Five hundred Hong Kong police officers sifted through reporters’ computers and notebooks at pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily on Thursday, the first case in which authorities have cited media articles as potentially violating the national security law.

A container ship carrying chemicals sank off Sri Lanka’s capital on Thursday nearly a month after catching fire, raising concerns about a possible environmental disaster.

Lebanon is grappling with a deep economic crisis after successive governments piled up debt following the 1975-1990 civil war with little to show for their spending binge.

Israel is willing to work towards establishing ties with Southeast Asia's Muslim majority nations, its ambassador to Singapore said on Thursday, despite their condemnation in May of Israeli air strikes on Gaza.

A plan by the Group of Seven nations to counter Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative has been welcomed by countries in China's immediate orbit of influence but will need to overcome doubts about Western commitment to emerging market projects.

Australia’s central bank, the postal service and several commercial lenders as well as other companies grappled with internet outages on Thursday, disrupting customer accounts and financial transactions before some services were restored late in the day.

Microsoft Corp on Wednesday named Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella as its new chairman, in place of John Thompson.

More than 350 doctors and medical workers have caught COVID-19 in Indonesia despite being vaccinated with Sinovac and dozens have been hospitalised, officials said, as concerns grow about the efficacy of some vaccines against more infectious variants.

Security forces set ablaze a village in central Myanmar after clashing there with opponents of the ruling junta, leaving at least two elderly people burned to death, several village residents said on Wednesday.

A senior Chinese epidemiologist said the United States should be the priority in the next phase of investigations into the origin of Covid-19 after a study showed the disease could have been circulating there as early as December 2019, state media said on Thursday.

China launched a spacecraft on Thursday carrying three astronauts to part of a space station still under construction for the longest stay in low Earth orbit by any Chinese national.

Almost a fifth of Covid patients without symptoms went on to experience conditions consistent with long Covid a month after their initial diagnosis, according to a huge study published Tuesday.

Israel carried out air strikes on the Gaza Strip early yesterday after militants in the Palestinian territory sent incendiary balloons into the south of the country, in the first flare-up between the two sides since a major conflict killed hundreds last month.

Two days before Iran’s presidential election, which is expected to be won by an ultraconservative cleric, two of the seven men vying for the post pulled out of the race yesterday.

Astronauts blasting off yesterday for China’s first crewed mission to its new space station will have a choice of 120 different types of food and “space treadmills” for exercise, China’s space agency said.

Several Republican lawmakers, eager to blame a US government official for the response to the coronavirus pandemic, introduced a bill Tuesday to fire Anthony Fauci, the face of American efforts to combat Covid-19.

Kim Jong Un has admitted that North Korea’s food situation is “tense”, state media reported yesterday, sounding the alarm in a country that suffered a devastating famine in the 1990s in which hundreds of thousands died.

British barrister Karim Khan, 51, took over as the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor yesterday with a pledge to improve its track record by taking only its strongest cases to trial.

Maida Bilal endured being beaten and harassed when she spent more than 500 days guarding the site of a planned mini hydropower plant on Bosnia’s Kruscica River with a team of women from her village before the building permits were annulled.

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday agreed at their first summit to resume arms control talks and to return ambassadors to each other’s capitals after they were withdrawn earlier this year.