Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma on Tuesday made a low-key visit to the Hangzhou campus of Ant Group that coincided with the Chinese fintech giant’s launch of LingGuang, a next-generation multimodal artificial intelligence assistant. Ma, who h...

Two men from a village in southwestern China witnessed their friend drown in a reservoir, and rather than alerting the authorities, they took him home, placing him in his bed as if he were merely asleep. The sister of the deceased recently recounted ...

Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui remained the world’s fourth most expensive retail strip with rents at US$1,515 per square foot per year, as two other core shopping districts in the city – Causeway Bay and Central – also ranked among the Asia-Pacifi...

Singapore’s acting sports minister has apologised for calling Hong Kong football fans and players “idiots” in a locker room pep talk to his side, following the city state’s historic win on Tuesday night in Hong Kong. Singapore came back from ...

An Australian journalist is set to face trial next month in Thailand after Malaysia’s internet regulator filed a criminal defamation complaint over his critical writing, a rare cross-border case in Southeast Asia that rights groups say could open t...

New Zealand’s top diplomat is set to visit China next week to mark a major deal with a state‑owned Chinese shipbuilder to upgrade interisland ferries serving the Pacific nation. New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters confirmed his trip on We...

Former US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo said US President Donald Trump’s tariffs are likely to outlive his administration, sustained by political fears that removing protectionist barriers will alienate workers who fear losing their jobs to offs...

The Dutch government has suspended its invocation of the Goods Availability Act, a Cold War-era law it used to effectively seize the European operations of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia. In a statement on Wednesday, the Dutch economy minister said...

A fire ripped through more than 170 buildings and killed one person in a southern Japanese coastal city on Wednesday, with military and firefighting helicopters scrambling to extinguish the country’s largest urban blaze in almost half a century. Ae...

A South Korean high school student died in an ambulance after eight hospitals refused to treat him over the space of an hour, in a case that has reignited concerns over a growing shortage of doctors and specialists in the country. The 18-year-old was...

Indonesian police have dismantled an Islamic State-linked network that used online video games and social media to radicalise more than 100 children, arresting five suspects including a convicted terrorist. The elite counterterrorism unit Densus 88 r...

Family offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai are redrawing the global map of private capital. Each hub combines favourable tax and regulatory regimes with strong local networks of banks, advisers and deal makers. Together, they now rival Western ...

South Korea is stepping up its outreach to Middle Eastern buyers as it pursues potential weapons contracts worth US$15 billion in the United Arab Emirates, seeking to build on its success in Europe and solidify its reputation as a dependable arms sup...

Hong Kong’s flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways will allow travellers who have booked tickets to Japan to “modify” their flights after Beijing’s earlier call for Chinese citizens to avoid going to the country. In a statement on Wednesday, the...

A Hong Kong court has declined a police officer’s request to temporarily halt his prosecution ahead of an intended judicial challenge to an inquest verdict that found he unlawfully killed a taxi driver by putting him in a headlock in 2012. Constabl...

A Hong Kong university establishing the city’s third medical school has pledged to commit more than HK$7 billion (US$899 million) to the project and has already recruited six clinical professors, including a former head of an Australian institution...

The European Commission has launched an anti-dumping investigation into Chinese robotic lawnmowers, confirming an exclusive Post report, while also marking another potential escalation of China-EU trade tensions. China has been selling more robotic l...

We have put together stories from our coverage on science from the past two weeks to help you stay informed. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Mathematician Qian Hong, son of top scientific clan, leaves U...

A Japanese cabinet minister has reiterated his country’s claim to Liancourt Rocks, known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea, after Seoul protested against a new museum wing promoting Tokyo’s sovereignty over the islets. “Under inter...

As governments worldwide debate the merits and dangers of digital currencies, India appears poised to launch its own state-backed stablecoin that uses government debt as collateral. Proponents argue that the Asset Reserve Certificate (ARC) could hast...

Chinese Premier Li Qiang will arrive in the Zambian capital Lusaka on Wednesday, with a US$1.4 billion railway modernisation deal high on his agenda. But Li could also face political fallout from a toxic spill at a copper mine in the country’s nort...

Wall Street will get a sense of where the billions of dollars being spent on artificial intelligence are going when Nvidia Corp reports its earnings after the bell on Wednesday. How the sinking stock market will react is another question. “This is ...

Malaysia’s national utility firm Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) has incurred losses of more than US$1 billion from illegal power usage by cryptocurrency miners between 2020 and August this year, the energy ministry said. TNB found that 13,827 premises h...

The Japanese economy could lose about 1.49 trillion yen (US$9.59 billion) over the next year if travellers from mainland China continue to avoid Japan over a row that has derailed the growth in arrivals seen earlier this year, an economist at the Tok...

The king and queen of Thailand have become the first visiting heads of state to greet Chinese astronauts in orbit, in an unprecedented moment for China’s tightly controlled human space flight programme. The 73-year-old King Maha Vajiralongkorn – ...

A 28-year-old Chinese man has been nicknamed “the hottest village cadre” after videos of him promoting agricultural products by showing off his muscular physique went viral. Lin Yangduo, who goes by the nickname Lin Xiaobai, is a former kayaker a...

Eight out of 10 newly introduced designated polling stations for civil servants in the coming Hong Kong Legislative Council election will be set up inside police facilities. A list of four new types of designated polling stations was gazetted on Wedn...

Portuguese football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and billionaire Elon Musk were among the guests at a lavish White House dinner hosted by US President Donald Trump for the visiting Saudi crown prince on Tuesday. Ronaldo plays for Saudi club Al Nassr, ...

The Japanese governor overseeing the region that is home to the world’s largest nuclear power plant is set to give the approval this week for its restart, the Kyodo news agency reported on Wednesday. The approval will clear one of the remaining mil...

China’s ambassador to the United Nations said on Tuesday that Japan was “totally unqualified” to become a permanent member of the Security Council – the latest salvo in a row about the new Japanese prime minister’s comments about Taiwan. Fu...

China will take “further measures” against Japan unless its prime minister retracts her controversial comments on Taiwan, the foreign ministry said as Beijing reportedly reimposed a ban on Japanese seafood imports. Chinese foreign ministry spokes...

Seven people have been injured after a minibus collided with a car in Hong Kong’s Ma On Shan and then crashed into a bus stop. A source said on Wednesday that the green minibus and BYD car were travelling in opposite directions along A Kung Kok Str...

An Israeli air strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon on Tuesday killed 13 people and wounded several others, state media and government officials said. It was the deadliest strike on Lebanon since a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbolla...

Henderson Land Development has unveiled Central Yards, a 1.6 million sq ft mixed-use project taking shape on Hong Kong’s most expensive piece of prime real estate and a key component of the developer’s HK$63 billion (US$8 billion) New Central Har...

North Korea is expected to remain largely impervious to Western diplomatic overtures for the foreseeable future as it rails against its rivals’ “hostile” policies. On Tuesday, North Korean state media denounced last month’s summit between US ...

Just three days before the annual Miss Universe pageant is set to take place in Thailand, one of the judges has abruptly stepped down. On Tuesday, Lebanese-French musician Omar Harfouch posted on social media explaining why he suddenly pulled out, sa...

In Wufeng Tujia autonomous county, Hubei province, the rugged beauty of central China masks the region’s long-standing isolation. Its steep terrain and dense forests have long hindered transport, stifling growth and keeping communities cut off both...

The Hong Kong government has lashed out at a US legislative committee for its report that urged for more sanctions on the city, as it pointed to the “substantial” commercial interests and economic benefits America enjoyed due to its ties with the...

Kissing did not begin with star-crossed human lovers but with the primate ancestors of great apes around 20 million years ago, according to a study published on Wednesday. Researchers from Oxford University and the Florida Institute of Technology wan...

Following the recent rate cut, Hong Kong lenders are cautiously easing household lending as they navigate a recovery that remains uneven and filled with mixed signals, according to credit reference agency TransUnion. In response to the US Federal Res...

This article was first published on November 20, 2025 By Alvin Sallay French motor­cycle ace killed in Macau Veteran French rider Bruno Bonhuil was killed when he crashed during the warm-up session for the showpiece motorcycle race at the Macau Gran...

A Gustav Klimt portrait painting sold on Tuesday for US$236 million, a record for a modern art piece, at an auction where a solid gold, fully functional toilet satirising the ultrarich also fetched US$12.1 million. The toilet, by Maurizio Cattelan - ...

Hong Kong’s financial services sector could boost hiring by as much as 15 per cent next year, fuelled by buoyant capital markets and growth in assets under management, according to a global recruitment agency. The surging equity markets in Hong Kon...

Asean has signed its first region-wide extradition treaty, a move observers see as a long-overdue step to close legal loopholes that have allowed fugitives to slip across borders and evade arrest. Analysts say the Asean Treaty on Extradition will plu...

The durian, the king of fruits, is synonymous with Malaysia, right? While every Malaysian will agree, the Indonesians are saying no. They insist that they have a stronger claim to the durian, creating a thorny issue in Malaysia’s bid to make it the...

Donald Trump ripped into a reporter from the US network ABC News on Tuesday, just days after calling another woman journalist “piggy” after she asked a question related to the convicted sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump threatened ABC’s br...

Chinese artificial intelligence scientist Yang Hongxia, a professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), is seeking to democratise large language models (LLMs) by empowering hospitals and various enterprises to train their own AI systems. Yan...

China should add a quantitative target for consumption growth as part of its long-term modernisation goals to help sustain growth momentum as the country’s population declines, a prominent Chinese economist said. “In addition to setting a gross d...

A museum in Beijing has launched a creepy-crawly coffee brew which has ground-down cockroaches sprinkled on the surface of the drink. Aside from the insect powders, the caffeine pick-me-up is laced with dried yellow mealworms. Drinkers say it has a �...

This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. Hong Kong woke up to temperatures as low as 13.2 degrees Celsius (55.8 Fahrenheit) on Wednesday, the coldest ...