While people are now able to travel freely in Australia’s more populated east, Covid-free Western Australia will maintain its tight restrictions into next year, state leaders said on Friday.Western Australia is the largest state, covering a third o...

Residents of India’s capital New Delhi woke up under a blanket of toxic smog and breathed in the most dangerously polluted air of the year so far on Friday, the morning after Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, after revellers defied a fireworks ...

Thousands of intelligence officers could soon face dismissal for failing to comply with the US government’s vaccine mandate, leading some Republican lawmakers to raise concerns about removing employees from agencies critical to national security.Se...

Kaisa Group Holdings is selling assets to raise capital for liabilities including a missed payment on a wealth product and US$11 billion of dollar bonds, as it faces a hectoring by Shenzhen’s government and the trading of its stocks were halted in ...

US Republicans have introduced legislation to provide an annual US$2 billion in foreign military financing to bolster Taiwan’s defences as the self-ruled island faces mounting pressure from Beijing. The legislation would authorise grants and loa...

Sudan’s army chief on Thursday ordered the release of four civilian ministers detained since he led a military coup last month, as international pressure mounted to restore the democratic transition.The move by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan came a...

The risk of a nuclear submarine collision in the South China Sea is growing as the PLA and US navies step up deployment in the contested waters, a Chinese researcher has warned.Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studie...

A commando of drug gang gunmen on Thursday stormed ashore at a beach on Mexico’s resort-studded Caribbean coast in front of luxury hotels and executed two drug dealers from a rival gang.The dramatic shooting attack sent tourists scrambling for cove...

A study released on Friday by an Australian university looking at multiple catastrophes hitting the Great Barrier Reef has found for the first time that only 2 per cent of its area has escaped bleaching since 1998, then the world’s hottest year on ...

Hong Kong’s top court on Friday declared that male indigenous villagers have a constitutionally protected right to build small houses, ending the debate on the legality of the controversial policy.Applicant Kwok Cheuk-kin had argued that the small-...

After cheating death in a New Delhi car accident 10 years ago, Tan Poh Lee decided in 2015 to quit her job as a partner at a multinational law firm and start a non-profit-making organisation in Hong Kong serving the elderly.Mighty Oaks hopes to next ...

An online celebrity pet dog was sold at over 160,000 yuan (US$25,000) at an auction in China, which was extended for five hours due to huge public interest.The eight-year-old shiba inu was put up for auction by the Chaoyang District Court in Beijing,...

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong has urged the government to reconsider its plan to pass a fake news law, as a survey found that more than 80 per cent of responding members believed press freedom in the city had deteriorated.Of the 99 ...

After leaders of 20 of the world’s biggest economies endorsed a global minimum tax of 15 per cent on large multinational businesses, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong flagged the city state’s concerns about drawing in foreign investment.Si...

Opening arguments begin on Friday in the trial of three white men charged with the shooting death of a black jogger amid controversy over the selection of just one African-American juror for the high-profile case.Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley...

The number of child abuse cases reported in Hong Kong in the first nine months of the year has jumped by two-thirds compared with the same period in 2020, police have said.Authorities attributed the increase to societal changes brought on by the coro...

This is the third and final part of a series on challenges China faces in its battle against Covid-19. Here, Zhuang Pinghui looks at the impact of its strict pandemic controls on foreign businesses and employees, and by extension its own economy.Afte...

The United States wants to start talks with China about its nuclear arms programme, the US State Department said on Thursday, after a Pentagon determination that Beijing was expanding its arsenal faster than previously thought.In a report released on...

In the 1998 Hollywood blockbuster Armageddon, Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck race to save the Earth from being pulverised by an asteroid.While the Earth faces no such immediate danger, Nasa plans to crash a spacecraft travelling at a speed of 24,000km/...

Metaverse, the concept of a shared virtual environment that users access via the internet, is gathering momentum in China, as Baidu and NetEase join other Big Tech firms in applying for trademarks related to this field amid concerns over the risks in...

Scientists identified a specific gene that doubles the risk of respiratory failure from Covid-19 and may go some way to explaining why some ethnic groups are more susceptible to severe disease than others.Researchers from the University of Oxford fou...

Vancouver City Councillor Melissa De Genova was walking through the ground floor of City Hall, pushing her baby daughter in a stroller, when she was approached by a man carrying an open shopping bag, filled with bundles of cash.“I could clearly see...

China’s bid to join the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA) could put the country at the strategic forefront of world trade and provide an impetus for the formation of another major economic pact hot on the heels of other deals, such as th...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday vowed to back Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko against foreign “interference”, as the two signed a series of agreements on closer integration.Speaking during a televised video meeting with Luk...

A Russian analyst who contributed to a dossier of Democratic-funded research into ties between Russia and Donald Trump was indicted Thursday on charges of lying to the FBI about his sources of information.The case against Igor Danchenko is part of sp...

The US Navy announced on Thursday that it has fired two senior officials deemed responsible for a recent mishap involving the USS Connecticut submarine in the South China Sea, shortly after a top military official said it was looking to hold individu...

Amid intense jockeying between Washington and Beijing, the United Nations Human Rights Council remains one of the few institutions where the two giants are forced to listen to each other, says its president, Nazhat Shameem Khan.The United States was ...

Spanish police have dismantled a smuggling ring suspected of bringing hundreds of Pakistani migrants into the European Union overland in “life-threatening conditions”, officials said on Thursday.The smuggling group took Pakistanis from camps in B...

Chinese President Xi Jinping criticised protectionism and unilateralism on Thursday, promising to address concerns about China’s trade practices as the country seeks to join a Pacific Rim trade bloc.“China supports the reform of the World Trade O...

China is focusing on developing more submarine-launched and ground-based nuclear missiles amid increasing pressure from the United States, Chinese defence analysts have said.A report released by the Pentagon on Wednesday said China had expanded its n...

China is taking the lead in expanding global trade as the world’s biggest trade pact takes effect, leaving behind an increasingly protectionist United States, trade experts say.The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), comprising 15 m...

Ren Zhengfei, the 77-year-old founder and chief executive of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co, told employees that peace can only be achieved through battle, and that they should fight for a day when “no one dares to bully us...

UN climate conference host Britain said 77 countries had pledged to phase out coal, dirtiest of the fossil fuels that drive global warming, as a study showed the carbon dioxide they release into the atmosphere had rebounded to near pre-pandemic level...

Google on Thursday marked what would have been the 88th birthday of the father of fibre optics and Hong Kong’s only Nobel laureate, the late professor Charles Kao Kuen, with an illustration on its homepage depicting the prizewinner in physics along...

A 4-month-old Chinese girl was taken to hospital on Thursday and is receiving a check-up after a viral video of her living in squalor brought into question how social service programmes should handle impoverished families who nevertheless raise a hea...

Apple was ordered to pay 12 million yuan (US$1.9 million) to a Chinese online publisher in an initial ruling handed down by the Tianjin Binhai People’s Court on Monday, months after the country’s highest court decided against the US technology gi...

A Hong Kong pharmacologist has said no evidence existed to conclusively prove the Sinovac vaccine against Covid-19 caused a heart blockage that killed a chronically ill man but acknowledged the jab could be a potential factor that accelerated his dea...

The rising number of cases of Covid-19 in Europe is of “grave concern” and the region could see another half a million deaths by early next year, the World Health Organization warned on Thursday.With 78 million cases in the WHO’s European regio...

Abraham Razack, the longest-serving lawmaker in Hong Kong, is likely to drop his re-election bid in the real estate constituency and give way to the son of Legislative Council president Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen, the Post has learned.The move, which mig...

The United Nations has passed a draft resolution submitted by China calling for peaceful cooperation on international security, the first arms control resolution proposed by Beijing in its 30 years as a member state. The resolution, titled “Promot...

Mainland China’s capital market, including both equities and bonds, will more than triple in size in the next decade to US$100 trillion, with Hong Kong playing a vital gateway role, according to the head of the city’s bourse operator.“The role ...

Britain on Thursday became the first country in the world to approve a potentially game-changing Covid-19 antiviral pill jointly developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, in a boost to the fight against the pandemic.The Medicines and Healthca...

Unisoc, China’s largest designer of chips for mobile phones, is quickly emerging as a rising power in the global market, as it seeks to challenge the dominance of traditional players such as Taiwan’s MediaTek and US giant Qualcomm.The Shanghai-ba...

Hong Kong television star Mat Yeung Ming has been jailed for 18 days, disqualified from driving for two years and fined HK$2,000 (US$257) over a car crash in Mid-Levels last year.But the 40-year-old TVB actor was immediately released on Thursday on H...

Excessive copying from set text was the most common mistake made by Hong Kong students in the English paper for the university entrance exams, officials have said, while weaker candidates struggled to remember English numbers correctly during a liste...

A German court sentenced a woman to life in jail on Thursday for killing five of her six children, in a case prosecutors described as particularly “malicious”.The 28-year-old mother, identified only as Christiane K., was found guilty of drowning ...

A visiting European Parliament delegation said on Thursday it was seeking to learn from Taiwan how to counter threats and interference from Beijing.The unprecedented visit has infuriated Beijing with the mainland’s foreign ministry slamming “cert...

China’s vegetable production is “basically normal” and it has enough wheat to meet demand for one and a half years, agriculture officials said on Thursday, in a further effort to reassure the public there is no need to worry about shortages.Sho...