Artificial intelligence is already reshaping industries and markets, even though artificial general intelligence (AGI) – a still theoretical form of AI capable of humanlike reasoning across many tasks rather than single specialised functions – ha...

Africa’s top regional body is hosting its annual summit in Ethiopia this weekend to discuss the future of the continent of some 1.4 billion people, as the organisation faces widespread discontent. Set up to “promote the unity and solidarity of th...

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China and US can get along well but whether the goal can be reached will ultimately depend on the United States. Addressing the Munich Security Conference, Wang said China sought to find the right way for the two...

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and the country’s main opposition leader held hands Friday as they paid tribute to the victims of one of the worst mass shootings in the country’s history at a vigil in a devastated British Columbia town. Carne...

“Our destiny will be intertwined with yours”, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told European allies at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, sending a strong message of US commitment to transatlantic ties. Europe was the US’ “oldest fr...

Hong Kong public universities had more than 20,000 non-local undergraduate students in the second academic year since the government doubled quotas, a 17 per cent year-on-year increase, as the education minister promised to review the threshold. The ...

China’s travel industry is expecting a sharp increase in visitors to Australia during this month’s extended Lunar New Year holiday, as millions of tourists fan out across the world for a nine-day break. Industry insiders said the lure of wine, se...

A number of psychiatric hospitals in central China have been exposed over a scam in which they lure healthy people to become patients in a bid to defraud the public medical insurance scheme. According to an undercover report by the Beijing News, most...

Some lovebirds in Hong Kong are expressing their affection this Valentine’s Day by spending hundreds of dollars on bouquets and gifts, while several vendors have recorded growth in sales of about 20 per cent. At the bustling Flower Market in Mong K...

Two sitting Philippine senators have been identified as “co-perpetrators” in former president Rodrigo Duterte’s crimes against humanity trial at the International Criminal Court, documents released by prosecutors show. Senators Ronald Dela Rosa...

Award-winning Indian writer Arundhati Roy has said she is withdrawing from the Berlin Film Festival over jury president Wim Wenders’ comments that cinema should “stay out of politics” when asked about Gaza. Roy said in a statement on Friday tha...

Hong Kong’s police chief has slammed the alleged involvement of a lawyer and doctors in a spate of so-called crash-for-cash scams as “unforgivable and unacceptable”. Commissioner of Police Joe Chow Yat-ming said on Saturday that the force would...

The United Arab Emirates is rapidly eclipsing Hong Kong and emerging as a credible rival to Singapore as Asia’s most dynamic trading hub, thanks to an ambitious post-pandemic campaign of economic diplomacy. Defying global headwinds from war and ins...

Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te has appealed for public support amid a dispute about a special military budget, warning that the deadlock could delay key weapons deliveries and send the island down the US arms supply priority list. The NT$1.25 ...

Hongkongers flocked to depart the city on Saturday, with many opting to take a nine-day Lunar New Year break to destinations across the rest of Asia, as mainland Chinese visitors crossed into the city amid the festive period. Travellers, including fa...

During an entrance exam for a top middle school in Japan in January, students were asked to read two poems depicting life in Palestine and write responses to key passages. Controversy soon followed on Japanese social media over the use of the materia...

The US Government experienced its second shutdown in four months on Saturday, as funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) halted, underscoring Washington’s growing partisanship and dysfunction. But in an ironic twist, Immigration and C...

Hong Kong police are investigating the death of an 80-year-old man allegedly knocked down by a taxi driver in a traffic accident in Kwun Tong. The force said on Saturday that the cab driver, a 46-year-old man, was travelling along Kwun Tong Road on F...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a battleground for the United States and China, but it can also be an area for dialogue and cooperation on regulation and global governance, according to researchers in Hong Kong and Singapore. The team highlighted “...

The posh, three-storey house in Malaysia’s capital of Kuala Lumpur was occupied by foreign prostitutes who provide their services for fees of up to 3,500 ringgit (US$900). The “romps”, which were either a 45-minute or 90-minute session, were of...

A German defence company has successfully tested an uncrewed cargo glider designed to support frontline military units, a technology that Tokyo is also exploring as it looks to bolster its capabilities in islands to the far southwest of the Japanese ...

Some Hong Kong restaurant operators have urged authorities to clearly tell the public about the origins of problematic raw oysters following a spate of food poisoning cases, so that diners can make informed decisions in the lead-up to Lunar New Year,...

The US military said on Friday it killed three alleged drug traffickers in a strike on a boat in the Caribbean. The attack raises the death toll from the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats to 133 people in at least 38 attacks carr...

Around a decade ago, aboard a train winding through China’s landscape, Wang Ning, the founder and chairman of Beijing-founded international art toy brand Pop Mart, shared with designer Kenny Wong Shun-ming the story of his early attempts at entrepr...

Thailand has begun using a birth control vaccine on elephants in the wild to try and curb a growing problem where human and animal populations encroach on each other – an issue in areas where farms spread into forests and elephants are squeezed out...

There is this old British chestnut that says justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done. Justice has been amply served in the 20-year sentence handed down to former media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, but it has not been seen to be done...

The Trump administration spent more than US$35 million to deport roughly 300 migrants to countries they had no connection to, doling out millions of dollars in lump sum transfers to foreign governments without a system to track how the money was used...

Suri Chan Tin-wing, a first-year English major at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, found herself struggling to write her first creative short story – a 300-word assignment for the compulsory course “Introduction to Literature”. Throughout h...

A mother from eastern China who faced online criticism for making simple breakfasts has turned heads and gone viral with her bizarre breakfast creations. Clothing shop owner Zhang Liping from Zhejiang province lives with her husband and their 16-year...

Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio is facing three new impeachment complaints, setting the stage for renewed scrutiny aimed at preventing her from becoming the country’s next leader. But unseating her and barring her from politics will n...

Renso Bajala didn’t expect a machine to help decide whether he kept his job. In 2024, the 22-year-old Makati City native was on probation in a customer relations role for a US credit card company when he learned that becoming a regular employee wou...

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that a change of government in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen”, as he sent a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East to ratchet up military pressure on the Islamic republic. Trump’s c...

A viral AI-generated video of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fighting atop a building is causing a stir online. The 15-second video comes from the latest AI video-generation platform, Seedance 2.0. The platform was launched this week by its owner, ByteDanc...

Chinese scientists have developed microelectrodes that can flex and move with the brain, potentially paving the way for more advanced and adaptable brain-computer interfaces, according to a study published by the peer-reviewed Nature Electronics. The...

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s landslide electoral victory on Sunday signals a troubling shift: Japan’s unsettling turn to the right. In a post-US-led world order, safeguarding Japan’s security will require reaffirming, not abandoning...

Beijing has called on the European Union to properly manage its frictions with China and deepen cooperation to tackle global challenges together. China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, made the call on the sidelines of the annual Munich Security Conference...

President Donald Trump boasted on Friday about a secret US “discombobulator” weapon that can block Russian and Chinese defence systems, as he met the elite troops who captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Trump’s comments at the Fort Bragg...

Brazilian prosecutors and police launched an extensive crackdown on a Chinese electronics distribution network accused of laundering more than one billion reais (US$190 million) over seven months through a system allegedly related to one of Latin Ame...

⁠The Trump administration sued ⁠Harvard University on Friday, accusing it ⁠of failing to comply with a federal investigation and seeking documents to determine whether the university had illegally considered race in its admissions process. The ...

The US eased sanctions on Venezuela’s energy sector on Friday, issuing two general licences that allow global energy companies to operate oil and gas projects in the Opec member and for other companies to negotiate contracts to bring in fresh ‌in...

Star Cruises cancelled a scheduled departure from Hong Kong on Friday evening because of “an unforeseen technical issue”, leaving angry passengers who had waited for hours to board complaining they had been treated like “refugees”. The cruise...

Consumer inflation in the US cooled slightly more than expected in January, government data showed Friday, as energy prices dipped. Analysts say the figure allows the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates again later this year, but warn that policyma...

In a move that escalates tensions between Beijing and Washington just weeks ahead of US President Donald Trump’s anticipated trip to Beijing, the Pentagon added a wide range of Chinese companies to a list of firms with alleged links to the military...

Fiscal strains are forcing Chinese provinces to slash their budget-revenue expectations for 2026 due to the knock-on effects of a five-year property market slump, and analysts cite the shift as a warning sign that intense debt pressures continue to d...

China and the US are likely to secure several “very positive” outcomes but not a “grand bargain” at their presidential summit in April, according to the board chief of a major American business lobby. James Zimmerman, chairman of the American...

In the latest sign of China’s push to channel private capital into infrastructure, several local governments have begun actively seeking private investors for two major ultra-high-voltage power line projects – the first schemes of their kind to o...

The authority managing Hong Kong’s West Kowloon arts hub has averted a funding crisis after securing a longer-than-usual 10-year loan facility of HK$3 billion, which comes in addition to a US$1 billion (US$383.8 million) bond sale programme announc...

Hong Kong plans to test a new clearance channel using facial recognition at one of its checkpoints by June to cut processing time to five seconds, with immigration authorities handling a record 335 million people entering and leaving the city last ye...

As Hong Kong braces itself for the Lunar New Year tourist surge, and perhaps long-awaited evidence of a return to the tourism heydays of 2017 and 2018, spare a thought for the US and mounting evidence of a “Trump slump” in US tourism this year. W...

A French tourist who went missing in northeastern Chad after heading off to visit an oasis in the desert has been found dead “after a fall”, Chad’s tourism minister said on Friday. The 70-year-old man – from the city of Dijon, according to a ...