Competition among Hong Kong florists heated up on the day before Mother’s Day as stores slashed bouquet prices and offered more innovative products, with some vendors reporting weaker business and lower profit margins compared with last year. Despi...

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday oversaw a military parade commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II on Red Square. Security was tight in Moscow as Putin spoke at the parade, even as a US-brokered three-day ceasefire eased ...

In the 1980s, then Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad launched his “Look East” policy, urging his country and others in Southeast Asia to emulate the state-led economic development models of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, rather than those...

Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation will launch a large-scale railway exhibition at Hung Hom Station on May 16, featuring four retired trains and a new immersive train driving simulator. The rail giant said on Saturday that the exhibition, titled “Statio...

Oral fish oil intake may not improve and could even speed up cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease, a research team from China’s Army Medical University has found. Many older adults are accustomed to taking omega-3 supplements to help protect ...

Beijing is moving to make green electricity usage a key metric in the operation of new data centre projects, as part of a major push to align the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence with national carbon goals, according to an action plan relea...

A Chinese woman who accused a famous chain of milk tea shops of planting mercury in her drink was later found to be the target of poisoning by her boyfriend. The woman, surnamed Zhang, from central China’s Anhui province, initially complained onlin...

Elon Musk has launched a tirade against French judicial authorities currently investigating possible abuses on his X social network. France opened an inquiry in January 2025 into allegations that X, formerly known as Twitter, was used to interfere in...

The United States has sanctioned a total of nine mainland Chinese and Hong Kong companies and individuals accused of helping Iran’s military. The decision, which risks complicating Donald Trump’s visit to China next week, was announced on Friday ...

Huaqiangbei, home to the world’s largest electronics marketplace in southern China’s tech hub Shenzhen, is reinventing itself as the world’s artificial intelligence showroom, drawing back foreign traders and tourists hunting for the latest gadg...

Vietnam has expanded its outposts in the South China Sea by hundreds of acres over the past year, according to a new report, as Hanoi and Beijing race to reinforce competing territorial claims through land reclamation. Vietnam has added about 534 acr...

TikTok owner ByteDance is ramping up its spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure, boosting its planned capital expenditure this year to more than 200 billion yuan (US$30 billion), according to two people familiar with the matter. This repr...

South Korea is drawing growing interest from Middle Eastern oil producers seeking to store crude oil at the country’s petroleum reserve bases, the world’s sixth largest, amid a prolonged blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a South Korean official a...

The Philippines has crowned its newest Miss Universe candidate, Bea Millan-Windorski, as the country – known for its penchant for beauty pageants – prepares to send its latest representative to the global competition in November. The 23-year-old,...

The US is shifting strategy to fund local African processing and mining infrastructure after recognising it cannot yet process the critical minerals it is racing to secure from the continent to counter China. Tom Haslett, managing director of policy ...

Malaysia is resorting to cloud seeding to bring much-needed rain to the country’s “rice bowl” north, where a drought has delayed planting of the staple crop and raised supply fears. “This year ... has been affected by prolonged dry weather, l...

Over the past year, retired economist Thomas Yuen Wai-kee has used shared bikes operated by Locobike and Helloride a few times each month to go on leisure rides in Hong Kong. So far the 62-year-old, a former assistant economics professor with Hong Ko...

It took less than six minutes for Japan’s Type 88 missile to find its mark, a decommissioned Philippine warship 75km (47 miles) off the coast of Ilocos Norte. The US-made Tomahawk took rather longer to hit its target, some 630km (390 miles) away. I...

Indonesian authorities on Saturday located two Singaporeans who went missing after Mount Dukono erupted on the Pacific island of Halmahera, officials said, but it was unclear whether they were alive. “We have identified the coordinates ‌of their ...

China’s export sector showed strong resilience last month, with the total value of outbound shipments hitting a monthly record even as the Strait of Hormuz crisis during the US-Israeli war in Iran showed little sign of abating after driving up ener...

Japan’s Mogami-class destroyer appears to be pulling ahead in the race to become the next generation of warships for the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN), in what would be another major deal for Japan’s defence industry just weeks after Tokyo announ...

Two Singapore residents who had been on board a hantavirus-hit cruise ship have tested negative to the rare respiratory disease, according to Singapore’s Communicable Diseases Agency (CDA). The two men aged 65 and 67 had been on the MV Hondius and ...

You can perhaps judge the rise and decline of a society by the quality of its public intellectuals. In the last century, the United States had some genuinely great thinkers such as Walter Lippmann and Hannah Arendt who addressed a literate public whi...

Hong Kong schools have recorded net student rises for two consecutive years, with the current academic year seeing an increase of about 7,200 pupils, a surge that an industry leader has attributed to the influx of dependants of admitted talent. The E...

In an extraordinary break from the diplomatic restraint typical of central banks, a dozen leaders of the world’s foremost monetary institutions issued a joint statement in January declaring their “full solidarity” with the US Federal Reserve an...

A four-year-old boy miraculously survived after falling from the window of his 11th-floor home. After the boy gained consciousness, he said in tears to his mother that he had climbed onto the window because he was missing her so much that he wanted t...

Mexican authorities have announced that the school year will end over a month early as the country gears up to host World Cup matches, prompting broad backlash. Education Secretary Mario Delgado said the decision to end the school year 40 days early ...

As global markets are roiled by geopolitical uncertainty and the energy fallout from war in the Middle East, a tiny speck in Southeast Asia has emerged as an oasis of stability – at least in terms of where the well-heeled can park their money. Giig...

China has moved early to help Laos plan its longest highway, the latest project in Beijing’s push to expand transport connectivity in Southeast Asia. The initiative underscores Beijing’s broader effort to strengthen its economic footprint in the ...

US President Donald Trump filed an appeal on Friday after the latest legal setback to his signature tariff policy, piling on more chaos and global uncertainty and setting up a new tussle over billions of US dollars in refunds. The appeal follows a de...

US President Donald Trump’s landmark visit to China comes as the Iran war disrupts global energy supplies, fuels economic uncertainty and adds fresh strain to Washington-Beijing ties. In the latest part of a series examining how rivalry, interdepen...

The old order is dead. We just don’t know what will replace it. As Henry Kissinger reminded us in his 2014 book World Order, “no truly global order has ever existed”. After US President Donald Trump’s erratic actions, the gloves are off. Amer...

There is an “almost zero” chance that the Dutch man linked to the hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius cruise ship contracted the disease in the Argentine port of Ushuaia, a provincial health official said on Friday. Juan Petrina, director of ep...

US President ⁠Donald Trump’s administration is nearing a US$400 million settlement with TikTok to resolve an ongoing lawsuit over alleged child-privacy violations, ABC News has reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. The White House de...

US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a three-day ceasefire and a prisoner exchange following US-mediated talks, saying negotiations to end the war were continuing and “we are getting closer and closer ...

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer called for stability with Beijing days before US President Donald Trump’s closely watched trip to China, saying the US was not out to reshape the Chinese economy but to rebalance trade. The trade chief told Fo...

The United States will host two days of intensive talks between Israel and Lebanon next week in a renewed push for a broader peace and security arrangement, according to a US State Department statement released on Friday. The talks, scheduled for May...

Two new suspected cases of hantavirus were ⁠reported on Friday, one in Spain and the other on the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, as experts race to contain an outbreak that began on a luxury cruise ship. The announcements in loca...

China’s international arbitration efforts have made significant progress, but more work is needed to attract foreign parties to arbitrate in China amid US-China rivalry, according to arbitrators and law scholars. China’s newly revised Arbitration...

Hong Kong has raised HK$27.6 billion (US$3.5 billion) through a green and infrastructure bond sale to finance the Northern Metropolis and low-carbon transformation projects. The offering drew investors from more than 30 markets across Asia, Europe, t...

The South China Morning Post has taken home three honours at the International News Media Association’s 2026 Global Media Awards, with its infographic on Hong Kong’s deadly Tai Po fire winning first place for the best use of visual journalism. Th...

Deeper economic cooperation between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will hinge on whether a code can be laid down to govern maritime territory and activity in the South China Sea, Philippine leader Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has said. ...

US employment rose more than expected in April, while the unemployment rate remained steady, government data showed, with the world’s largest economy firming recent labour market gains but analysts warning of underlying weakness. “Total nonfarm p...

At a New York City ballroom late last month, a crowd of hi-tech luminaries gathered at an honours ceremony. The biggest draw for the assembled tech geniuses was Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, the superstar head of one of the world’s most valuable com...

China’s top remote sensing expert Ke Tao died from an illness on Wednesday at the age of 48, according to an obituary from Wuhan University. “Comrade Ke Tao made outstanding achievements in national defence science and technology and remote sensi...

A Hong Kong court has convicted two footballers and a betting agent of bribing fellow players to rig game outcomes in the city’s largest match-fixing case in recent years. Former Hong Kong Under-23 player Brian Fok was convicted on Friday of five c...

Leapmotor, one of China’s strongest-performing electric vehicle (EV) makers this year, has taken a major step towards building cars locally for European customers after agreeing with shareholder Stellantis to add a line at a Spanish plant previousl...

China’s shipping giants are bracing for a harsh new reality of persistent global volatility, as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz shifts from being a problem of transit delays to a hard volume shock. With the crucial energy corridor still paralys...

The Pentagon has begun releasing new files on UFOs, saying members of the public can draw their own conclusions on “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP). Besides the Pentagon, the effort is led by the White House, the director of national inte...

Chinese artificial intelligence high-flier DeepSeek is expected to close its first external financing round soon, boosting its valuation to up to US$50 billion, according to three people familiar with the matter, as the country’s marquee state-back...