US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth will address Asia’s main annual defence gathering on Saturday, with US allies perhaps hoping to avoid a repeat of last year’s ticking off. Hegseth’s morning speech will be the main event at the Shangri-La Dialo...

There seems to be no end to the harm arising from US President Donald Trump’s madcap war on Iran. Go beyond the direct tragic impact across Iran itself, the collateral damage from Tehran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and its ad hoc...

Malaysia’s religious authorities can ban teachings they consider deviant, send followers to rehabilitation classes and take group leaders to court. But they have not stopped banned or fringe Islamic movements from finding new followers online, acco...

Around 86 per cent of children seeking places in Hong Kong’s public primary schools have secured one of their top three choices through the central allocation system, a record high and up from about 79 per cent last year, as applicant numbers fell ...

US defence industry leaders are pushing for deeper commercial cooperation with Taiwan to strengthen its military capabilities, as the island seeks faster ways to bolster deterrence amid Beijing’s mounting military pressure. But they cautioned that ...

Nato member Romania said on Friday that a drone injured two people in a southeastern city during an overnight Russian attack on neighbouring Ukraine, the first time in the war that a drone had hit a densely populated area in Romania and caused injuri...

Japan’s parliament on Friday passed an immigration control law revision to raise the maximum fee for residence status applications by foreigners and introduce an online pre-entry travel authorisation system for overseas arrivals. Once the fee chang...

Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted the leaders of Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan and the US during May, reflecting Beijing’s increasing importance on the global stage. In total, 15 national leaders have visited the Chinese capital this year, also incl...

The Global Prosperity Summit 2026 (GPS 2026) highlighted Hong Kong’s expanding role in international and regional cooperation both within China’s Global Governance Initiative as well as Apec, ahead of a meeting of the bloc’s economic leaders in...

An annual United Nations report documenting sexual violence in conflicts worldwide has included Israeli forces for the first time since the review began more than 15 years ago for their treatment of Palestinian detainees. Israel denies the accusation...

The US indictment of Singapore-based shipping tycoon Teo Siong Seng in a price-fixing scandal has raised questions about Washington’s determination to pursue prominent figures from friendly countries, though legal experts say the case conforms to e...

The Philippines is banking on its Asean chairmanship to elevate the country’s tourism through “warmth and authenticity”, despite facing accessibility hurdles and stiff competition from holiday heavyweights such as Thailand and Indonesia. The ar...

The United States on Thursday designated two well-known Brazilian crime groups, the so-called Red Command (CV) and First Capital Command (PCC), as terrorist organisations, despite opposition from Brasilia. “CV and PCC are two of the most violent cr...

An ex-police officer who disguised himself as a woman to sexually prey on teenage boys in Singapore was sentenced on Friday to three years’ jail and four strokes of the cane. While dressed in a dress and headscarf, Sharizal Shafi’ee, 40, approach...

Chinese police officers dug through sand with their bare hands to search for a Taiwan tourist’s lost phone, winning widespread online applause. Having successfully retrieved her phone, the woman presented her Taiwan resident travel permit in front ...

Hong Kong police have arrested a 14-year-old boy after a razor blade was found wedged between two seats on a Citybus double-decker, with the force alleging the suspect pointed the blade at his schoolmates during a dispute on the bus. Inspector Lee Ya...

China’s Innovent Biologics has signed a global collaboration with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer worth up to US$10.5 billion to jointly develop 12 cancer treatment programmes. The Hong Kong-listed drug maker said it would receive an upfront payment of...

A woman has been found with burns covering 40 per cent of her body after a suspected gas leak triggered an explosion at a flat in Hong Kong. Police said they received reports at around 10.30am on Friday that residents had heard a loud explosion from ...

The resignation of a Hong Kong principal who swore at security guards during a school trip to Singapore has drawn mixed responses from students, with some saying he should be held accountable for tarnishing the institution’s image while others felt...

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please conside...

Scientists in China are growing towering hybrids of wheat and rye – taller even than some humans – in the deserts of its western Xinjiang region. The hybrids, known as triticale, can adapt more easily than wheat to challenging conditions and, in ...

Digital spaces and molecular bonds may not seem to have much in common. But for two leading academics at Hong Kong Baptist University, both fields reveal how research can lead to important discoveries that have a real-world impact. Christy Cheung, ch...

A revamped appraisal system that denies salary increments to underperforming Hong Kong civil servants is unlikely to significantly improve efficiency, observers have said, calling for a more balanced approach with team-based performance indicators. T...

An uncrewed Blue Origin New Glenn rocket exploded on a Florida launch pad during a test on Thursday, in a major setback for Jeff Bezos’ space venture as it seeks to narrow the gap with Elon Musk’s IPO-bound SpaceX. Video posted by NASASpaceflight...

The United States is reportedly bringing a powerful new weapon to the Iran war: large artificial intelligence (AI) models tasked with automating every stage of the targeting process, from satellite imagery analysis to final strike selection. But how ...

Hong Kong has recorded six consecutive “hot nights”, tying the longest such streak for May, as an intense heatwave grips the city. The Hong Kong Observatory said the minimum temperature at its headquarters had stayed at or above 28 degrees Celsiu...

China’s top diplomat to the United States Xie Feng has told a prominent gathering in New York that US-China relations were at a “historical crossroads”, while acknowledging the winds and bends in the bilateral relationship, following this month...

As BTS concert tickets go on sale on June 3, Malaysian fans are already gearing up for what many describe as the ultimate online battlefield, one filled with scalpers, bots and eye-watering resale prices. For countless Armys, the official fandom of t...

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] Greater clarity on costs, stronger co-ordination between public and private sectors, and more comprehensive support for patients emerged as the central themes at the Prudenti...

US President Donald Trump could soon appear on a new US$250 bill, in the Republican’s latest move to shatter US traditions by putting his personal stamp on national institutions. A proposal for the new bill, featuring a glaring Trump, was first rep...

Japan is often seen as one of Asia’s most stable democracies, with a sophisticated media industry and constitutional protections for free expression, yet one of the world’s leading press freedom indexes has once again rated the country’s media ...

Nothing about the summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in Beijing suggested high drama. The language was restrained, the optics disciplined. The impression it left was simple: escalation of tensions for its own sa...

A pregnant woman in eastern China gave up her prepared operating room to save another expectant mother suffering massive bleeding. A video of the emergency “life-and-death relay” in Weifang, Shandong province, has gone viral on mainland social me...

In Hong Kong’s busy commercial area of Causeway Bay, a post office located in a major shopping centre served just a few dozen customers during lunch on Thursday. Across 90 minutes, when nearby restaurants and shops were filled with residents presse...

South Korea’s economy faces uncertainties from rising inflation, a weakening won and uneven performance across sectors, even as it grows stronger than expected this year, according to analysts. The Bank of Korea on Thursday revised its economic gro...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday he had directed Israel’s military to take more of Gaza, initially by seizing 70 per cent of the Palestinian territory, where the population is already penned into a tiny strip of land along...

Hong Kong has the “most complete renminbi financial ecosystem” and is well placed to serve as a hub for Central Asian countries seeking to expand the currency’s use in trade and investment, according to a veteran banker. Stephen Chan Man, deput...

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers are speeding up their pivot to the premium segment, where they hope to secure higher profit margins and dodge the cutthroat market’s most vicious price competition. New models launched by carmakers including Nio...

An explosion and massive fire at a Dallas residential building Thursday killed a child and at least two other people following a blast that shook nearby homes and happened while firefighters were rushing to a reported gas leak, officials said. At lea...

Central Asia is tilting more decisively towards China as geopolitical uncertainty deepens, with Beijing’s expanding influence recasting the former Soviet states’ strategic orientation. In the second of a three-part series, Victoria Bela looks at ...

Recent articles in an Asia-focused international policy forum suggest that states such as Australia, Canada and South Korea can join up with other middle powers to secure the maritime order and restore the liberal international order. While well mean...

An Austrian court on Thursday convicted a man of planning to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna nearly two years ago. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The state court in Wiener Neustadt, south of the capital, found the 21-year-old defenda...

Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino on Thursday rejected suggestions that US pressure had shaped his government’s handling of a dispute over ports near the Panama Canal, as Panama seeks to stabilise relations with Beijing and renew a key maritime...

There was no one in the courtroom on Thursday to speak on behalf of the four men Randy Santos bludgeoned to death with a metal bar as they slept on the New York City streets. No anguished friends or relatives to tell the judge about Florencio Moran, ...

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called for a “new partnership” with the United States to “help make America great again”, in a speech delivered in New York on Thursday. Carney said that while the world is ‌undergoing a “rupture” as ...

Worn down by thousands of passers-by honouring an unusual tradition, a floor mosaic of an anatomically detailed bull in one of Milan’s grand arcades is getting a sensitive makeover. Legend has it that grinding one’s heel on the mosaic bull’s te...

Israel pounded south Lebanon with deadly strikes and widened its offensive with the first raid near Beirut in weeks where authorities said a woman and two children were killed despite a ceasefire. The attack near the capital came after heavy strikes ...

Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews, Brittany Howard and Joan Baez will headline a star-studded protest festival set for the Washington area a month before the US midterm elections. Springsteen and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Mo...

Across the vast United States, soybean farmers caught in the crossfire of the US-China trade war hoped for a deal on the crop when US President Donald Trump met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. There was optimism after the two presidents met ...