At least eight people were killed and many were injured in a crush when fans surged toward the stage during the opening night of the Astroworld music festival on Friday in Houston, officials said.Houston fire chief Samuel Peña confirmed the casualty...

Hong Kong will be able to build 16,000 transitional homes by mid-2023, the city’s housing chief has revealed, accounting for 80 per cent of such flats the government has promised to provide.Secretary for Transport and Housing Frank Chan Fan deliver...

Hong Kong government vaccine experts have said they do not rule out the possibility of a fourth Covid-19 jab for residents, with the city rolling out third shots under its booster programme next week.The idea, raised by Professor David Hui Shu-cheong...

It’s a city of more than 5 million motorbikes, but Hanoi on Saturday opened its first ever urban railway line as authorities try to cut traffic and pollution that have long dogged the Vietnamese capital.After years of delays and a near-doubling of ...

It isn’t the smell of smoke that greets you when you walk through the doors of Lhasa, it’s the sight of it.Located beneath the Zabarwan hills and just across from Dal Lake, the partly open-air restaurant seems out of place among the eateries that...

Malaysia’s Smart Glove on Saturday said it was opposed to forced labour and committed to the well-being of its workers, after the United States banned imports from the rubber glove maker for alleged forced labour practices.The US Customs and Border...

Each time social worker Ivan Lin Wai-kiu has a new elderly client, it can take as much as an hour for him to understand the person’s health issues.“Sometimes they bring more than a dozen medical appointment slips and I have to ask why they are se...

The husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian held in Iran since 2016, vowed to maintain a hunger strike he started nearly two weeks ago to denounce the “complacency” of the British government and its failure to secure the release o...

China is a key driver of global sales of luxury goods, from expensive jewellery to private jets.While the global market for high-end products has taken a hit during the coronavirus pandemic, mainland China’s share of that pie has increased. Here’...

Almost two years after the coronavirus first struck the central Chinese city of Wuhan, life has largely returned to normal for most people in China.But Zhang Zhan’s battle is far from over. The 38-year-old citizen journalist and former lawyer remai...

For the first time in a dozen years, Duoduo could remember what it felt like to walk.Her legs were strapped into large modern splints, and a fabric brace supported her waist. Surrounding her was what appeared to be the exoskeleton of robotic legs.As ...

US Democrats on Friday rescued President Joe Biden’s faltering domestic agenda, passing a giant infrastructure package that is one of the pillars of his US$3 trillion economic vision after rebel moderates had earlier blocked a vote on his social we...

Pfizer is in discussions with 90 countries over supply contracts for its experimental Covid-19 pill, which was shown to reduce by 89 per cent the risk of hospitalisation or death in patients at high risk of severe illness.Chief executive officer Albe...

The risk of a possible conflict in the Taiwan Strait between China and the United States is rising as the US more clearly defines its defence ties with Taiwan, pushing Beijing to send more threatening signals, observers said.They said that even thoug...

Mox Bank, a virtual lender backed by Standard Chartered, has the best mobile banking app in Hong Kong and Asia but lags behind its Western peers, according to a study carried out by a management consultancy firm.Livi Bank, a virtual bank co-owned by ...

An international team of archaeologists and forensic experts will start excavating a site at Tai Tam Country Park later this month to unearth wreckage believed to be of a United States warplane shot down during the second world war.Local amateur hist...

With no public holidays to look forward to in November, it is often viewed as one of the most dreaded months in Hong Kong. And it’s going to be twice as hard this year, since we were somewhat spoiled by a dynamic October.Last month, apart from a co...

Malaysia’s elder statesman Mahathir Mohamad recently spoke to This Week in Asia on the New Economic Policy (NEP), the 50-year-old affirmative action programme that benefits the country’s majority Malays and aboriginal groups, known as “bumiputr...

An elderly man in Hong Kong died in what police said was a suicide after he fell onto the tracks at Mong Kok East MTR station on Saturday morning, leading to the suspension of train services for about an hour on the East Rail line.The 74-year-old man...

Hong Kong’s top court on Friday upheld the exclusive right of indigenous male villagers in the New Territories to build three-storey houses, ruling that the controversial small-house policy was constitutional in its entirety.Below, the Post unpacks...

On Monday, the Chinese Communist Party will kick off a four-day closed-door session that will be attended by hundreds of the most powerful people in the country. More than 370 full and alternate members of the Central Committee, the party’s highes...

A Chinese intelligence officer was on Friday convicted in US federal court of economic espionage in an alleged state-backed effort to steal technology from US and French aerospace firms, the Justice Department said.Xu Yanjun, an official in the Jiang...

A zoo in China was forced to take down a short video that showed a monkey smoking after the clip caused public outrage.But the zoo, located in Hengshui, Heibei province, northern China, on Thursday defended itself by saying the footage was made to ed...

Tap here to launch this special feature

Separated from her husband and estranged from their seven daughters in Hong Kong, retired cleaner Chan Yim-chun moved by herself to the mainland Chinese city of Zhongshan in 2000.She bought a 600 sq ft flat in a rural area of the city in Guangdong pr...

Firdaus Jesfrydi, 26, has a profile that makes him a perfect match for Malaysia’s majority affirmative action policy.The ethnic Malay grew up in a home in Sarawak with an annual household income of some 4,800 ringgit (US$1,200), and in 2013 won a s...

Marilia Mendonca, one of Brazil’s most popular singers and a Latin Grammy winner, died on Friday in an aeroplane crash on her way to a concert. She was 26.Mendonca’s press office confirmed her death in a statement, and said four other passengers ...

The popularity of a spreadsheet documenting long working hours at Chinese Big Tech companies has pushed censors to strip it from several domestic platforms and the team responsible for it to terminate the project after it had remained accessible on M...

New Zealand will not shy away from criticising China’s human rights record to protect its lucrative trade relationship with Beijing, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said in an interview.Ardern’s government has been accused of going easy on Chin...

China’s fourth Type 055 warship – its most advanced and largest destroyer – is expected to go into service next month, with more to follow in the next two years, according to sources.The stealth-guided missile destroyer will be the latest addit...

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday approved a framework to determine which US-listed Chinese companies fail to fully allow auditing inspection and, therefore, will be delisted from American capital markets.The US securities watchdog sai...

The astronauts who will depart the International Space Station on Sunday will be stuck using diapers on the way home because of their capsule’s broken toilet.Nasa astronaut Megan McArthur on Friday described the situation as “suboptimal” but ma...

It was a split second decision. Mirza Ali Ahmadi and his wife Suraya found themselves and their five children on August 19 in a chaotic crowd outside the gates of the Kabul airport in Afghanistan when a US soldier, from over the tall fence, asked if ...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has appointed a long-time diplomat to lead the investigation into dozens of cases of “Havana syndrome”, as the Biden administration struggles to get to the bottom of an illness that’s been called either an a...

Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg on Friday branded the UN climate summit in Glasgow a “failure” during a mass protest in the Scottish city demanding quicker action from leaders to address the emergency.Thunberg said that pledges from some nation...

Hong Kong’s security chief said minor surgery he had undergone for an elbow injury did not affect his work, after he was discharged from hospital on Saturday morning.Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung, 56, was the second senior official i...

The setbacks suffered by the Democrats in this week’s US elections may intensify the foreign policy pressures on Joe Biden even if they do not have a direct impact on the White House’s approach to China, Chinese diplomatic observers have said.The...

The US and China are not considering reopening closed consulates in each country, the White House said Friday, after a report that said the move was under consideration as part of an upcoming virtual meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese le...

China has formally arrested a former official who used to be in charge of the country’s secret police and also oversaw Hong Kong and Macau’s security matters.Sun Lijun, a former Chinese vice-minister of public security, had been placed under disc...

A Chinese LGBT advocacy group has suspended operations indefinitely and closed its social media accounts amid a nationwide tightening of social controls.LGBT Rights Advocacy China, a non-profit providing legal support for the LGBT community, announce...

German security services believe that a man found dead in a street outside the Russian embassy in Berlin last month was an undercover agent of Russia’s FSB intelligence service, Der Spiegel reported on Friday.The 35-year-old man’s body was found ...

At least 82,000 potential contacts of confirmed Covid-19 cases have been traced, according to a city government in western China, but the use of big data analysis to identify the contacts has sparked mixed feelings.From last Wednesday, some Chengdu r...

As Chinese and African leaders plan to meet in Dakar, Senegal, at the end of the month for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) the continent is eyeing better trade deals with the Asian economic giant.On Thursday, the Senegalese foreign affa...

TikTok owner ByteDance’s sweeping corporate restructuring, announced earlier this week, will put an end to the company’s aggressive expansion and herald a new era of consolidation for the world’s most valuable unicorn, said analysts.The reorgan...

The MTR Corporation has rejected all five bids for a large residential site in Tung Chung on Lantau Island after the plot elicited a cool response from Hong Kong’s developers.“[MTR] has decided not to accept any of the tender submissions [and] wi...

A trial of Pfizer’s experimental antiviral pill for Covid-19 was stopped early after the drug was shown to cut by 89 per cent the chances of hospitalisation or death for adults at risk of developing severe disease, the company said on Friday.The re...

A video showing a powerful Vietnamese official enjoying a bite of steak smothered in gold leaf at a luxury London restaurant has sparked online anger in the Southeast Asian country, where the average person earns a few dollars a day.To Lam, minister ...

Tencent Holdings, the social media and gaming giant, has announced packages for workers reaching retirement age, which is 60 for men and 55 for women in China, in a sign that China’s internet workforce is ageing along with the whole country.Employe...

China reported 68 new local Covid-19 cases across 11 provinces on Friday, down from Wednesday’s peak of 93 but with infections spreading to the northeastern province of Liaoning.Eight cases in the port city of Dalian were the first infections of th...

Two ex-directors of an engineering consultancy firm face up to seven years in jail after being charged with defrauding the Hong Kong government out of nearly HK$2 million (US$256,400) by allegedly covering up the falsification of test results on the ...