Videos of Xu Xiuzhen, 77, speaking different languages with foreigners in 2018 brought her instant fame. And to this day, she is still working at the scenic spot selling water, postcards and headdress flowers after nearly 25 years, she told the South...

China’s President Xi Jinping is increasingly using the Communist Party’s disciplinary mechanisms, best known for tackling corruption, to punish poor performance, a study has found.It said the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) ha...

Hong Kong confirmed more than 58,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, including 32,766 residents who logged their infections through a new online portal after using rapid tests.They were added to the 25,991 infections discovered through PCR tests,...

More than half of Hong Kong workers have seen their incomes slashed after testing positive for Covid-19, with many forced to take unpaid leave while undergoing isolation, according to a new survey.In the poll conducted by the Democratic Alliance for ...

A doctor jailed for killing a woman in Hong Kong’s worst-ever beauty treatment mishap has lost an appeal against her conviction, with a court ruling the trial jury was correct in finding her guilty following “entirely fair and balanced” directi...

Hong Kong police have arrested three men accused of undermining the city’s anti-pandemic efforts, with one suspect allegedly inciting residents to bomb Covid-19 community testing centres.Among the suspects is a 28-year-old man suspected of knowingl...

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is no longer transmitting data to the UN’s atomic watchdog, the agency said on Tuesday, as it voiced concern for staff working under Russian guard at the Ukrainian facility.On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine an...

A “troubling new strategic convergence” between Beijing and Moscow has developed and the risk of “major power conflict” had grown since Russia invaded Ukraine, Australia’s intelligence chief said on Wednesday.Andrew Shearer, director genera...

China’s annual government report skipped any mention of the United States, but Washington and its allies are definitely on the minds of the Chinese lawmakers meeting in Beijing this week.While discussions are predominantly focused on domestic affai...

China’s sovereign bonds have plunged from atop the global performance rankings to the bottom half in recent weeks, undermining their status as an alternative haven just as global markets have become roiled by the war in Ukraine.The return on yuan d...

Thousands of tourists from Russia have been left stranded in Thailand as a consequence of Western countries’ sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.Flight cancellations, a rouble currency in free fall and payment problems arising from Russian banks...

Russia said it was providing humanitarian corridors on Wednesday for people fleeing Kyiv and four other Ukrainian cities, as the number of refugees created by the biggest assault on a European country since World War II surpassed 2 million.Mikhail Mi...

Mainland China’s firm support of Hong Kong against the recent coronavirus outbreak has shown that the city’s “high degree of autonomy” will not be undermined by the central government’s jurisdiction over the former British colony, a top Bei...

The tiny handful of Lithuanians living in Taiwan are suddenly in vogue among the island’s residents after their small Baltic nation did something Taipei has long staked its identity on: it stood up to Beijing.In the months since Taiwan opened a de ...

Taiwanese security circles are closely watching developments in the Russian invasion of Ukraine to see what lessons can be applied to the self-ruled island’s own battle strategy in the event of an invasion from mainland China.While Taipei has not r...

Hong Kong’s flag carrier Cathay Pacific on Wednesday reported HK$5.5 billion (US$703 million) in losses last year with services hammered by strict Covid-19 travel curbs, but its cargo business helped keep operations afloat.The figure was significan...

A Texas man was convicted on Tuesday of storming the US Capitol with a holstered handgun, a milestone victory for federal prosecutors in the first trial among hundreds of cases arising from last year’s riot.A jury also convicted Guy Wesley Reffitt ...

An expert group convened by the World Health Organization said it “strongly supports urgent and broad access” to booster doses of Covid-19 vaccine amid the global spread of Omicron, capping a reversal of the UN agency’s repeated insistence last...

Western powers on Tuesday warned Russia against wrecking an almost completed deal on bringing the United States and Iran back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear accord, as Iran’s top negotiator was set to return from consultations in Tehran.Elev...

US President Joe Biden’s ban on American imports of Russian oil and other energy products, announced on Tuesday, does not include a ban on imports of uranium for nuclear power plants, a source familiar with the matter said.The US power industry rel...

This is the first in a series of stories about gender equality in China to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8. Here, Phoebe Zhang looks at how the case of one trafficked woman led to unprecedented public attention and calls for action i...

Australia declared a national emergency on Wednesday in response to devastating floods along its east coast, and designated catastrophe zones in towns swept away by swollen rivers.“Australia is becoming a harder country to live in because of these ...

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor made her first public appearance in two weeks on Wednesday, revealing that the heads of the city’s private hospitals had agreed to step up their efforts in the city’s anti-pandemic fight.Speaking at a p...

China’s headline factory-gate inflation rose at the slowest pace in eight months, according to data released on Wednesday, but rising commodity prices in response to the war in Ukraine have started to filter through.The official producer price inde...

A 29-year-old deaf woman has been named by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV one of the 10 most inspiring figures of 2021 after becoming a PhD student at the prestigious Tsinghua University in China.Other recipients for the award include Nobel Prize lau...

Coal is heading for a short-term comeback as Europe looks to cut its reliance on Russian gas and oil but the Ukraine crisis could hasten decarbonisation on the longer run, according to energy analysts.European Union leaders will meet in Versailles in...

South Korea says it fired warning shots at a North Korean patrol boat that temporarily crossed the countries’ disputed western sea boundary while chasing an unarmed North Korean vessel.The North Korean patrol boat crossed the so-called Northern Lim...

When Andrew* caught Covid-19, it was not the symptoms of the disease that turned out to be the most harrowing part of the experience.The Southeast Asian man in his thirties, who was infected in February 2021, says it was having to isolate for over 40...

Two heavyweights in China’s electric vehicle (EV) industry have lobbied Beijing for different approaches to charging, a key issue in the development of the new energy vehicle market in the country.Lei Jun, chief executive officer of smartphone gian...

A US judge on Tuesday ordered the dismissal of Virginia Giuffre’s lawsuit accusing Britain’s Prince Andrew of sexually abusing her when she was underage, as Britain’s finance ministry confirmed that no public funds were used in their settlement...

A juror told a judge Tuesday that failing to disclose his child abuse history during jury selection at the trial of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was one of the biggest mistakes of his life – but an unintentional one.“I didn’t lie in orde...

McDonald’s Corp and Starbucks Corp are temporarily closing hundreds of restaurants in Russia, with Coca-Cola and Pepsi among the latest Western companies to pause operations in the country after it moved troops into Ukraine.PepsiCo, the soft-drink ...

The ongoing war in Ukraine will not halt China’s push to surpass the United States to become the world’s largest economy by 2030, according to a senior Beijing adviser, despite a recent sell off of Chinese bonds by overseas investors.Russia’s i...

Pakistan’s opposition parties moved a no-confidence motion seeking the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday, accusing him of mismanaging the economy and poor governance in the toughest challenge he has faced since taking power in 2018.The...

South Koreans are heading to the polls to choose their president in an election likely to have deep ramifications for the US-China competition and efforts to rein-in Kim Jong-un’s nuclear ambitions.Whoever wins what has been billed as a race betwee...

The United States rejected a surprise offer by Nato ally Poland on Tuesday to transfer its Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets to a US base in Germany as a way to replenish Ukraine’s air force in its defence against invading Russian forces.The United ...

President Xi Jinping and other top Chinese leaders appear unsettled by the problems Russia has faced in invading Ukraine but their determination on the Taiwan issue should not be misjudged, the director of the CIA said on Tuesday.Their concerns inclu...

The Ukraine war has plunged the world into a period of instability. But, without the political fortitude for pragmatic compromises, the swift restoration of peace that the international community yearns for will remain elusive.As Russia continues its...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Britain Tuesday to label Russia a “terrorist state” over its invasion of Ukraine and to increase the pressure of sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime.In a historic speech to the...

With Russia intensifying its war on Ukraine, killing civilians and triggering a mass refugee crisis, President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced a US ban on imported Russian oil. Critics of Russia have said that sanctioning its energy exports would be t...

Hackers linked to China’s Ministry of State Security have spent most of the last year infiltrating and moving freely through state government networks across the United States, according to a report by the cybersecurity firm Mandiant.Released on Tu...

Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority on Tuesday revealed that a suspected mix-up between police and medical staff over the identities of two dead patients resulted in one of the bodies being wrongly sent to a public mortuary.A patient, who died on Februa...

It’s a global day to celebrate women, but many fleeing Ukraine feel only the stress of finding a new life for their children as husbands, brothers and fathers stay behind to defend their country from Russia’s invasion.The number of refugees reach...

US President Joe Biden announced a US embargo on Russian oil and natural gas on Tuesday, a move that adds more muscle to Western sanctions but also more pressure on the global economy.Britain said it would eliminate Russian imports by year’s end, b...

Sobbing, singing and standing ovations are not typical responses in a Vancouver cinema, much less for a 152-minute documentary.But Revolution of Our Times, director Kiwi Chow Kwun-wai’s visceral account of Hong Kong’s 2019 upheaval, is being rece...

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine snarls regional logistics and rattles the global commodity market, ripples are spilling over into container shipping, resulting in more delays, less capacity and higher costs, according to experts.The conflict in Ukr...

Hong Kong’s most virulent wave of coronavirus cases has already peaked on March 4, with infections having been predicted to drop more than tenfold in a period of more than one month, according to the latest estimates from the University of Hong Kon...

A lead scientist in China’s lunar programme has unveiled details of plans for the county’s first base on the moon, saying probes will start surveying the south pole for potentially vital resources, such as water.China has teamed up with Russia to...

When the UN General Assembly held its Special Emergency Session this month, Indonesia – along with 140 other countries – voted in favour of a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the Muslim-majority country’s official stanc...