A couple from western China’s Chongqing municipality were both sentenced to death on Tuesday for conspiring to kill the man’s two young children from a previous marriage so they could start a new family.The father, Zhang Bo, started a romantic re...

The United States intensified its surveillance of China over the South China Sea in 2021, a Beijing-based think tank said while calling on Beijing to remain vigilant about any heightened risk over the waters.Hu Bo, director of the South China Sea Pro...

India’s government has barred the Missionaries of Charity, the Catholic religious order and philanthropic organisation started by Mother Teresa, from accessing foreign donations for not meeting eligibility conditions under local laws, the federal H...

China is about to close yet another difficult year, marked by a deepening feud with the US and the seemingly interminable coronavirus pandemic.Faced with the twin challenges of a slowing economy and a new Cold War brewing on its doorstep, China has s...

Employees at China’s ride-hailing giant Didi Global were told that they cannot exert their stock option rights until the day the company completes a listing in Hong Kong, according to an internal memo seen by the South China Morning Post.The compan...

The US will send officials to China to provide “consular and diplomatic security services” for American athletes, according to the US State Department which said the move did not constitute official or diplomatic representation at the Beijing Win...

Hong Kong’s Customs and Excise Department is asking Interpol for help in going after websites that are hawking knock-off luxury goods they claim are real versions being auctioned off by the authority.One website registered in the United States clai...

Indonesia became the latest country to allow Boeing’s 737 MAX planes back in its skies, joining Ethiopia in lifting the ban on the aircraft that crashed in both countries more than two years ago.The transport ministry will let airlines resume flyin...

Australia reported more than 10,000 daily Covid-19 cases for the first time since the start of the pandemic amid the rapid spread of the Omicron strain.New South Wales on Monday recorded 6,324 cases, with 55 in intensive care among 520 people in hosp...

In a forested area just outside Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, mock Russian troops ambush camouflage-clad army reservists.The would-be Ukrainian soldiers, who include architects and researchers in their ranks, return fire with replica Kalashnikovs as imit...

After six days of lockdown, China’s northwestern city of Xian is facing further restrictions, with 175 new cases of Covid-19 reported on Monday – up from 150 a day earlier. The latest patients range in age from 6 months to 85 years.Xian – known...

Chinese investors in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are finding ways of circumventing restrictions that have effectively outlawed their preferred assets even after Binance and Huobi, two major crypto trading platforms, have vowed to purge mainlan...

Ghislaine Maxwell did not take the stand at her sex-trafficking trial, but the jury may have heard from her nonetheless.Prosecutors presented as evidence of her close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein a brief 2002 essay they said she wrote under the ...

Donald, a 56-year-old businessman from Medan on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, took his second shot of the Sinovac vaccine in July.Last month, when a friend called him and asked if he wanted a booster, Donald (who declined to reveal his identity and a...

The past 12 months have been a banner year in Chinese archaeology and palaeontology.From finding a potential ancient human relative to an “alien civilisation”, some of the most exciting scientific breakthroughs in 2021 involved China.They helped ...

The United States and Russia will hold much-anticipated talks in January, a White House official said, with the rivals set to negotiate on nuclear arms control and mounting tensions over Ukraine.“The United States looks forward to engaging with Rus...

Hong Kong will mandate three days of hotel quarantine for returning air cargo crew and is considering making coronavirus vaccinations mandatory for school students as it takes a more aggressive approach to battling a rise in imported Omicron cases.Fo...

China’s front-running experimental drug to treat Covid-19 has suffered a setback, with a late-stage trial on outpatients failing because of a low number of hospitalisations.Kintor Pharma’s candidate Proxalutamide – administered as a simple pill...

The world economy woke up from its pandemic-induced coma in 2021, but between the Omicron variant causing renewed disruptions and persistent inflation pushing central banks to pump the brakes, the outlook is uncertain.Countries have posted impressive...

Hong Kong has repeatedly been touted as the least affordable housing market over the years, with the average household needing to save for about 20 years to buy a home.It costs HK$16,239 (US$2,082) per sq ft to buy a property in Hong Kong, according ...

As much of the Asia-Pacific spent 2021 in degrees of lockdown, people quit their jobs for their well-being, climate policies made headlines, a K-drama idol was cancelled (and then un-cancelled), and a politician apologised for cursing at China. Here�...

Singapore residents bemoaning expensive home prices now have something else to worry about: rising rents.Rents have jumped to a six-year high, and analysts anticipate further increases as demand outweighs supply. That’s adding to costs for resident...

Sportsmanship was the order of the day as more than 200 people turned out for a good cause at a flagship charity soccer tournament for Operation Santa Claus (OSC) last month.OSC, an annual charity drive jointly organised by the South China Morning Po...

A troubled Hong Kong fitness chain has closed its four remaining branches, citing “unrealistic rents” and social-distancing regulations that crippled the industry during the coronavirus pandemic.Goji Studios said it would facilitate the transitio...

Mangoes are a matter of national pride for Cambodian farmer Chum Chamm.For years, Chamm, who grows mangoes in the well-known Kampong Speu province, witnessed Vietnamese traders come to Cambodian farms to cut deals for entire harvests of the fruit. Th...

Fraudsters posing as mainland Chinese officials duped Hong Kong residents out of HK$726 million (US$93 million) in phone scams in the first 11 months of 2021, the highest losses in a single year for such cases since 2015.The amount was also 35 per ce...

CLP Power, one of two Hong Kong electricity suppliers, has set aside HK$32 million (US$4.1 million) in 2022 to help local businesses become more efficient in their energy consumption through facility upgrade and training.The initiative is part of its...

US health authorities on Monday halved the recommended isolation time for people with asymptomatic Covid-19 infections from 10 to five days, with a surge of cases causing travel chaos and threatening wider social disruption.“The Omicron variant is ...

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will not vaccinate his 11-year-old daughter against Covid-19, he said on Monday, maintaining the firm anti-vaccine stance that has drawn criticism from public health experts and hit his poll numbers.The right-wing l...

US President Joe Biden signed into law the National Defence Authorisation Act, or NDAA, for financial year 2022, which authorises US$770 billion in defence spending, the White House said on Monday.Earlier this month, the Senate and the House of Repre...

In just 42 seconds, a small Chinese satellite captured images of a large area around a US city that would be sharp enough to identify a military vehicle on the street and tell what type of weapon it might be carrying, say scientists reporting on the ...

A bird flu outbreak in northern Israel has killed at least 5,200 migratory cranes and forced farmers to slaughter hundreds of thousands of chickens as authorities try to contain what they say is the deadliest wildlife disaster in the nation’s histo...

Jean-Marc Vallée, a Canadian best known for directing the Oscar-nominated film Dallas Buyers Club and Emmy-winning HBO series Big Little Lies, died suddenly at his cabin outside Quebec City. He was 58.Vallée’s demise was reported on Sunday by ent...

As Omicron spreads ever more gloom around the globe ahead of New Year’s Eve, governments are moving at different speeds to contain the scourge, with some reimposing restrictions immediately and others hesitating to spoil the party again.In Britain,...

China is building more vessels than it would need for operations close to its coast, because of its expanding overseas interests, a former Chinese colonel has said.Zhou Bo, a retired People’s Liberation Army (PLA) senior colonel and a former direct...

China has complained of “close encounters” with Elon Musk’s space programme, with SpaceX Starlink satellites twice approaching the Chinese Space Station (CSS) in orbit.The two events, on July 1 and October 21, forced the Chinese spacecraft to u...

China has confirmed visa applications from US officials planning to visit during the Beijing Winter Olympics, which start February 4.The South China Morning Post reported last week that the US government had recently submitted three-month visa applic...

China’s efforts to lift domestic production of soybeans and other oil crops could accelerate the approval of genetically modified (GM) seeds and shake up the seed industry, analysts said.At the weekend’s central rural work conference, China’s t...

The Communist Party chief of Chinese tech hub Shenzhen has been promoted to acting governor of Guangdong, the province’s legislature announced on Monday.Wang Weizhong, 59, takes over from Ma Xingrui. Ma was named as the new party secretary of the f...

Taiwan has condemned Nicaragua for seizing its diplomatic assets and transferring them to Beijing, to which the Central American state this month switched its official recognition.Accusing Nicaragua of defying international laws and protocols, the Ta...

Polish President Andrzej Duda on Monday vetoed a controversial media ownership law that critics said was aimed at silencing the US-owned news channel TVN24.“I am vetoing it,” Duda said in a televised statement, following heavy criticism of the la...

Samsung Electronics’ memory chip complex in Xi’an, one of the largest foreign-funded projects in China, is in the spotlight after the city tightened its lockdown measures on Monday following 150 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday.While there are no rep...

A top mainland expert on Hong Kong affairs has emphasised that maintaining stability and improving people’s livelihoods should take precedence over democratic development in the city.Wang Zhenmin, director of Tsinghua University’s Centre for Hong...

The new party chief of China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has pledged to maintain social stability and public order, indicating there will be little change to how the sensitive border region is run.Ma Xingrui vowed he would follow President X...

British police said on Monday they were assessing a video purportedly made by a man who tried to break into a castle where Queen Elizabeth was spending Christmas in which he said he wanted to kill her.In the video, obtained by The Sun tabloid, a mask...

Taiwanese news website Apple Online is set to be sold, with its owner being wound up after sister Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily closed during a crackdown under the city’s new national security law.The liquidator for Next Digital, the media group ...

China is facing a daunting task to stabilise employment next year, as the world’s second largest economy continues to be tested by the coronavirus pandemic and a fast-ageing society.The country must also ensure enough jobs are created for young peo...

Concerns that the world’s largest video game platform Steam was blocked in China on Christmas Day have spread on social media as gamers complained about issues connecting to the website days after it kicked off its popular year-end sale.Access to t...

The destructive power of typhoons in Asia could nearly double by the end of the century, according to a study by the Chinese University of Hong Kong.Their average wind speed at landfall could strengthen by 6 per cent, or 7.2 kilometres per hour, said...

A growing number of boutique vineyards in mainland China are poised for take-off, and a leading Hong Kong trader has said he believes the city can help introduce their offerings to the world.Paulo Pong Kin-yee, founder and managing director of the Al...