China has detained several Japanese nationals, including top executives of companies with offices in China, for allegedly violating export restrictions on dual-use goods, Japanese newspaper The Mainichi said, citing multiple sources. Dual-use items c...

Amid widespread store closures by foreign fast-fashion players in China, US apparel brand Gap is defying industry headwinds. It plans to open 50 new stores in mainland China this year and return to Hong Kong by year’s end, following a localisation ...

The cremations of the victims of the Debsirin school shooting in the Thai province of Nonthaburi had barely begun when another body was added to the country’s rising toll from gun violence. On Monday morning, a former MP for Nonthaburi fired four r...

A South Korean actress has apologised for the controversy surrounding her great-grandfather’s pro-Japanese ties during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule, a day after calling the accusations “groundless”. “After further checking, we have confirm...

Power supply and air-conditioning disruptions across parts of Hong Kong have left residents sweltering in the extreme heat, with outages occurring at a housing estate, an office building and even a funeral home. In Yuen Long, about 2,400 households i...

A 72-year-old man who went missing three days ago has been found dead on a mountain trail in Hong Kong’s Sha Tin district. The family of Tam Hing-man reported him missing on Saturday after losing contact with him, according to police. Tam had left ...

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim accused opposition lawmakers of staging “political drama” on Tuesday after they walked out of a special parliamentary session on a long-awaited royal inquiry into the country’s Muslim pilgrimage savings...

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sidestepped calls to apologise on Tuesday after a clip emerged of him engaging in crude banter about a gift from his Japanese counterpart. Albanese had already faced a backlash and apologised over comments m...

Zhu Senlin, a former Guangdong governor and key enforcer of the province’s economic transformation when China was opening up in the 1990s, died on Monday aged 95, according to official media. Nanfang Daily, mouthpiece of the Guangdong party committ...

Ten drivers have been arrested for allegedly taking part in illegal street races on a Hong Kong highway, with police deploying drones and unmarked high-performance vehicles to capture the suspects’ activities and apprehend them. The force revealed ...

A Republican-led congressional committee focused on US competition with China has issued a public call for American academics to come forward if they think they missed out on jobs in favour of “applicants from China”. “Are you an American stude...

A former Deloitte information technology (IT) manager has been remanded in custody pending sentence for stealing 423 laptops from the accounting firm’s Hong Kong office over 17 months to fund his stock trading addiction. Ho Man-kit, 40, pleaded gui...

Fast-fashion retailer Shein Global Holdings is planning to take investor orders for its Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) as soon as next week, aiming for a valuation of US$35 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The Singapore...

Havelock Palace has apologised for cooking foraged seafood in Singapore. The apology comes weeks after the Chinese restaurant received online flak and a barrage of one-star Google reviews for its involvement in a video showing a group of individuals ...

On the southern edge of China, near the border with Vietnam, a breathtaking array of wall art stretches 260km and is over 2,000 years old. This extraordinary collection, known as Huashan rock art after its most notable site, is celebrated for its viv...

A summit next month by the Brics grouping of nations has raised hopes that major players India and China will align to rally member states to resolve the Strait of Hormuz crisis, with the United States making little headway. Analysts say the forum fr...

Hong Kong authorities are considering lowering the threshold for activating higher-tier heat stress warnings during abnormally hot weather, following public criticism that the alert was not upgraded even as the city sweltered through its hottest day ...

South Korea is working to close a legal loophole that allowed people sharing AI-generated pornography featuring fictional personas to go scot-free. The move by lawmakers came after a court in Goyang, Gyeonggi province, acquitted a man accused of dist...

Hong Kong’s privacy watchdog has arrested a man on suspicion of doxxing a former restaurant owner and a business consultant following a financial dispute over unpaid bills. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD) said on Tue...

We have selected seven stories from the SCMP’s coverage of Asia over the past week that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Anger in Malaysia a...

The likelihood that US electric vehicle (EV) giant Tesla will obtain Beijing’s approval for higher-level autonomous driving remains a distant prospect, according to analysts. Though Tesla recently hired people to test its Full Self-Driving (FSD) sy...

Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby has pressed Southeast Asian nations to join a “flexible realism” strategy in the Indo-Pacific, as the United States prioritises practical defence cooperation and deterrence over ideology. Speaking at a forum i...

Chinese scientists have created a diamond with no Achilles’ heel – one that cannot be broken, even by a hard knock with a hammer – according to a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Synthesis. While a diamond is the hardest natu...

US President Donald Trump secretly flew out of Turkey last month on a smaller plane than previously known due to an assassination threat from Iran, The Washington Post reported on Monday. According to an anonymous US official who spoke to the Post, T...

The South China Morning Post has signed three memorandums of understanding (MOUs) in Kuala Lumpur aimed at deepening regional cooperation and serving as a bridge between Hong Kong, Malaysia and the wider Asean region. SCMP publisher Tammy Tam on Tues...

US Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby avoided naming Beijing or addressing escalating tensions in the South China Sea during a speech in Manila on Monday, adopting a measured tone weeks before an expected meeting between US President...

Yoon Jin-woo had never gone to Seoul World Cup Stadium to watch FC Seoul, the city’s team and the club that calls South Korean football’s symbolic home its own. But on Sunday night, he made the pilgrimage from the suburbs of Gimpo to see Manchest...

Hang Seng Indexes Company plans to expand the Hang Seng Tech Index (HSTECH) to 50 constituents and introduce “sales growth” as a criterion for selection to strengthen market representation, according to a consultation paper released on Monday. Ho...

China’s rapidly expanding aircraft carrier fleet may be vulnerable to attack from submarines – an area where its defensive capacity lags behind that of the United States – according to a new report. This gap is drawing increasing attention as B...

A father in northwestern China embraced a challenge posed by his teenage daughter during a heated argument and ultimately earned a spot in an MBA programme. Zhang Zhiqiang, 44, living in Xian, Shaanxi province, works in the health and wellness indust...

When S* enrolled at Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia (NUMed Malaysia) in the Southeast Asian nation, the British-born Pakistani student believed the five-year medical degree would give him a realistic route into Britain’s National Health Serv...

Despite representing nearly half the world’s population, accounting for about a quarter of the world’s gross domestic product and covering more than 60 per cent of the Eurasian land mass, the role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in the i...

A former Hong Kong justice minister who now heads an intergovernmental mediation body based in the city has said the organisation is ready to handle state-to-state disputes, with six countries having nominated more than 100 mediators from the legal, ...

China’s civil aviation authority has dialled up its safety-focused communications with some foreign carriers from Southeast Asia in recent months to enhance ties, communication and oversight. An aviation analyst said the move was made in light of c...

South Korea may have been steadfast in its support for Ukraine against Russian and North Korean forces, but Kyiv’s request for air defence systems could prove to be a step too far for Seoul to accept. In addition to South Korea’s legal and policy...

“He who has never been to the Great Wall is not a true man,” former Chinese leader Mao Zedong wrote in a poem while passing through the Liupan Mountains in Guyuan, Gansu, during the Long March of the Red Army in October, 1935. The Great Wall he m...

Hong Kong’s commercial property investment more than doubled to US$3.1 billion in the second quarter, making it the fastest growing investment market in Asia-Pacific thanks to a strong increase in retail and office deals and a low base effect, acco...

US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order calling for revamped childhood vaccine recommendations that promote his long-held but discredited theory that childhood vaccines should be spaced out into separate medical visits. The orde...

US President Donald Trump has extended for 90 days a waiver allowing foreign-flagged ships to transport oil and other commodities between US ports but imposed new limits after shipbuilders and their allies in ‌Congress argued the policy was undermi...

China has asked to join World Trade Organization consultations that Brazil opened against US tariffs of up to 37.5 per cent. Beijing filed the request in Geneva on Monday, telling the trade body it held a substantial commercial interest in the case. ...

When Francois Morin, China director at the World Nuclear Association – a leading international industry body – took a group of foreign nuclear engineers to a Shanghai Electric plant last year, the scale of production caught them off guard. Heavy ...

A Chinese citizen faces up to 20 years in US federal prison after pleading guilty on Monday to attempting to purchase US-made military equipment to export to China, in violation of US arms export controls, according to the US Department of Justice (D...

The Trump administration is on pace to revoke a record number of visas this year, the State Department said on Monday, as it disclosed that more than 175,000 had been revoked since US President Donald Trump returned to office. The visas were revoked ...

US President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, was sworn in on Monday as attorney general after a bruising confirmation fight that exposed bipartisan concerns about the Justice Department’s direction under the Republican presid...

A US judge on Monday dismissed criminal charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, after the Justice Department said it had decided to abandon the fraud and bribery case. Brooklyn-based US District Judge Nicholas ‌Garaufis’ decision to gran...

Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer questioned her psychiatrist’s expertise, prescribing decisions and overall treatment as the defence sought on Monday to suggest that the mental healthcare system overlooked and even accelerated the Massachusetts mother’s...

A US appeal court on Monday allowed thousands of lawsuits to move forward against Meta ⁠Platforms, Alphabet’s Google, ByteDance’s TikTok, and other ⁠social media companies over claims they designed their products to ⁠be addictive to young u...

US President Donald Trump on Monday demanded that Iran compensate the victims of attacks, conflicts and domestic repression he blamed on Tehran, adding a new condition to negotiations over reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The demand came after Iran re...

A group of US investment giants are partnering with Nvidia on US$500 billion in funding for AI infrastructure projects, the Financial Times reported. Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, Brookfield Asset...

Russia’s Supreme Court barred the liberal Yabloko party on Monday from contesting September’s parliamentary elections, sidelining the only officially registered party that opposes Moscow’s ‌war in Ukraine. More than four years after Russia’...