Eight years ago, when businessman BK heard a couple at a shop in Adelaide speaking his native Indian language, he enthusiastically introduced himself to them.But the other man’s smile vanished after BK gave his surname, which signified he belonged ...

Mainland China reported 75 new locally transmitted Covid-19 cases on Friday, including 61 new cases concentrated in Inner Mongolia, as the country continued to battle to keep the pandemic under control.The National Health Commission said in its daily...

The Internal Security Department (ISD) has released newly declassified details of terror plans by the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) organisation against about 80 targets in Singapore. These include previously unreleased statements by JI detainees and surveill...

Hong Kong’s elections chief has insisted the city is ready for this month’s Legislative Council poll a day after administrators acknowledged a misstep in which some electors were sent the wrong candidate information, while the agency policing the...

It is rare for China’s Communist Party to mention the Great Leap Forward, one of the darkest chapters of the Mao Zedong era, but an economic guru did so last month after the country’s push towards carbon neutrality was interrupted by power cuts.M...

An Italian man who wanted a coronavirus vaccine certificate without actually having the jab tried to play the system by presenting health workers with a fake arm, an official said on Friday.Despite the realistic skin colour, nobody was fooled by the ...

While overall income growth among many Chinese has yet to recover from the impact of the pandemic, demand among China’s lower-income groups is likely to remain subdued as pressure grows on the economy.Tina Tang, an administrative secretary at a sma...

A new mandate requiring the use of Hong Kong’s Covid-19 contact-tracing app at local restaurants from December 9 is likely to see exemptions made for children and the elderly, many of whom do not own smartphones, the city’s health chief and an in...

The upcoming debut of a Thailand-born K-pop star is drawing controversy as young Thais denounce her late father’s royalist activism.Sitala Wongkrachang, daughter of late Thai actor Sarunyoo Wongkrachang, became the centre of a social media controve...

The US delisting of Didi Chuxing could offer a test case for whether Chinese companies being investigated by Beijing would be welcomed in Hong Kong, which is ramping up stock market reforms to keep up with US bourses.Didi said on Friday on its Weibo ...

China’s population is expected to peak in 2021 and fall steadily in the foreseeable future in a turning point for the country’s population trajectory, according to James Liang, executive chairman of online travel platform Trip.com Group and renow...

Barbados officials on Friday were investigating how a man reportedly managed to board a commercial flight from the island nation to the US city of Miami with a loaded gun in his possession.Transportation Security Administration agents at Florida’s ...

Chinese Olympians on a three-day goodwill tour of Hong Kong finally got their chance to show residents exactly what they could do on Saturday as gold medal-winner Wang Zongyuan stepped onto a diving platform in Causeway Bay.The 20-year-old smiled, wa...

Primary and middle school children in China are to be targeted in new campaigns to nurture patriotism and love for the Communist Party.President Xi Jinping recently told a meeting of a policy implementation group known as the Central Comprehensively ...

The Omicron coronavirus variant spread in Australia on Saturday, testing plans to reopen the economy as a cluster in Sydney grew to 13 cases and an infection was suspected in the state of Queensland.Federal authorities are sticking with a plan to reo...

Can we truly love and miss someone we have never met? It’s certainly rare, but I think it’s possible.I’m not thinking of the unrequited love of a super fan, which can often verge on the obsessive. People can genuinely love a celebrity like they...

The Omicron variant of the virus that causes Covid-19 likely acquired at least one of its mutations by picking up a snippet of genetic material from another virus – possibly one that causes the common cold – present in the same infected cells, ac...

In this final instalment of a three-part series, Denise Tsang and Fiona Sun talk to Hongkongers from all walks of life – from business owners to those on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder – about how runaway inflation has eaten into th...

A Brazilian Supreme Court justice ordered on Friday that a probe be opened into President Jair Bolsonaro for having said during a live broadcast on multiple social media platforms in October that Covid-19 vaccines may raise the chance of contracting ...

“The voters didn’t get a chance to find us, because the police found us first,” Ye Jinghuan said of her third attempt to take part in China’s electoral process.The dissident had sought to get elected as a delegate representing people at the t...

An elderly woman in central China turned on her phone camera and pointed it to herself. “Good morning, everybody! I live by myself, and I am very lonely. I am 80 years old and, because I am still able to talk, I spend my lonely days making short vi...

Imagine a shared virtual world where you could socialise, game and live as an avatar, try out the latest fashions without ever leaving the comfort of your own home and use cryptocurrency to buy intangible representations of almost anything you liked,...

The poverty report released by the government last month was widely covered because of its dire finding that more than one in every five Hongkongers lived below the poverty line last year.This translates to a record-breaking 1.65 million people, alth...

The weekend arrest of Alvin Chau Cheuk-wa, the head of Macau’s biggest casino junket operator, over alleged links to illegal cross-border gambling is a shot across the bow to the city’s gambling industry, including its American casino operators, ...

The Omicron coronavirus variant has been detected in 38 countries but no deaths have yet been reported, the WHO said on Friday, as authorities worldwide rushed to stem the heavily mutated Covid-19 strain’s spread amid warnings that it could damage ...

For Marcus Khoo, perfumes and oil diffusers were never high on his shopping list. They would have sat idling in his online shopping cart, were it not for a hire-purchase instalment payment option that tipped the balance in his decision.Using a servic...

China is expected to hold a key annual economic meeting as early as next week, as it looks to set the policy tone for the country in 2022 amid swirling headwinds, according to people familiar with the matter.The central economic work conference, at w...

Senior diplomats from the US and European Union voiced their growing concern about China’s pressure campaign and “bullying” against Lithuania and Taiwan, as the two democratic governments continue to defy Beijing’s demands and forge a closer ...

A court imposed Panama’s maximum sentence of 50 years in prison on Friday on seven members of a cult who killed a woman and six children in a religious rite in a remote part of the Central American nation.The court in Bocas del Toro province senten...

The six-year-old boy whose parents died in an Italian cable car crash flew from Israel to Italy on Friday after a drawn-out battle for custody, a family spokesman said.“After 84 days since he was illegally removed from his home, Eitan will now retu...

Unknown to most people, the United States has embarked on an exercise to divide the world into two blocks – “democracies” and “authoritarian” states.What’s more, the US defines “authoritarian” as any country that refuses to follow the...

US President Joe Biden said on Friday he is developing comprehensive initiatives to make it difficult for Russia’s Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine and that he would not accept Moscow’s “red lines,” as fears mounted that the simmering conflic...

Hundreds of mourners gathered in a Macedonian village cemetery on Friday to lay to rest 10 local inhabitants including eight schoolchildren who were among 45 people killed in a bus crash in Bulgaria.The bus, carrying tourists back to North Macedonia ...

Yorkshire’s director of cricket Martyn Moxon and head coach Andrew Gale have left the troubled county side along with the entire coaching staff in the latest fallout from a damaging racism scandal.Former Yorkshire off-spinner Azeem Rafiq gave harro...

Ghislaine Maxwell’s defence lawyers on Friday questioned a former Jeffrey Epstein employee about when he met a woman who testified earlier this week that the British socialite set her up for abuse by Epstein starting when she was 14 in 1994.Juan Al...

A bipartisan pair of US lawmakers introduced a resolution on Friday accusing the International Olympic Committee of helping Chinese authorities whitewash tennis superstar Peng Shuai’s sexual assault claims against a former senior Communist Party of...

Antony Sher, one of the most acclaimed Shakespearean actors of his generation, has died aged 72, the Royal Shakespeare Company said on Friday.Sher had been diagnosed with terminal cancer earlier this year. His husband, Royal Shakespeare Company artis...

Almost two years into the pandemic, black people and members of other racial and ethnic minority groups in Britain are still dying from coronavirus at higher rates than white residents, probably because of lower vaccination rates, a government-commis...

Lithuania on Friday said mainland China was blocking its exports in a row over the opening of a representative office for Taiwan in Lithuanian capital Vilnius earlier this year.China has already downgraded diplomatic ties with Lithuania and stopped i...

A stepmother has been jailed for life in Britain with a minimum term of 29 years for abusing, poisoning and murdering her six-year-old stepson.Arthur Labinjo-Hughes was left with an unsurvivable brain injury while in the sole care of 32-year-old Emma...

About 1,600 children and 400 other people have been quarantined at Lake Geneva in western Switzerland because of two cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.The two cases at an international school were linked to a family member who had retur...

China’s second Type 075 landing helicopter dock is expected to be assigned to the Eastern Theatre Command, which oversees the Taiwan Strait, giving the frontline unit a powerful striking platform, a defence expert said.Dubbed a small aircraft carri...

China has pledged to address overseas companies’ concerns by fast tracking entry of staff into the country and stabilising supply chains in Beijing’s latest effort to lure foreign capital.At a meeting on Thursday with business executives of more ...

China is forging a new identity for Macau, the world’s largest casino den, as a regional technology hub, according to Chinese technology industry executives and officials.As the former Portuguese colony grapples with Covid-19 and Beijing’s harsh ...

The Hong Kong government has spent HK$3.4 million (US$436,300) to run front-page advertisements in nearly a dozen local newspapers calling on voters to cast their ballots in this month’s Legislative Council election, which has been shunned by the m...

Hong Kong will be on high alert for “lone-wolf” terrorist attacks and other potential disturbances at polling stations in the coming Legislative Council election, the security secretary has said.Chris Tang Ping-keung’s warning on Friday followe...

A mob of factory employees in eastern Pakistan tortured and burned a Sri Lankan manager on Friday in a “horrific” attack that Prime Minister Imran Khan said brought shame on the country.A police official in the eastern town of Sialkot, who spoke ...

The Chinese and Vietnamese militaries will stage their first joint medical drills next week as Beijing continues a drive to woo its Southeast Asian neighbours as its competes for influence with the United States.On Monday, 84 People’s Liberation Ar...

A third of Hongkongers with British National (Overseas) status are considering moving to the United Kingdom, while 6 per cent have applied for a scheme to do so, according to a survey, while new figures on pension withdrawals show an increase in the ...

A citywide manhunt is on for three robbers who intercepted a delivery van and made off with about 35 stray cats and dogs in northwestern Hong Kong on Friday.Police said the strays were being delivered to the office of an animal welfare organisation f...