Hong Kong’s exports jumped by 64.9 per cent year on year in September, the highest growth in more than 40 years, with artificial intelligence-related (AI) products further fuelling the momentum of recent months. Provisional figures released by the ...

Private jets, fine jewellery, watches, superyachts and luxury property will feature in a new Hong Kong exhibition offering business opportunities to “brands, yacht owners and connoisseurs”, according to the organiser. The inaugural Festival of Co...

One word will hang over the Hong Kong community in the run-up to next month’s anniversary of the dreadful Tai Po fire that took 168 of our fellow citizens’ lives: accountability. By the time we mark the occasion, we will know if we still have a s...

For three decades, Lao Gan Ma’s glass jars, bearing the stern portrait of founder Tao Huabi, have been a fixture on Chinese dinner tables and a symbol of traditional food manufacturing. This week, however, the iconic chilli sauce has become an unli...

Massive crowds, fireworks and dancing have filled the streets across Belgrade since Serbia’s nationalist strongman Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat in Sunday’s parliamentary election after 14 years in power. The political shift could cool diploma...

Australia’s national broadcaster ABC called on the far-right One Nation party on Wednesday to stop using children’s TV character Bluey in its political cartoons. Bluey is the popular star of an Australian cartoon series featuring canines navigati...

We have put together stories from our coverage on electric and new energy vehicles from the past two weeks to help you stay informed. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. BYD to build new factories in Europe...

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is up against it in next month’s Melaka state poll, as his ruling Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition risks yet another electoral wipeout at the hands of its federal partner Umno. The two are competing head-to-h...

Malaysia will still lose tens of billions of ringgit to the 1MDB scandal even after further overseas asset recoveries, its second finance minister said on Wednesday, as disgraced former prime minister Najib Razak prepares to move to house arrest. Naj...

Hong Kong’s government-owned postal service reported a record operating deficit of HK$905 million (US$115 million) in 2025-26, its ninth straight annual loss. In its annual report published on Wednesday, Hongkong Post said the past year showed its ...

Malaysian customs said on Wednesday ⁠that it ⁠had seized about 49.5 ⁠million ringgit (US$12 million) worth of advanced artificial intelligence chips this month, as authorities close in on a syndicate suspected of smuggling high-performance semi...

A Chinese investigative blogger who exposed telecoms fraud and other illegal activity was killed by criminals hired on social media, according to Chinese media, as the case prompts calls for heavier punishment for his death. The body of Wu Kai, who u...

Israelis voted on Tuesday in their highest turnout for decades, with exit polls showing the camp of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that of his rival are neck and neck. Exit polls from the three mainstream Israeli television networks gave the t...

A Singaporean behavioural therapist who was repeatedly hit in the face by a four-year-old boy with special needs grabbed his hand and dragged him off his chair and onto the floor. Tricia Lee Hsien, 29, was fined S$5,000 (US$3,900) by a court on Wedne...

With the “exceptionally cheap” sale of a vacant Hong Kong shopping mall, developer CK Asset Holdings is freeing up capital for other projects, while the buyer will have to be patient because the location will struggle to attract tenants in the sh...

After convincing China to accept a cap on its hybrid car exports, a stream of top-level European finance and banking officials will descend on the Chinese capital in the coming months on a far trickier mission: persuading Beijing to stop holding down...

Yosafat Menteng travelled all the way from Kalimantan in Indonesia’s Borneo with five others just to take part in Wednesday’s student protest in the heart of Jakarta. Back home in Palangka Raya, one of the worst-affected cities by the haze, he he...

El Salvador has sent about 1,000 troops to Haiti after four Salvadorean members of a UN-backed security mission went missing in a gang ambush on the outskirts of the capital on October 18, a security official in Haiti told Reuters on Tuesday. The tro...

India has emerged as a major exporter of ammunition and other weapons to Europe since the outbreak of the Ukraine-Russia war, but analysts caution that New Delhi has yet to secure a lasting foothold in Europe’s defence market. Defence Secretary Raj...

Standard Chartered’s third-quarter net profit rose 46 per cent as strong growth in wealth management and lower credit impairment buffered one of Hong Kong’s three note-issuing banks from provisions linked to geopolitical tensions. The bank’s sh...

ICBC share prices diverge after first parallel listing By Carol Chan This article was first published on October 28, 2006 Shares of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China jumped a relatively modest 14.7 per cent on their Hong Kong debut and a lacklu...

A total of 2,097 Malaysian police officers and personnel have been arrested for drug-related offences, robbery and corruption between 2021 and August this year, according to Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail. Of the total, 1,551 were arrested f...

China’s massive maritime science infrastructure – an aircraft carrier-sized floating artificial island – has officially entered its engineering construction phase. On October 18, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), the facility’s lead devel...

Hong Kong’s leader is expected to announce reforms introducing criminal penalties for bid-rigging on Thursday, when the government will also release the final investigation report on the Tai Po inferno, the South China Morning Post has learned. Chi...

Japan is bracing for a more unpredictable ally in Washington, as the US midterm elections threaten to deepen political gridlock and complicate Tokyo’s long-term security calculations, analysts say. Observers warn that post-election political battle...

ByteDance is accelerating its push into embodied artificial intelligence, stepping up recruitment for robotics talent as it seeks to move cutting-edge research out of the laboratory and into physical hardware. The Beijing-based owner of TikTok and Do...

Parents in Japan are taking an increasingly active role in their children’s lives – helping them find marriage partners, navigate job hunting and secure housing – as the line between parental support and personal decision-making continues to bl...

A Gen Z tech influencer from central China has brought science fiction to life by handcrafting a manned hoverboard and teaching himself flight control and mechanical engineering. Song Xingyu, 26, from Enshi, Hubei province, is known online as “Amaz...

Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing proved volatile in its Hong Kong trading debut after an underwhelming HK$9.9 billion (US$1.26 billion) initial public offering (IPO), as investor sentiment was haunted by the deepening sell-off across China’s...

Beijing has appointed veteran propaganda official Mo Gaoyi as Communist Party secretary of Yunnan province in its latest leadership reshuffle, making him a rare example this year of a provincial head with minimal local governance experience. An analy...

Ferocious winds and torrential rain lashed India’s southeastern coast as Cyclone Arnab made landfall on Wednesday, forcing nearly 100,000 people to evacuate their homes in two states, authorities said. Arnab hit Andhra Pradesh as a “very severe c...

Immigration restrictions, rising living costs and strains in US-India relations are testing support for President Donald Trump among some Indian-Americans who backed the Republican Party in 2024, analysts say, ahead of November’s midterm elections....

Manila sent two strikingly different messages to Beijing on October 13. At the Malacanang Palace, a presidential spokeswoman reaffirmed Manila’s commitment to sustaining diplomatic and economic ties with China, saying “China needs the Philippines...

A booming semiconductor industry is helping drive a surge in trade in Xian, one of China’s ancient capitals, making it the country’s top performer by trade growth among provincial capitals and provincial-level cities for which data is publicly av...

More than 1,000 people are still taking shelter in evacuation centres, awaiting temporary housing three months after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Japan’s Kumamoto prefecture, damaging their homes. The quake occurred at 4.27pm on July 28. As of...

An American student considering studying in China attended a briefing with a senior FBI official at a Washington think tank last month to address her concerns about whether such an experience could jeopardise her prospects for a career in the federal...

Fresh-graduate job postings in Hong Kong fell 22 per cent in the first nine months of this year from the same period in 2025, according to data from one of the city’s biggest job-search platforms, with an industry leader warning that advances in te...

Lithium deposits formed by ancient volcanic activity may lie beneath parts of China’s battery manufacturing heartland, particularly along the southeastern coast, according to a new study. In an interview with the South China Morning Post, geologist...

South Korea wants to take back wartime command of its troops from the United States within the next two years, but analysts say Washington is refusing to commit to a date to keep a hold on a military it sees as vital to countering China. The dispute ...

Global carmakers are searching for a way to survive in China’s cutthroat market, as they continue to lose ground to domestic competitors in a landscape that is increasingly tilting towards electric vehicles (EVs). International auto brands from Vol...

Britain’s King Charles arrived in the Bahamas on Tuesday as part of a nine-day trip to the Caribbean, where he faces calls for an apology and slavery reparations. It is his first official visit to the Bahamas as king, with the archipelago’s gover...

Three once high-flying brothers convicted of exploiting their wealth and access to luxury real estate to drug and rape dozens of women were sentenced on Tuesday to 30 years in prison. US District Judge Valerie E. Caproni announced the punishment for ...

In September, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu unveiled the city’s first five-year plan along with his policy address, highlighting Hong Kong’s strategic role in promoting the greater use of the yuan outside mainland China as a key priority. In t...

Eswatini probably does not register on most people’s mental maps. Its relatively recent name might sound unfamiliar as many people still know it as Swaziland. That it demands attention from pundits like yours truly has much to do with it being the ...

Alibaba has won a preliminary court order blocking a US restriction that drove away its Washington lobbyists, after a federal judge found the Chinese technology giant was likely to succeed in challenging the measure on free-speech grounds. US Distric...

The 2027 US defence bill, covering more than US$1 trillion in proposed defence spending, will be one of the most closely watched pieces of legislation when Congress returns after the midterm elections, with efforts to counter China running through ne...

The camp of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ahead of his rival’s opposition bloc but still short of a majority on Wednesday after 50 per cent of votes were counted in Israel’s pivotal general election. Voters turned out in the highest numbe...

A dinosaur that looks like a miniature T. rex is now one of the world’s most expensive fossils. The rare skeleton of a Nanotyrannus – recently confirmed to be a distant cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex, not just a young specimen – sold for US$47.3 m...

DNA connects serial killer Ted Bundy to the death of a Utah teenager, authorities announced on Tuesday, exactly 52 years after her body was discovered in the woods by a hunter. Bundy has been dead since 1989, but the tally of his confirmed victims co...

Pope Leo’s lung cancer diagnosis and surgery has affected how Catholics view his health and papacy, the Vatican’s foreign minister said on Tuesday, in an unusual acknowledgement by one of the Church’s most senior officials. “It’s a bit of �...