The economic toll of war is pushing Iran to find a resolution to the hostilities beyond its fragile two-week truce with the US, according to a Middle East-focused think tank leader and businessman who is familiar with the status of the negotiations. ...

Chinese biomedical companies deploying cutting-edge technologies are emerging as serious competitors to Western dominance in the race to treat Parkinson’s disease, in a market that could reach US$16 billion over the next decade. The firms are devel...

Hong Kong police have used drones for the first time to combat illegal street gambling operations, arresting eight suspects over the past two weeks. The eight suspects – seven men and a woman, aged between 53 and 76 – were arrested in Chung On Es...

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) powered by large language models presents a significant breakthrough. For the first time, humans are communicating with computers using language instructions. This has enabled the use of AI agents to perform in...

About 1,900 families who lived in Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court will return in batches to their fire-ravaged homes from April 20. Nearly five months after the deadly blaze in Tai Po engulfed seven of the estate’s eight buildings, the government arra...

Qiu has been scouring Shanghai’s labour agencies for a job for her 58-year-old father – a former mechanic from neighbouring Jiangsu province caught in a frustrating limbo. While he is still years away from the official retirement age for rural mi...

Lea Albritton’s mornings belong to the repair shop. Her afternoons belong to the camera. The 40-year-old from Leyte in the central Philippines has lived in the US state of Georgia since 2019 with her 62-year-old American husband, Timothy, running a...

The Hong Kong government should use its proposed accountability system prudently to investigate department heads and avoid undermining morale among civil servants, a top adviser to the city’s leader has said. But Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, convenor of ...

As the artificial intelligence race moves beyond language models into the physical world, Asia’s manufacturing and supply chain strengths could give it an edge over the US, says Granite Asia’s Jixun Foo. The veteran venture capitalist said the cu...

Surgeons in southern China have removed an 8cm-long worm from a woman’s brain after she suffered from multiple mystery health problems. The 61-year-old had brain surgery at a hospital in Guangdong province in early April, the Shenzhen Evening News ...

Hong Kong is set to announce on Monday a new batch of “strategic enterprises” establishing a presence in the city, including several firms with market capitalisations of up to HK$100 billion (US$12.8 billion), the finance chief has revealed. Writ...

A single father has refused to accept any more donations from Malaysians following a viral video that appeared to show him having difficulty finding money to pay a mechanic after his motorcycle broke down in Kuala Lumpur. According to Sinar Harian, t...

Three people in California have been sentenced for insurance fraud in a bizarre scam that involved someone dressed in a bear costume damaging luxury cars. The California Insurance Department said the three used a person in a bear suit to stage fake a...

David Chan* is among the few remaining ship machinery maintenance masters at the Po Chong Wan temporary industrial area in Hong Kong’s Aberdeen. Chan, in his seventies, entered the trade in the 1960s as an apprentice in Ap Lei Chau, an islet off Ab...

The flags arrived before BINI did. They were already rippling across the Mojave Tent at Coachella in a sea of blue, red and white when the eight-member group took the stage on a recent Friday afternoon, carried by fans who had travelled across oceans...

During Vice-President Han Zheng’s visit to Nairobi in March, China signed a cash grant for drought relief and recently delivered food aid to Somalia, Togo, Zimbabwe and Zambia – helping 217,057 people in Zambia and providing Zimbabwe with 5,000 t...

Pope Leo sought ⁠to downplay his feud ⁠with US President Donald Trump on Saturday, ⁠saying reporting about comments he has made so far during his Africa tour “has not been accurate in all its aspects”. Speaking to reporters in English aboar...

Taiwan must urgently overhaul its civil defence and rethink its energy strategy to withstand a potential blockade, experts warned at a tabletop exercise, describing existing preparedness as “too romantic” for a real-world crisis. The two-day 2026...

Malaysian comedian Rizal van Geyzel keeps his three children – aged six, 14 and 15 – off social media. He calls it a “gateway drug” to fake news, pornography, stalkers and doom-scrolling. “Do I risk them resenting me? Sure, but these are th...

For the first time in its history – and in a striking departure from its long-standing doctrine of minimal economic intervention – Hong Kong is preparing to draw up a five-year plan. Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has asked all policy bureaus t...

China’s artificial intelligence model companies are unlikely to “eat up” the domestic software market because they lack the deep industry know-how and experience to meet enterprise needs, according to an HSBC analyst. Unlike the US, China’s l...

The debut exhibition of the US’ Metropolitan Museum of Art in Hong Kong has underscored the importance of people-to-people ties and trust between countries through cultural exchanges during times of uncertainty, organisers have said. About 200 piec...

A dedicated five-year-old Chinese girl is making a big impression online with her skilful and powerful martial arts performances. Huang Zijun from Maoming, in southern China’s Guangdong province, has marvelled countless netizens with videos of her ...

Singapore has earned top marks for digital resilience in the Asia-Pacific, but a new study reveals a disconnect at the heart of its corporate world: its executives ranked 10th out of 11 for leadership on the issue. The findings, published on Wednesda...

Construction of a US$1 billion Chinese-invested hydropower station has begun in Cambodia to facilitate the Southeast Asian country’s use of renewable energy as the fallout from the Iran war constricts developing countries’ access to traditional f...

Former US president Barack Obama met New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for the first time on Saturday at a child care centre where they read to preschoolers and led a singalong. The meeting comes as Mamdani, a democratic socialist who marked his 100th da...

For a Chinese enterprise venturing overseas, the first decision is often not which market to enter, but which city to launch from. And that choice increasingly narrows to Hong Kong or Singapore. Both offer deep capital markets, common law systems and...

Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said on Saturday she had “no regrets” about symbolically handing over her Nobel Peace Prize to US President Donald Trump in January. “There is a leader in the world, a head of state in the wo...

A Canadian man accused of helping 14 ⁠people in the province ⁠of Ontario kill themselves by selling a ⁠legal but deadly substance online will avoid a murder trial by pleading guilty to lesser charges, his lawyer said on Saturday. Kenneth Law, 6...

A gunman who killed at least six people in the streets of Kyiv on Saturday before taking hostages and barricading himself in a nearby supermarket has been shot dead by police, Ukrainian officials said. The head of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, Ihor ...

Mexican ⁠President Claudia Sheinbaum and Spain’s Pedro Sanchez ⁠met in Barcelona on Saturday after a summit of progressive leaders, signalling a rapprochement during the first presidential visit to the Mediterranean country in eight years. The ...

Fourteen people were injured after a minibus crashed into a heavy goods vehicle, Hong Kong police said on Saturday. The driver reported to police at about 9.30pm that the minibus had hit a heavy goods vehicle in Tsing Yi and that some passengers had ...

In June 2021, from a podium in the Cornish countryside, former US president Joe Biden told a relieved Europe that “America is back at the table”. The comment – made after a summit of the Group of Seven rich nations – became a galvanising forc...

US President Donald Trump on Saturday directed his administration to speed up reviews of certain psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine, which recently has been embraced by combat veterans and conservative lawmakers despite having serious safety risks...

Hong Kong’s competition watchdog is closely monitoring a potential megadeal between the city’s two largest supermarket chains amid a continued decline in grocery sales since 2020. The Competition Commission told the South China Morning Post that ...

The shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz only hours after its reopening is a tactic by Iran to gain leverage over the United States before possible negotiations, according to Chinese analysts. With the clock counting down to the end of a two-week ceasefi...

The “drone-killing” success of Iran’s 358 loitering munition, especially against expensive US-made platforms, is attracting attention well beyond the battlefield in the Middle East. In China, state media has taken a look at the Iranian-designed...

UK counterterror officers are investigating an arson attack on a shop in an area of London with a large Jewish population, police said on Saturday, following similar incidents in recent weeks. No one was injured in the fire on late Friday in Hendon, ...

A Hong Kong woman has lost nearly HK$4.9 million (US$625,800) in three months after being cheated by bogus “investment experts” in an online scam. The victim was lured into contacting the scammers after seeing a post on social media advertising h...

In Canada, fans and foes of Chinese electric vehicles are holding their breath for brands like BYD to hit the market. Whether they love them or not, they share the hope that Chinese carmakers will help to bring all EV prices down, as affordability be...

Hong Kong rugby has reached a “pinnacle” as the city celebrates the 50th anniversary of its annual Sevens tournament, the man who coached the local team at the first edition of the event in 1976 has said. Peter Duncan, who stepped down as preside...

Hong Kong Cantopop singer Keung To has urged the public to learn from his mistakes after he was fined HK$2,200 (US$280) for careless driving, running a red light and failing to display a probationary sign on his car while driving. Keung, a member of ...

For 66-year-old Ming Lee, the only way to get back to his flat in Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court is by walking up 25 flights of stairs, after the deadly inferno at the housing estate last November destroyed seven of its eight buildings, including their...

China could gain a “massive strategic advantage” from the war in Iran by reshaping trade in the Middle East and catching up with the US militarily, according to one analyst. Zhu Zhaoyi, executive director of the Institute of Middle East Studies a...

Japan and Australia said on Saturday they have finalised contracts to jointly deliver the first three of 11 ships for the Australian navy based on the upgraded Japanese Mogami-class frigate, as the two countries deepen their defence cooperation amid ...

The People’s Liberation Army could use minelaying drones to blockade Japan and other waters in the strategic first island chain during a conflict over Taiwan, a mainland Chinese military magazine has suggested. The PLA’s strategy would see AJX002...

An 81-year-old Chinese woman dubbed “the strongest Chinese mother” was born without limbs and managed to raise three children. The octogenarian who has moved many people online sewed with her mouth and used her elbows to hold chopsticks while loo...

Hong Kong’s second-biggest public housing provider will gradually expand the supply of its subsidised sale flats, aiming for them to account for 40 per cent of its home supply in future projects. Hong Kong Housing Society chairman Ling Kar-kan said...

Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz again, according to Tehran’s Fars News Agency. “Control of the Strait of Hormuz has returned to its previous state, and this strategic strait is under the strict management and control of Iran’s Armed Forces...

East Asia’s “economic miracle” in the post-World War II period was predicated upon a number of factors, such as the region’s export-led growth model, but critically it also depended on an assured supply of capital to finance business investme...