China has reported its highest daily Covid-19 case count since its first national outbreak in 2020, with more than 1,000 new locally acquired coronavirus cases reported, as local authorities scramble to tackle outbreaks across the country.The spike w...

Hong Kong confirmed more than 29,000 new coronavirus infections on Friday, while a top mainland Chinese epidemiologist said the exponential surge in cases had largely been contained despite urging the public to remain vigilant.Visiting health expert ...

Didi Global has suspended preparations for its planned Hong Kong listing after failing to appease Chinese regulators’ demands that it overhaul its systems for handling sensitive user data, according to people familiar with the matter.The Cyberspace...

Detectives investigating the attempted murder of a 70-year-old retiree who was viciously attacked in a Hong Kong shopping centre suspect it was a random act linked to the assailant’s mental state, according to a police source.The force insider on F...

The Russian envoy in Singapore has said Asian countries should focus on issues of “primary importance” such as Covid-19 recovery rather than Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and blasted the city state for joining the West in sanctioning Moscow.In ...

China has experienced continuous cyberattacks since February in which internet addresses in the United States were used to seize control of Chinese computers to target Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, state news agency Xinhua said on Friday.It cited the ...

Ukraine’s stiff resistance against the invasion by Russian forces could be a model for Taiwan to defend itself should Beijing choose to violate the island’s “sovereignty” by attacking, a senior US defence official told a Senate hearing.The Un...

Russian troops edged closer to Kyiv on Friday, as officials said the Ukrainian capital was being transformed into a “fortress” and President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of again targeting humanitarian corridors.Hundreds of thousands of civi...

Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korea’s president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol pledged to further elevate bilateral ties between the two nations, after concerns that their diplomatic relationship may be tested over Yoon’s pro-Washington stance.In a...

Australia said on Friday it is buying extra vaccines to fight the potentially deadly, mosquito-borne Japanese encephalitis virus, which has spread down the flood-hit east coast for the first time.Previously confined to the tropical north, since late ...

Nearly seven in 10 refugees and asylum seekers in Hong Kong expect to run out of food in a week’s time and have little hope of restocking supplies due to a buying frenzy triggered by fears of a lockdown for Covid-19 testing, a survey by a concern g...

US President Joe Biden will call on Friday for an end to normal trade relations with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, clearing the way for increased tariffs on Russian imports, five people familiar with the situation told Reuters.Biden will make ...

Malaysia’s Johor state will on Saturday hold the first elections since the country lowered its voting age to 18, with 750,000 new ballots added to regional polls seen as a litmus test for a general election that could be called this year.Political ...

The number of foreigners entering Singapore from Hong Kong almost doubled from January to last month, according to latest figures from the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), reinforcing reports of people fleeing the city for its rival financial hub.Singa...

It’s popped up on bus stops, road signs and even a pram in Russia: a “Z” sign to whip up support for what Moscow describes as its “special military operation” in Ukraine.The campaign takes as its motifs the distinctive “Z” and “V” m...

Exactly two years ago, on March 11 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 a global pandemic.This was two months after there were reports of a mystery virus infecting people in Wuhan, the most populous city in central China. Early...

HutchMed, the pharmaceutical unit of tycoon Li Ka-shing’s flagship CK Hutchison Holdings, led declines among four Hong Kong-listed stocks on Friday after being named in a list of foreign companies liable to US accounting inspection law.HutchMed’s...

As Chinese women participate more in the labour force than their peers in most major economies, they also appear to have found bigger success in the business world.About 6.4 per cent of CEOs at mainland China-listed companies last year were women, co...

Hong Kong will finally begin providing at-home Covid-19 vaccinations to people with mobility issues – a measure first floated by experts months ago – after the city’s leader acknowledged on Friday that her administration had done too little to ...

The World Health Organization advised Ukraine to destroy high-threat pathogens housed in the country’s public health laboratories to prevent “any potential spills” that would spread disease among the population, the agency told Reuters.Biosecur...

China has reported 555 new confirmed Covid-19 cases reported, up from 528 a day earlier.The National Health Commission said on Friday that 397 of the new infections were locally transmitted, with 121 in the northern province of Shandong. Jilin provin...

The pandemic’s death toll may be three times higher than official Covid-19 records suggest, according to a study that found stark differences across countries and regions.As many as 18.2 million people probably died from Covid-19 in the first two y...

There have been no signs China is helping Russia skirt sanctions over its war in Ukraine, according to US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.“I’ve not seen evidence that China is providing Russia with any significant workaround for our sanctions,”...

A Chicago court on Thursday sentenced actor Jussie Smollett, one-time star of the TV drama Empire, to 30 months probation and 150 days in jail for staging a hate crime against himself.A jury in December found Smollett, 39, guilty of five of the six f...

New Zealand’s tight Covid-19 bubble was once globally lauded but for local business, the strict border controls increasingly feel like a straitjacket as a lack of foreign workers and tourists squeezes the island nation’s economy.Meat processors h...

This year’s “two sessions” were shortened to six-and-a-half days because of Covid-19, and any comments from Li about Hong Kong’s current outbreak, and the growing controversy over the “dynamic zero” strategy and the city’s mass testing ...

Singapore is seeking to attract higher-calibre foreign workers under a new points-based visa system, as part of the government’s broader push to boost local employment while positioning itself as a global city, Manpower Minister Tan See Leng said.�...

One theme stood out for me while listening to a press conference this week by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi.And that is China’s seeming world view that countries in the region are not quite capable of making their own decisions and are often s...

After Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor declared on Wednesday universal mass testing was no longer a top priority, many Hongkongers were left staring balefully at their overstuffed freezers and medicine chests and towers of cup noodles.It w...

European Union leaders meeting in France Thursday ruled out fulfilling Ukraine’s demand for a fast-track integration with the bloc, as they discussed ways to help the eastern country that’s been invaded by neighbouring Russia.EU nations have been...

The theme for International Women’s Day 2022 is “Break the Bias”, which asks us to imagine a world free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination. In the second of a series of stories about gender equality in China, Holly Chik looks at why there ...

In Hong Kong, pandemic fatigue has set in. After three years of the curtailment of movement in one form or another – from MTR shutdowns and road blockages during the protests to social distancing measures during Covid-19 – Hongkongers have had to...

Islamabad on Friday warned New Delhi of “unpleasant consequences” over what it said was an Indian-originated, but unidentified high-altitude supersonic object that crashed in Pakistani territory.Pakistan foreign office said in a statement it summ...

At the height of the pandemic, Angola struck a deal with Chinese lenders to defer debt servicing as the virus threatened to push the southern African nation into default.China Development Bank (CDB) and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (IC...

US President Joe Biden’s administration said it planned to announce new sanctions on North Korea on Friday after concluding that Pyongyang tested a new, advanced long-range weapon system.Launches in late February and early March “involved a new i...

Beijing is expected to make an all-out effort to achieve its economic growth target of “around 5.5 per cent” this year as it contends with a raft of hurdles and potential impediments to that goal.Disturbances stemming from a protracted Russia-Ukr...

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was quick to congratulate Yoon Suk-yeol for his victory in Wednesday’s presidential election in South Korea, while analysts say Tokyo will have breathed a sigh of relief at the conservative opposition candidate...

China overestimated Russia’s ability to achieve a decisive victory over Ukraine, Moscow overestimated Beijing’s support and the US overestimated Russian military prowess, top US intelligence chiefs told senators on Thursday as they assessed the u...

Financial markets can be forgiven for downplaying geopolitical risks. One loses count of the number of international crises and military flare-ups that have only had a fleeting impact on asset prices. Investors are poorly equipped to assess and price...

The Islamic State group confirmed the death of its leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, more than a month after his demise, and named Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi as his successor.Little is known about the new leader, who will serve as ...

Grimes and Elon Musk’s Christmas present was a new baby.The once-and-apparently-future couple secretly welcomed a second child in December, the 33-year-old accidentally revealed to Vanity Fair in a new cover story published on Thursday.The baby gir...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a flagrant violation of international law that has resulted in a humanitarian disaster – has nailed shut the coffin of the post-1989 “liberal” international order.The model was already on its deathbed, having ...

China supports “a ceasefire to stop the war” in Ukraine “as soon as possible”, foreign minister Wang Yi told his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian on Thursday, as Europe continued to lobby Beijing to step in diplomatically.The comments ca...

Italy on Thursday annulled the sale of a military drones company to Chinese investors, three government officials said, the latest in a series of moves by Prime Minister Mario Draghi to curb Beijing’s forays into the euro zone’s third-largest eco...

Could humans have driven a Bronze Age crocodilian species in southern China into extinction just a few hundred years ago?That is the question being raised as a team of scientists studies the partially fossilised remains of two giant crocodiles uneart...

Tens of thousands of BTS fans gathered in Seoul on Thursday for the K-pop superstars’ first live concert in South Korea since the pandemic began – although Covid rules prevented them from dancing or singing along.The chart-topping septet’s seri...

[Sponsored Article] In its fifth year of operation, Stamford American School Hong Kong has seen a lot of growth in student population and campus size. As the world and Hong Kong continue to evolve and become increasingly connected due to the Covid-1...

Russia announced Thursday an export ban on more than 200 types of foreign-made products and equipment until the end of the year, part of Moscow’s response to sanctions imposed over the Ukraine conflict.The measure concerns goods and equipment that ...

Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine – justified by Moscow as a response to its neighbour’s tilt to the West and Nato – has many pondering whether Beijing would follow suit in Taiwan.Beijing has long felt that Washington is using the self-ru...