A woman in central China who was lying naked while awaiting a massage at a spa was shocked when a male therapist appeared, and she refused his services. Following her refusal she was mocked by the manager of the spa for being “ignorant”. The inci...

A Spanish family of four is missing after a tourist boat sank in rough seas in Indonesia, state news agency Antara reported on Saturday. The vessel was carrying 11 people when it sank in the Padar Island Strait near Labuan Bajo on Friday night, Antar...

Hong Kong police have arrested a man after finding an extendable baton in his checked luggage bound for the United States, marking the second discovery of unauthorised weapons in airline baggage this week. The force received a report on Friday after ...

In dark blue suits, the elders of the Khoo clan gathered outside the prayer halls of the Leong San Tong Khoo Kongsi, a grand 190-year-old clanhouse in George Town, the capital of the Malaysian state of Penang. One by one, they stepped inside for the ...

Just over a year after an incident that nearly triggered a cascading failure across China’s national power grid, engineers have developed the most powerful smart direct current (DC) transformer on the planet – an innovation poised to neutralise r...

A Chinese influencer with 44 million online followers has been banned for live-streaming a “vulgar” pool party at a hot spring. The influencer, who uses the handle Liu Ergou, live-streamed the party involving about 20 people for nearly three hour...

A mainland Chinese driver under Hong Kong’s southbound travel vehicle scheme has been fined for illegal parking, while another faces accusations of using tinted windows, following an earlier warning over unauthorised use of auto driving mode on the...

Catch up on some 2025 entries in Open Questions, SCMP’s series of in-depth interviews with global opinion leaders. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. ‘Delusional’: Jeffrey Sachs on why Western hegemo...

Moscow is likely stationing new nuclear-capable hypersonic ballistic missiles at a former airbase in eastern Belarus, a development that could bolster Russia’s ability to deliver missiles across Europe, two US researchers have found by studying sat...

Nexperia China, the estranged unit of the Dutch chipmaker, is pushing forward with efforts to secure new wafer suppliers in six months, as the firm’s Netherlands head office and mainland Chinese owner Wingtech Technology started direct talks last w...

China has appointed its first female pilot to exclusively captain flights on its home-grown C919 jet, with more aspiring women waiting in the wings as the nation expands its talent pool and systemically transitions elite pilots who used to fly Boeing...

Hong Kong public hospitals will deploy more than 1,000 service ambassadors to assist residents when healthcare reforms take effect next Thursday, with authorities saying the system revamp to accommodate the fee changes is entering its final stage. Di...

Five men and one woman have been injured at the Hong Kong airport after the vehicle they were travelling in swerved to avoid a detached cargo container. Police said they were alerted to the accident on South Runway Road at about 10.30pm on Friday. A ...

Thailand and Cambodia agreed to an “immediate” ceasefire on Saturday, the two countries said in a joint statement, pledging to end weeks of deadly border clashes. At least 47 people were killed and more than a million displaced in three weeks of ...

Incoming lawmakers should prioritise helping the Hong Kong government advance policy reforms and deepen integration with national development, the outgoing Legislative Council president has said as he prepares to step down. Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen als...

One month after the deadly Tai Po fire, survivors are slowly rebuilding their lives. In the second part of a series on how the community is moving on, Fiona Chow tells the story of one mother’s journey to find stability and hope for her young famil...

Lee Jae-myung is set to become the first sitting South Korean president to travel to China since 2019 with a visit scheduled for early January. Analysts said Lee was expected to engage Beijing on security issues, including North Korea’s nuclear amb...

Singapore saw plenty of drama unfold this year, from pickleball courts to the Supreme Court. The city state was gripped by election fever in May, when the People’s Action Party maintained its dominance at the polls. On the trade front, Washington�...

A massive crash in snowy weather killed two people and injured 26 on an expressway in Japan late on Friday as the country kicked off its end-of-the-year holiday season. The Gunma prefectural highway police said on Saturday that the pile-up on the Kan...

Morgan Stanley’s fundraising drive for Operation Santa Claus (OSC) has kept the firm on course to remain the campaign’s top corporate supporter for the ninth consecutive year, extending a partnership of nearly three decades that has engaged emplo...

Hong Kong has seen an increase in applications to import pets after the city cut the quarantine period for cats and dogs from mainland China from 120 to 30 days. The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) also said that a greater n...

Campaigners against nuclear energy have condemned Japan’s decision to resume operations at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power plant, claiming that the facility will be unable to withstand a major earthquake as it was “built on tofu”. Tokyo Electric P...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he expects to meet US President Donald Trump in Florida on Sunday in pursuit of a deal to end Russia’s nearly four-year invasion, though the latest comments from Moscow raise doubts about how close a fina...

Foreign forces have used deepfakes and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to create public panic and obtain sensitive information, posing a threat to China’s national security, the country’s top intelligence agency has warned. Deepfa...

Genomic sequencing has helped Hong Kong identify the right treatments for cancer patients more quickly, according to an expert who also suggested that the city could be a “super-linker” between mainland China and the rest of the world in drug dev...

A primary teacher in China has been suspended from her job for cursing at “naughty” pupils and saying that she hoped they would all get the flu. The outburst appeared in a chat group and has gone viral online. The teacher, surnamed Li, is a music...

Wheels were turning in more ways than one at a packed Hong Kong Velodrome last month when cyclist Ceci Lee Sze-wing rode to her third gold medal of the 15th National Games. Roared on by home spectators, it symbolised the successful realisation of the...

Taya says her life was looking up as Myanmar crept out from decades of isolation. She had a job in marketing, enough money to shop in Yangon’s new retail plazas and fuel her quiet dreams of opening a small bakery, as her generation enjoyed unpreced...

US President ‌Donald Trump said on Friday that a US military strike targeting Islamic State militants in Nigeria was originally supposed to take place on Wednesday but he ordered it delayed by a day. “They were going to ‍do it earlier,” Trump...

Prosecutors in South Korea have indicted 10 people, including former Samsung Electronics executives, for allegedly leaking the company’s technology to Chinese chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT). The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ ...

The Cure guitarist and keyboard player Perry Bamonte has died aged 65, the legendary British dark rock band announced on Friday. Bamonte, who became a full member of The Cure in 1990, “passed away after a short illness at home over Christmas”, ac...

From luxury handbags to vintage Bordeaux, China’s consumers have long associated French products with fine living. Now, France aims to hook the country’s expanding middle class on another local speciality: foie gras. China placed tight restrictio...

French police on Friday arrested a man suspected of stabbing three women in the Paris Metro as the capital’s end-of-year festivities were in full swing, prosecutors said. The three victims were attacked at three different locations along the Line 3...

Interest in Hong Kong’s Diploma of Secondary Education has increased steadily in recent years. The government is committed to strengthening the city’s role as an international education hub, not just in tertiary education but also in basic educat...

Airlines in the United States have cancelled or ‌delayed thousands of flights on Friday, according to flight tracking website ‍FlightAware, due to winter storm Devin during peak holiday travel. A total of 1,382 flights were cancelled and 4,685 de...

Two sisters testified at Harvey Weinstein’s most recent criminal trial. Kaja Sokola accused the disgraced movie mogul of sexual assault. Ewa Sokola was called as a witness to boost her claims but ultimately ended up helping the defence. Now, Ewa So...

Venezuela released 99 prisoners on Christmas Day, officials said, with the government calling it a goodwill gesture as it assesses arrests made after President Nicolas Maduro’s re-election. “The national government and the justice system have dec...

As 2025 draws to a close amid heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing over new arms sales to Taiwan, analysts warn that the worsening atmosphere could weigh on the substance – if not the scheduling – of US President Donald Trump’s vi...

Somalia and the African Union reacted angrily on Friday after Israel formally recognised its northern region of Somaliland as an “independent and sovereign state” – the first country to do so. Somaliland, which declared independence from Somali...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday he will meet US President Donald Trump in Florida over the weekend. Zelensky told journalists the two leaders will discuss security guarantees for Ukraine during Sunday’s talks, and that the 20-...

President Donald Trump’s reluctance to authorise direct military intervention in Venezuela underscored the US dilemma of how to reassert dominance in its traditional sphere while managing escalation risks in multipolar rivalry with China and Russia...

Chinese AI start-up Zhipu AI said it would step up efforts next year in the pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI) while continuing to open source its AI models after its initial public offering. In 2026 “we’re going to contribute more ...

China has launched a national fund designed to channel state-backed money into early-stage bets on tech, a move officials said could ultimately steer trillions of yuan into preferred avenues of investment. Beijing’s National Venture Capital Guidanc...

Hong Kong’s old Yau Ma Tei police station, a century-old building and popular selfie spot among mainland Chinese tourists, will host a new film-related exhibition, with tickets going on sale from Saturday. Opening on January 2, the exhibition is th...

An Islamist militant group has claimed responsibility for a bombing that killed at least eight worshippers at a mosque in a predominantly Alawite area of Homs, Syria, on Friday. In a statement on Telegram, Saraya Ansar al-Sunna announced that its fig...

Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the world’s largest maker of electric vehicle batteries, has partnered with semiconductor developer Unigroup Guoxin Microelectronics to form a new automotive chip firm in Beijing. CATL-owned Wending Investmen...

Images of a cargo ship in Shanghai carrying containerised vertical launchers, sensors and self-defence systems have spread online and prompted discussion for apparently showing China’s capacity to convert civilian cargo vessels to military purposes...

Catch up on some of SCMP’s biggest China science stories of the year. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. China unveils a powerful deep-sea cable cutter that could reset the world order A compact, deep-se...

Taiwan’s legislature passed a motion on Friday to start impeachment proceedings against the island’s leader, William Lai Ching-te. The Legislative Yuan voted 60 to 51 in favour of the motion that argued that the leader undermined the self-ruled i...

The fascination with cryptocurrencies shows no sign of fading. With the passage of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (Genius) Act in July, US lawmakers added to the sense that crypto is here to stay. But an uncomfort...