Moscow must choose between war and diplomacy amid a military build-up on Ukraine’s borders, European Union Council head Charles Michel said on Wednesday, urging Russia to demonstrate its will to de-escalation by actions rather than words.“In the ...

Hong Kong residents who have tested positive for Covid-19 but are stuck at home waiting for isolation arrangements or admission to hospital can now receive medical consultations at seven public clinics capable of handling up to 1,000 patients a day.A...

Hong Kong police have announced that Andrew Kan Kai-yan now serves as the force’s national security director, replacing Frederic Choi Chin-pang after he was caught at a vice establishment during a raid last year and reassigned.According to a force ...

China’s social media platform Weibo has become the latest arena for dialogue between Britain and Russia over Ukraine.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson used his Chinese social media account to urge Russian President Vladimir Putin to think again ...

Hong Kong police have arrested a cosmetics businesswoman and social media influencer accused of gambling illegally at an online casino and promoting bookmaking.So Mei-yan, also known as Cry So or So Miu-miu on her social media platforms, was detained...

When Islamic studies teacher Herry Wirawan was handed a life sentence by an Indonesian court on Tuesday for raping 13 students aged between 13 and 16, he became the first convicted rapist to receive such a hefty sentence.In Southeast Asia’s largest...

At least 18 people died in mudslides and floods when torrential rains swept a mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro state, and there were fears the toll could rise as searchers check damaged areas on Wednesday.The state fire department said late on Tu...

China will work with Asian countries to strengthen the use of local currencies in trade and investment, Yi Gang, the governor of the central bank, said on Wednesday, as part of plans to strengthen regional economic resilience.Recent years’ progress...

Several Hong Kong lawmakers have suggested using empty cruise ships as makeshift quarantine facilities, while others have called on residents to “complain less” and “tolerate more” amid an ongoing surge in coronavirus cases that has overwhelm...

Police in eastern China have detained two people after they tried to visit a woman who had been chained and locked in a hut in freezing temperatures by her husband.A Beijing-based lawyer, who could not speak on the record but had been informed about ...

A quarter of a million dollars for Leonardo DiCaprio. A US$385,773 bar tab. Five grand for “model wrangling.”These were among the expenses that jurors in the federal conspiracy trial of former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng heard about on Tuesday,...

The United States is wary of China’s tacit support for Russia’s ongoing aggression towards Ukraine and the possibility that Beijing might one day use similar tactics to advance its interests in Asia, Washington’s top air force official in the r...

The Joe Biden administration says some foreign countries haven’t been able to accept their full allocation of Covid-19 vaccine donations from the US, as they increasingly grapple with logistical barriers and vaccine hesitancy.“There have been mom...

A Japanese princess who was infected with the coronavirus was discharged on Wednesday after a week at a Tokyo hospital, the Imperial Household Agency said.Princess Yoko, 38, the first royal member infected by the virus, had been diagnosed with modera...

From oyster farming to hi-tech clusters, the rural region of San Tin along the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border has gained fresh cachet for its proposed role in powering future economic growth. In her 2021 policy address, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yu...

This year is the Year of the Tiger, according to the Chinese zodiac. But few people in mainland China know that this chronological method involving a 12-year cycle of animals did not originate in China.Ancient Babylonians about 4,000 years ago were t...

Investors will be closely watching the forward guidance by HSBC and Standard Chartered as the lenders prepare to report their annual results this week against the backdrop of a tightening rate environment and a weaker economic outlook for Hong Kong, ...

Chinese video game maker MiHoYo, developer of hit mobile title Genshin Impact, has launched a global metaverse brand called HoYoverse, in the latest sign that tech firms in China are embracing the virtual world.“Our mission in establishing HoYovers...

Whether they have been camped out on Ukraine’s borders or moving tanks across the vast country, Russia’s battle-hardened troops have made the world listen to Vladimir Putin, who wants to redefine European security.President Putin has made revivin...

Philippine boxer-turned-presidential candidate Manny Pacquiao said he will form a “peace panel” that will negotiate with Beijing on the South China Sea dispute if elected to the top post, while also deepening defence ties with the US.“Our goal ...

A Russian invasion of Ukraine would be a diplomatic dilemma for Beijing and do nothing to further the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland, according to Chinese experts.“Of course we don’t want [an invasion]. We have a close relationship wit...

Increasingly divergent monetary policies between China and the United States would help rein in an excessive rise in the yuan by reducing foreign money inflows, a former Chinese foreign exchange regulator said on Wednesday.The US Federal Reserve is w...

A 30-year-old former policeman died in hospital on Wednesday after losing control of a sports car he was driving, with the vehicle plunging down a slope in northern Hong Kong.The man was driving his Mazda RX-8 towards Sheung Shui along Fan Kam Road i...

Trust in the United States among Southeast Asians grew under the Joe Biden administration, with more than half of respondents in an annual policy survey saying they were confident or very confident Washington would “do the right thing” for the gl...

Hong Kong hit another daily coronavirus record on Wednesday, confirming 4,285 new Covid-19 cases, with 7,000 more preliminary-positive infections identified so far.Even without Wednesday’s figure, the city’s surging fifth wave of infections had a...

Tigrayan fighters deliberately killed civilians and gang-raped dozens of women and underage girls in two towns in Ethiopia’s Amhara region last year, Amnesty International said on Wednesday, the latest example of the horrific toll exacted by the 15...

Major Asian economies, including South Korea, Singapore and Indonesia, have seen a rapid increase in coronavirus cases as the highly infectious Omicron variant continues to tear through the region.South Korea on Wednesday reported a daily record of 9...

China’s improving consumer and factory-gate inflation outlook continued last month, data released on Wednesday showed.The official consumer price index (CPI) rose by 0.9 per cent in January from a year earlier, down from a rise of 1.5 per cent in D...

Joining worried parents across the country, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy announced on Twitter on Tuesday that his four-year-old daughter had tested positive for Covid-19.“Staring at my daughter’s positive test, I asked myself the same question...

Hong Kong could ease the crunch in fresh food supplies by transporting goods from mainland China by sea, a method which could bring in about 70 per cent of the original volume for vegetables, industry leaders have said.Chief Executive Carrie Lam Chen...

A well-known Chinese investor is facing an angry backlash after saying that he wants his teenage son to become a “low life” and sleep with as many women as possible.Ding Peng, a quantitative investment veteran and prominent financial adviser, sai...

China’s biggest producers of semiconductor chips, bottled water and baby-milk formula are likely to join the Hang Seng Index in the next rebalancing exercise, strengthening the country’s linkages in the world’s fourth-biggest stock market.Chip ...

These are stressful times for Hong Kong. The prospect of a “tsunami-like” Covid-19 outbreak – to borrow the expression used by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor last month – is real and deeply concerning.Instinctively, people feel th...

Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed to the Hong Kong government it must take the “main responsibility” in tackling the coronavirus pandemic, urging it to stabilise the situation as soon as possible, local pro-Beijing media reported on Wedne...

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aims to create land and sea connectivity via a global web of infrastructure projects that will facilitate the flow of people and goods. This vision of connectivity is shared by the Association of Southeast Asian Nat...

Thousands of Catholics in the United States may have to be re-baptised after the church discovered a priest had got one word wrong in the blessing for decades – invalidating the rite.For 26 years, Father Andres Arango had been performing the first ...

US President Joe Biden on Tuesday cast doubt on Russia’s claims that it has withdrawn some troops from the Ukrainian border, warning that an invasion by Moscow remained “distinctly possible” and urging all US citizens still in Ukraine to leave....

India’s latest move to ban more Chinese apps points to worsening prospects for tech companies from China operating in the South Asian nation, analysts said.The Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has placed 54 Chinese-linked a...

Moderna, the United States pharmaceutical specialist in RNA therapeutics and mRNA vaccines, said it would open a branch in Hong Kong, adding to its commercial presence in Asia to tap the region’s health care market.The company, based in Cambridge i...

A US patient with leukaemia has become the first woman and the third person to date to be cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus that causes Aids, researchers reported on Tuesday.The ...

Want to own a fashionable piece of Bing Dwen Dwen and then join the hipster crowd? Take caution not to purchase it through pirate distributors.That is the warning to consumers after the first case of copyright infringement of the Beijing Winter Olymp...

A new study has shown that a Chinese mRNA vaccine candidate saw a significant drop in its ability to neutralise the Omicron strand of the coronavirus compared to its effectiveness against a wild-type strain with no major mutations – but that a boos...

For entrepreneurs like Annie Liu, a positive relationship between Beijing and Canberra has a direct impact on the image of her Australian-made products in the Chinese market.Her Sydney-based start-up Visdon, which makes health supplements, relies on ...

Monkeys memorise a series of events by converting time to space in their brain, according to a research team in China who reported observing the process.The discovery sheds light on the fundamental working mechanism of a non-human primate brain, acco...

Imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said Tuesday he would keep challenging Russia’s leadership during the opening of a new fraud trial that could extend his jail term by more than a decade.Navalny appeared at the beginning of the hearing via v...

The family of a cinematographer shot and killed on the set of the film Rust sued Alec Baldwin and the movie’s producers Tuesday for wrongful death.Lawyers for the family of Halyna Hutchins announced the lawsuit filed in New Mexico in the name of Hu...

Ottawa’s police chief was ousted Tuesday amid criticism of his inaction against the trucker protests that have paralysed Canada’s capital for over two weeks, while the number of blockades maintained by demonstrators at the US border dropped to ju...

The families of nine victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School have agreed to a US$73 million settlement of a lawsuit against the maker of the rifle used to kill 20 first graders and six educators in 2012.Remington, which made the Bushmaster AR-15-...

Hong Kong’s worsening coronavirus crisis and strict social-distancing measures have forced operators to pull the plug on two cinemas in the past four days, with an industry leader warning more closures may be looming.Cinema City Victoria in Causewa...

Prince Andrew has reached an agreement to settle claims that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl decades ago, his accuser’s lawyer said in a court filing.Virginia Giuffre had claimed the British royal was one of several men to whom Jeffrey Epstein...