 vaccine because executives have concluded that scaling up the company’s own production is the best way to increase the global supply, the company’s chairman said Monday.In an interview wit...

The trial of 14 people accused of plotting the assassination of Burkina Faso’s former president Thomas Sankara started on Monday, 34 years after he was gunned down in one of the most infamous killings in modern African history.Sankara – a charism...

Prince Charles, a lifelong environmentalist who has championed organic gardening and runs one of his cars on white wine and cheese, has urged world leaders to turn talk into action at the upcoming UN climate summit.Queen Elizabeth’s eldest son and ...

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday slammed the Taliban’s “broken” promises to Afghan women and girls, and urged the world to donate more money to Afghanistan to head off its economic collapse.The comments came on the he...

Federal prosecutors asked on Monday that a US Navy engineer remain locked up as they press forward with charges that he tried to sell submarine secrets to a foreign country.The detention memo for Jonathan Toebbe was filed ahead of an expected appeara...

A stream of red-hot lava gushing from the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Spanish island of La Palma engulfed a cement plant on Monday, raising a thick cloud of smoke and prompting authorities to order people in the area into lockdown.The local emergency...

Israeli politicians flanked by former US president Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law launched an initiative in Jerusalem on Monday to advance the Abraham Accords that saw Arab states normalise ties with Israel.Jared Kushner, a former White Hou...

A 35-year-old female doctor died after being found unconscious in a hospital ward with a used syringe next to her on Monday morning, Hong Kong authorities said.Police confirmed they received a report at 8.51am from Pok Oi Hospital in Yuen Long that t...

Hong Kong’s biggest opposition party appears set to skip the coming Legislative Council election, with none of its members stepping forward to run as an internal deadline for applications came and went.The party had set a two-week application perio...

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday recommended that immunocompromised people be given an additional dose of Covid-19 vaccine, due to their higher risk of breakthrough infections after standard immunisation.The Strategic Advisory Group of E...

Chinese President Xi Jinping plans to conduct a telephone call with European Council President Charles Michel on Friday, according to an EU official familiar with the plan.Following a meeting of the European Union‘s 27 leaders last week, at which t...

Wang Sicong, the son of Dalian Wanda Group’s billionaire founder and an outspoken social media personality with 40 million followers, has opened fire on Meituan’s data policies just as the country’s dominant food delivery service is grappling w...

Beijing’s top agency in Hong Kong has prepared a to-do list for the local administration and its own officials to improve the city’s governance based on a recent outreach drive, as a deputy director promised more of such programmes to gauge publi...

China’s military said on Monday it had carried out beach landing and assault drills in the province directly across the sea from Taiwan, though it did not link the exercises to current tensions with Taipei.Taiwan has complained of stepped-up milita...

Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines from the United States and Britain will spark a complex naval competition in the Indo-Pacific above and below the water, according to analysts.The announcement of the Aukus pact and the plan by ...

Hong Kong may need to follow in Macau’s footsteps and set up a suspension mechanism for quarantine-free travel with mainland China when the border fully reopens, a government pandemic adviser has said, meaning just one local Covid-19 case could tri...

China Evergrande Group’s electric vehicle arm said it still planned to have its first Hengchi-branded car ready for delivery early in 2022, even as the parent company battles to stay afloat amid a cash crisis that has crippled production.Liu Yongzh...