Hong Kong customs officers have arrested two teenagers after confiscating HK$110 million (US$14 million) worth of cocaine concealed in an electric transformer that arrived from Costa Rica.Lee Ka-ming, head of customs’ drug investigation group, said...

Families of the victims of the China Eastern Airlines plane crash have been the focus of official support and close monitoring in the aftermath of the worst incident of its kind in decades.In all, 132 people were on board the aircraft when flight MU5...

Children and teenagers in Hong Kong have enrolled in online classes for everything from music lessons to art and wellness programmes after their early summer break was brought forward during the city’s worst wave of coronavirus infections.Operators...

Anti-tobacco advocates have for years pushed for a “tobacco endgame”, where young people will be banned from ever buying cigarettes in their lifetimes. New Zealand got the ball rolling when it announced its intention to gradually raise the minimu...

Thousands of people were ordered to evacuate from their homes near a Philippine volcano on Saturday after an eruption sent ash and steam hundreds of metres into the sky.Taal volcano, which sits in a lake south of Manila, exploded with a “short-live...

For Chinese archaeology, 2021 was a banner year highlighted by the global breakthrough that was the beautifully preserved ancient gold masks discovered at Sanxingdui.Last week, the Institute of Archaeology under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences...

Russian forces in Ukraine seem to have shifted their focus from a ground offensive aimed at Kyiv, the capital, to instead prioritising what Moscow calls liberation of the contested Donbas region in the country’s industrial east, officials said on F...

Yemen’s Houthis said they launched attacks on Saudi energy facilities on Friday and the Riyadh-led coalition said oil giant Aramco’s petroleum products distribution station in Jeddah was hit, causing a fire in two storage tanks but no casualties....

Since last year, tens of thousands of Singapore residents have resumed their passion for international travel via the city state’s vaccinated travel lanes, after putting their globetrotting ways on pause for nearly two years.Many went as far afield...

Beijing is seeking to rally support among developing nations for its position on Russia’s war on Ukraine, a move seen as a response to pressure from the West.It comes after US President Joe Biden “made it clear” to Chinese leader Xi Jinping in ...

Hong Kong’s leader has said thresholds for suspending flights carrying passengers infected with the coronavirus could be revisited, but refused to call it a “major concession”, as the city confirmed 8,841 Covid-19 cases on Saturday, the lowest ...

Ukraine started auctioning off a collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Friday in an expansion of a cryptocurrency fundraising push that Kyiv says has already collected more than US$65 million for its war effort.The “Meta History: Museum of Wa...

Before six female employees from Musiness, a commercial music copyright platform based in Shanghai, started taking turns as a customer service specialist to answer questions from clients through a company social media account, none of them expected t...

Rosmah Mansor, the wife of the former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, didn’t receive or buy a US$23 million pink diamond necklace, according to her lawyers.“Our client and her husband only knew that a United Arab Emirates prince, Sheikh Man...

The other day I decided to give Turning Red a watch, given the buzz that the film has generated in the Asian community.This movie is the proud outcome of the first all-female leadership team under the Disney brand, and may this be the first film of m...

A photograph of a handwritten note from a passenger on China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735, which crashed in southern China on Monday with 132 people on board, caused an emotional stir in China this week.The note describes a jade disc, a good-luck p...

Nepal remains in the headlights of big power rivalry in South Asia with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Kathmandu for talks and a heavyweight US Congressional delegation expected to arrive three weeks later.Wang’s weekend visit, the last stop o...

Wong Wai-kit has lost count of the number of times he came across desperate people scavenging for leftovers at restaurants and food courts since the Covid-19 pandemic hit Hong Kong in early 2020.Sometimes he would discreetly offer some of his own mea...

A social media post in early March claiming that India had become the world’s most populous country created a storm in China.The post claimed India’s population had hit 1.415 billion and was widely shared on social media, adding to rocky relation...

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Friday added China Telecom (Americas) Corp, China Mobile International USA and Russia’s AO Kaspersky Lab to its list of communications equipment and service providers deemed threats to US national secu...

Scientists have figured out why vampire bats are the only mammals that can survive on a diet of just blood.They compared the genome of common vampire bats to 26 other bat species and identified 13 genes that are missing or no longer work in vampire b...

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will visit US President Joe Biden at the White House next week to discuss China, Asian security issues and the response to Russia’s war against Ukraine, officials said on Friday.Biden and Lee will meet on Ma...

Shanghai has been seen as a model of China’s Covid-19 controls throughout the pandemic, but the fast-spreading Omicron variant is putting that to the test.Authorities have sought to minimise disruptions while sticking to the country’s zero-Covid ...

Scientists have discovered microplastics in human blood for the first time, warning that the ubiquitous particles could also be making their way into organs.The tiny pieces of mostly invisible plastic have already been found almost everywhere else on...

Global investors have withdrawn money out of China on an “unprecedented” scale since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, according to a report by the Institute of International Finance (IIF), with the yuan likely to face more pressure in com...

The United States has no immediate plans to sanction China over the war in Ukraine because Beijing has so far not provided military support to Moscow, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Friday.“I don’t think that that’s necessary or app...

US President Joe Biden on Friday compared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to China’s crushing of protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, speaking during a visit to Poland near the border with Ukraine.Biden also referred to Russian President Vladimir P...

In a scaled-back formulation of its war goals, Russia said on Friday that the first phase of its military operation was mostly complete and it would focus on completely “liberating” Ukraine’s breakaway eastern Donbas region.The announcement app...

China’s state-run Sinopec Group has suspended talks for a major petrochemical investment and a gas marketing venture in Russia, sources told Reuters, heeding a government call for caution as sanctions mount over the invasion of Ukraine.The move by ...

Russia is looking to China, India, Iran and Turkey to plug the gap created by an exodus of Western retail companies, an industry body said on Friday, as Moscow grapples to find ways to combat its growing isolation in the face of sanctions.The Russian...

Female foreign ministers from 16 countries said Friday they are “deeply disappointed” that Afghan girls are being denied access to secondary schools and called on the Taliban to reverse their decision.Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers unexpectedly d...

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is due to host Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in what will be their first face-to-face meeting since the invasion of Ukraine, when ministers from countries bordering Afghanistan gather in China next week.Lavrov wil...

Climate activists staged a 10th series of worldwide protests Friday to demand that leaders take stronger action against global warming, with some linking their environmental message to calls for an end to the war in Ukraine.The Fridays for Future mov...

China’s central bank said it would expand the scope of its digital yuan trial this year, as it rushed to fill hundreds of engineer and product developer positions to accelerate the initiative.The People’s Bank of China said on Thursday that this ...

India’s civil aviation minister urged Indian airlines on Friday to add more long-haul aircraft to their fleets and to increase flights abroad, as air travel rebounds from a two-year slump due to the Covid-19 pandemic.Domestic passenger numbers are ...

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has rejected the Bar Association’s earlier recommendation for an outspoken lawyer to join a key panel that helps select the city’s judges and opted instead for its new chairman who has distanced himself...

With almost no hope of finding survivors from Monday’s China Eastern Airlines plane crash, the process for compensating the grieving family members of the 123 passengers and nine crew members has begun.On Tuesday, China’s top insurance regulator ...

A research team with China’s manned space programme say they have developed technology that will allow astronauts to control robotic equipment using their brainwaves.It could transform how astronauts operate the giant arm on the Chinese space stati...

Hong Kong’s electoral office has apologised after an employee failed to follow guidelines and sent the personal details of about 15,000 voters to a random email address.The Registration and Electoral Office (REO) on Friday said the staff member int...

Meituan, operator of China’s largest on-demand services platform, reported a wider net loss in the three months to December from a year ago, as revenue slowed for the third consecutive quarter amid Beijing’s pressure to lower merchant fees and bo...

Developer Sun Hung Kai Properties has become the first to offer a variety of perks and discounts for Hong Kong shoppers looking to splash out when they receive the first half of their HK$10,000 (US$1,280) in electronic consumption vouchers in April.T...

Congestion at ports in Shenzhen and Hong Kong reached an all time high this week as authorities implement stringent coronavirus restrictions to contain local outbreaks, posing a threat to shipments heading to the United States over summer, analysts s...

Ukrainian authorities in the besieged ruins of Mariupol said Friday that about 300 people died when a Russian air strike blew up a theatre where hundreds of civilians were sheltering – a catastrophic loss of civilian life that, if confirmed, is lik...

Two more employees of the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children were arrested on Friday over accusations of abuse, taking the total number of suspects in the case to 34.The women, aged 49 and 57, were arrested in Mong Kok but later release...

China is willing to play a “constructive role” in encouraging peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping told British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a phone call on Friday, state media reported.The call between the two ...

China and South Korea are “unmovable permanent neighbours”, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a call with South Korean president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol on Friday, amid concerns that ties could be tested over Yoon’s pro-Washington approach.In th...

TikTok owner ByteDance, the world’s most valuable unicorn, on Friday marked its 10th anniversary in a muted celebration that was broadcast online to its employees, an event where billionaire founder Zhang Yiming was conspicuously absent.Chief execu...

China’s top leadership has raised the alarm about growing risks to global food security caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while doubling down on the push for self-reliance in grains and fertiliser.The country’s agricultural production and...

An Australian journalist will face court in Beijing next Thursday on state secrets charges, after being detained for more than 19 months, sources close to the case said.Cheng Lei, who worked as a television anchor for Chinese state media for a decade...

China will complete its preparation for establishing a financial stability guarantee fund by the end of September with the central bank leading the work, a document published by State Council showed on Friday.Government departments including the Nati...