International

More than 6,000 flights have been cancelled worldwide over the long Christmas weekend and thousands more were delayed, a tracking website reported Saturday, as the highly infectious Omicron variant brings holiday hurt to millions. Compounding the travel chaos in the United States, severe weather in the country’s west is due to wreak havoc on roadways […]

Hong Kong university students and graduates on Friday paid solemn tribute to two campus statues marking Beijing’s 1989 suppression of Tiananmen Square democracy protesters, which were removed overnight as authorities steadily erase all remaining tributes to the historical event. The removals come a day after Hong Kong’s oldest university took down a well-known sculpture commemorating the […]

By Paul RICARD A month after it was first detected in southern Africa, Omicron is now known to be far more contagious than previous variants of Covid-19 but appears to cause a less severe illness than its predecessors.What isn’t clear is how the newest variant will change the face of the pandemic. Just how severe […]

By Xinqi SU Hong Kong’s oldest university launched an overnight operation Thursday to dismantle a statue commemorating those killed in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in the latest blow to academic freedoms as China cracks down. The eight-metre (26-feet) high “Pillar of Shame” by Jens Galschiot has sat on the University of Hong Kong’s (HKU) campus since […]

The World Health Organization chief warned Wednesday that the rush in wealthy countries to roll out additional Covid vaccine doses was deepening the inequity in access to jabs that is prolonging the pandemic. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insisted that the priority must remain to get vaccines to vulnerable people everywhere rather than giving additional […]

World powers on Monday condemned Hong’s Kong tightly vetted legislature vote, saying rules imposed by Beijing that reduced directly elected seats and controlled who could stand had eroded democracy in the Chinese territory. China has overseen a sweeping crackdown in Hong Kong in response to huge and often violent democracy protests two years ago. It imposed […]

A Polish soldier patrolling the European Union’s eastern border with authoritarian Belarus has deserted and asked for political asylum there, Polish and Belarusian officials said on Friday. Tensions on the Poland-Belarus border have been high for months as thousands of migrants have tried to cross into EU member Poland in a crisis the West and […]

By Francesco Fontemaggi US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday urged China to cease “aggressive actions” in the Asia-Pacific, speaking during a visit to the region, as Washington seeks to bolster alliances against Beijing. President Joe Biden’s administration is trying to reset relations and reassert its influence in Asia after the turbulence and unpredictability […]

Time magazine on Monday named Tesla chief and space entrepreneur Elon Musk as its person of the year, citing his embodiment of the technological shifts but also troubling trends reshaping people’s lives. Musk — who overtook Amazon founder Jeff Bezos this year to become the world’s wealthiest person — wields impact on Earth with his […]

China branded US democracy a “weapon of mass destruction” on Saturday, following the US-organised Summit for Democracy which aimed to shore up like-minded allies in the face of autocratic regimes. China was left out of the two-day virtual summit — along with countries including Russia and Hungary — and responded by angrily accusing US President […]

By Sebastian Smith President Joe Biden said Friday that democracy “knows no borders” as he closed a two-day summit on democratic freedoms while fending off a storm of criticism from China and domestic critics alike. Biden’s presidency has focused on restoring America to what Ronald Reagan liked to call a “shining city on the hill,” […]

Chinese human rights lawyers and activists said they have been blocked from leaving their homes this week ahead of events to mark Friday’s UN Human Rights Day. China has seen a dramatic crackdown on civil liberties and freedoms since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012, with hundreds of human rights lawyers and activists detained […]