Hong Kong and mainland Chinese police have arrested 33 people in a joint operation to crack down on a suspected credit card theft syndicate targeting city residents who travel across the border for leisure, with losses exceeding HK$1.8 million (US$22...

Typhoon Champi continued to batter China’s eastern coast on Saturday, grounding over a hundred flights and prompting the authorities to relocate tens of thousands of people, while weakening as it moved towards Japan. Flights from airports in Shangh...

In a rare overnight vote, the Czech ruling coalition pushed public media funding changes through a first parliamentary hurdle despite criticism that they could weaken broadcaster independence. The populist government of billionaire Prime Minister And...

The anxiety gripping Seoul is palpable. Under US pressure, South Korea signed a US$350 billion investment deal last November for a 10-percentage-point tariff reduction, billing it as a strategic alliance. Barely a year on, the facade has crumbled. La...

France is bracing for another day of mass protests on Saturday, with the government promising that 70,000 police and gendarmes will be deployed across the country amid fears that last weekend’s scenes of violence and looting could repeat themselves...

Two Philippine Air ⁠Force ⁠aircraft crashed during ⁠a training flight at an air base south of the capital Manila, killing four pilots, the military said on Saturday. The aviation accident on Friday involved two SF-260 aircraft at the Fernando A...

Hong Kong authorities should act as a “visible hand” to break down barriers erected by vested interests and revive growth momentum through reform under its maiden five-year plan, a former Beijing official overseeing the city’s affairs has said....

Israel’s military launched an operation in the occupied West Bank on Friday it said would last several days and include searches and building demolitions, after gunmen killed two soldiers days ahead of Israeli elections featuring security as a key ...

The former father-in-law of slain Hong Kong socialite Abby Choi Tin-fung rented a village house flat under false pretences and bought a meat mincer and multiple saws as he allegedly prepared for the model’s killing, a court has heard. More evidence...

China is challenging India’s long-held dominance of the African market for antimalarial drugs in 12 of the continent’s hardest-hit countries, according to a new study. Last year, Chinese exports of antimalarial drugs reached US$89.3 million, near...

About 16,000 Hong Kong residents have signed up for a joint exam to drive taxis or ride-hailing cars, the transport chief has said. Speaking on a radio programme on Saturday, Secretary for Transport and Logistics Mable Chan said the allocation arrang...

Drinking water has been scarce for over a decade in Taiz, but the problem has reached crisis levels in recent weeks as Iran-backed Houthi rebels besiege Yemen’s third-largest city in their escalating conflict with government forces. The needs of Ta...

Hong Kong customs officers seized 600 million illicit cigarette sticks in the first three quarters of this year, the department chief has said, as he revealed plans to roll out more advanced contraband detection equipment. Commissioner of Customs and...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un urged his military to train to become the strongest in the world at a two-day meeting of company commanders in Pyongyang, state media said on Saturday. Kim’s call for what he dubbed a “Korean-style military revolut...

Days ahead of close-fought Israeli elections, campaigns have gone into overdrive with poor-taste jibes and inflammatory attacks against candidates, sometimes crossing red lines. Fuelled in part by a boom in AI-generated images flooding social media, ...

At this time of year, Fatima Ramos would normally be preparing her balikbayan boxes. Overseas Filipinos typically fill these boxes with gifts, clothes, food and household items to send to their loved ones back home in the Philippines for Christmas. R...

A cryptocurrency trading platform on Hong Kong and Canadian regulators’ alert lists has opened an office in the city, prompting experts to urge closer scrutiny of how such firms promote themselves without undermining an open business environment. E...

Chinese researchers have mapped the complex geological evolution of Turkey’s Kizilcaoren deposit, offering fresh insights into the country’s most significant known rare earth reserve while dampening expectations over its commercial potential. Alt...

Parisians are buying tear-gas canisters and pepper sprays to defend themselves and their property during protests, which are expected to continue over the weekend, the owner of a weapons shop in the French capital has said. France was hit by its wors...

A revised Imperial House Law took effect on Saturday to address Japan’s shrinking imperial family while retaining the traditional male-only succession system despite public support for female emperors. The legislation, enacted in July in the first ...

Fiercely proud of its culinary traditions, India is increasingly open to foreign influences, with French cooking schools attracting students eager to make their mark on the country’s growing fine-dining sector. “Ten or 15 years ago, there were fa...

Pets in China have become deeply woven into people’s lives and romantic relationships, especially those of younger couples. When romance sours, deciding “who gets custody” is becoming a painful legal grey area for many couples. According to pet...

Japan’s centuries-old festivals are facing renewed scrutiny after a series of fatal accidents in recent weeks, raising questions over how communities can preserve their cultural traditions without putting lives at risk. Three people have been kille...

Private recreation leases have a long and contentious history in Hong Kong. Complaints about the inequity of granting land leases to private clubs at a nominal premium for the exclusive enjoyment of a small number of members have been raised many tim...

The number of private secondary schools in Hong Kong has risen by more than half in five years as demand for alternative curricula grows and new operators seek to attract families drawn by the city’s highly ranked universities, education authoritie...

China’s access to artificial intelligence computing power will double next year, but US-designed chips will account for about 65 per cent of that capacity, an indication of its continued reliance on foreign hardware, according to new research. Tota...

When 35-year-old Bekasi resident Ika Kartika voted for Prabowo Subianto in Indonesia’s 2024 presidential election, she hoped the former general would restore a “Suharto-like” era of stability, when everyday essentials were affordable and life f...

Kevin Rudd, president of the Asia Society and a former Australian prime minister, described US-China strategic competition as full-on and multidimensional at a Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics event on Friday. “There is a full-blown str...

Strategic competition between China and the US and its allies is intensifying across the Pacific islands, with both sides pursuing a growing range of security agreements to expand their influence, according to an interactive mapping tool released thi...

Plenary sessions of the Central Committee, the upper echelon of China’s ruling Communist Party, are major events on the country’s political calendar. In the third part of this series, William Zheng and Alcott Wei examine how the fight against cor...

In late September, Singapore’s Reddit community erupted over the government’s new dating platform, FirstDate. Curious to get an insider’s perspective, I visited the site, connected to my Singpass account and watched as my name, age and marital ...

Kenya’s health ministry announced the country’s second Ebola death on Friday, saying a 65-year-old woman who was a close relative of the first patient died after developing symptoms while in quarantine. The woman began showing symptoms 10 days ag...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that Beijing has “influence” over Moscow it should use to stop the war in Ukraine, and that a proposed summit meeting of the US, Chinese and Russian leaders must not lead to the division of hi...

The Trump administration is expanding tariff exemptions to more Canadian products, a move that may help boost Republican US Senator Susan Collins’ re-election campaign in Maine. Collins announced in a statement on Friday that the exemptions would a...

A gunman firing from a car killed one person and wounded five – including a 12-year-old girl shot eight times – in the Paris suburbs on Friday, in what the French president called a “racist terrorist attack”. The man was “firing at random, ...

Gunmen killed at least seven people and wounded dozens at a church in southern Jordan on Friday, with the king vowing retaliation for the rare attack on Christians in the majority Sunni Muslim kingdom. Assailants stormed the compound of a Greek Ortho...

Ukraine’s top negotiator involved in a humanitarian mission led by US first lady Melania Trump has said that a local ceasefire with Russia will start on Tuesday – two days before the mission begins – and last several days. Ukrainian, Russian an...

A scorched hunk of metal that turned up in a US farmer’s cornfield may have handed China an awkward moment and technically an “international incident”, according to a British astronomer who has tracked rocket launches for more than 30 years. Th...

Authorities in the Philippines are investigating Thomas Markle, father of Meghan, the ⁠wife of Britain’s Prince ⁠Harry, the Philippine justice undersecretary said ⁠on Friday, after allegations he possessed child sexual abuse images. “Our An...

China has unveiled a position paper on outer space governance, prioritising the prevention of space weaponisation while calling for a global framework to protect all nations’ legitimate rights beyond Earth. Addressing the inaugural Global Governanc...

France will deploy some 70,000 police nationwide as it braces for new protests this weekend after some of the worst urban violence in years erupted on the sidelines of demonstrations a week ago, the government said on Friday. President Emmanuel Macro...

Fatimah Zainal had already paid for her flights and accommodation when videos of the unrest in France made her jittery about the Paris leg of her European holiday. “The videos definitely made me panic,” said Fatimah, who plans to visit the French...

The Philippines’ dual push for stronger “minilateral” defence links and a more robust Asean security role is dividing analysts, with one calling the move “opportunistic”. Some experts view Manila’s advocacy for the “Squad” alliance as...

Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Authority has advised property owners under a subsidy scheme against hiring a contractor that failed to install fire safety components in lifts at hundreds of buildings, saying it had “lost confidence” in the company. ...

Indonesia’s warnings of curbing energy exports to countries it deems disrespectful amid regional tensions have put Singapore and other Southeast Asian buyers on notice, exposing the risks of relying on a neighbour increasingly protective of its res...

Hong Kong’s legislature will set up a subcommittee to examine proposed restrictions on access to land records following widespread public concern. At a Legislative Council House Committee meeting on Friday, lawmakers endorsed establishing the subco...

The European Union may hit more Chinese industries with quotas or tariffs before further negotiations with Beijing, the bloc’s trade chief said on Friday, naming plastics as a sector in which investigations are advanced. Maros Sefcovic said that wh...

China and Europe should jointly introduce a system like the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), a levy on carbon-intensive imports designed to account for the carbon costs domestic producers face, which “applies against the rest of the world...

Beijing has told Brussels not to “fantasise” that pressure will extract concessions. This came after China made a goodwill gesture in the recent hybrid-car trade deal. The European Union responded by doubling down on a proposed trade “kill swit...

China’s Communist Party convened an early monthly Politburo meeting on Friday to review a key internal inspection report, doubling down on its high-pressure anti-corruption campaign ahead of a major party conclave next week. Chaired by President Xi...