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TOKYO, Japan (AFP) – Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi urged his US counterpart Thursday to consider restricting American troop movement in the country after a surge in Covid cases on bases and surrounding communities. The request to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken comes as virus cases surge in Okinawa, which hosts most of the US forces in Japan and is now seeing a rise in community infections. The region’s governor has blamed the rise […]
by Qasim Nauman SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korea has successfully tested a hypersonic missile, state media reported Thursday, in the first major weapons test by the nuclear-armed nation this year. This was the second reported North Korean test of a hypersonic gliding missile to date — following one in September last year — as Pyongyang looks to add the sophisticated weapon to its arsenal despite international sanctions and condemnation. Hypersonic missiles move far […]
2-week ban on flights from 8 countries to take effect starting Saturday midnight Hong Kong announced strict new anti-coronavirus controls on Wednesday, banning flights from eight nations, shuttering bars and gyms and cancelling evening restaurant dining after the Omicron variant was detected within the city. The restrictions are the latest economic blow to an international business hub pursuing a zero-Covid strategy that has kept cases low but left residents cut off from the rest […]
SINGAPORE, Singapore (AFP) — Myanmar has “all the ingredients for civil war”, Cambodia, chair of Southeast Asia’s regional bloc, has warned ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Hun Sen to the crisis-wracked country. Myanmar has been in chaos since a coup last year, with more than 1,400 people killed in a crackdown on dissent by security forces, according to a local monitoring group. Hun Sen, whose country this year holds the rotating chairmanship of […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — The city of Zhengzhou ordered its 12 million residents to take Covid-19 tests Wednesday after a handful of cases were detected, as China fights to stamp out virus clusters ahead of the Winter Olympics. Everyone in Zhengzhou, which has been placed under a partial lockdown, must be tested to “thoroughly uncover infections hidden among the public”, the city’s government said in a statement Wednesday. Zhengzhou has detected 11 cases in recent […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — Covid cases in the locked-down Chinese city of Xi’an fell to their lowest in weeks on Wednesday, as officials said an outbreak there had been largely “brought under control” after two weeks of a stay-at-home order. But other urban hubs where clusters have been detected face restrictions including a new partial lockdown in the city of Zhengzhou. China has stuck to a rigid approach of stamping out Covid cases when they […]
by Sunghee Hwang North Korea has fired a projectile into the sea, the South’s military and the Japanese coast guard said Wednesday, in what would be the first such launch by Pyongyang this year. In the decade since Kim Jong Un took power, North Korea has seen rapid progress in its military technology at the cost of international sanctions. Despite severe economic difficulties during the coronavirus pandemic, Kim said last week the country would continue […]
TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) — At least eight people have been killed in flash flooding in Iran’s south due to heavy rains expected to last until later this week, state media reported on Tuesday. “Following the floods and rains of the past few days in the southern regions of the country, we have seen an increase in casualties and deaths,” spokesman for the national rescue service Mojtaba Khaledi said, quoted by state news agency IRNA. “So […]
NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — India’s capital New Delhi will lock down over the weekend as authorities grapple with a fresh surge in coronavirus cases, partly fuelled by the fast-spreading Omicron variant. The country was battered by a devastating Covid outbreak last year that overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums, but daily case numbers had since then stayed reasonably low until last week. Delhi’s new restrictions came the same day the sprawling megacity’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — A landslide at a construction site in southwest China’s Guizhou province has killed at least 14 people, state media reported Tuesday. Workers were reinforcing a hillside when the landslide happened on Monday evening, the official Xinhua news agency said. Rescuers have found 14 bodies, as well as three injured people, with the cause of the accident “still under investigation”, Xinhua reported. Rescue work is “completed”, with the three injured currently in […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — China Tuesday said it will continue to “modernize” its nuclear arsenal and called on the United States and Russia to reduce their stockpiles a day after global powers pledged to prevent such weapons spreading. In a rare joint statement setting aside rising West-East tensions, the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France reaffirmed their goal of creating a world free of atomic weapons and avoiding a nuclear conflict. The five nuclear […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) – More than one million people in a city in central China were being confined to their homes on Tuesday after three asymptomatic coronavirus cases were recorded in the country’s latest mass lockdown. Beijing has pursued a “zero Covid” approach with tight border restrictions and targeted lockdowns since the virus first emerged. But the strategy has come under pressure with a series of recent local outbreaks and with just a month to […]
