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by Shingo ITO TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — After years of controversy, Japan’s Princess Mako will marry this month, but she will forego traditional rites and will not take a usual payment given to royal women marrying commoners. “Princess Mako will marry on October 26,” an Imperial Household Agency official told AFP, adding that “wedding ceremony, reception banquet and other rituals won’t be held, and a lump-sum payment won’t be provided.” Princess Mako, who is the […]
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AFP) — Sri Lanka on Friday lifted a near six-week lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus but maintained a night curfew and a ban on public gatherings and parties. Daily deaths had jumped to over 250 with 4,000 infections after Sri Lankans celebrated the traditional Sinhala and Tamil New Year in mid-April, but case numbers have since eased. The health ministry on Friday urged companies to encourage staff to work from […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korea has test-fired a “newly developed” anti-aircraft missile, the latest in a string of recent weapons test launches, state media said Friday. “The DPRK test-fired an anti-aircraft missile newly developed by it on September 30,” the Korean Central News Agency reported, using the country’s official name. © Agence France-Presse
MANAMA, Bahrain (AFP) — Israel’s top diplomat Yair Lapid opened the Jewish state’s embassy in Bahrain Thursday, a year after the US-brokered normalisation of ties. “We have officially opened the Israeli embassy in Bahrain,” tweeted Lapid. “We agreed that by the end of the year, there will be the opening of the Bahraini embassy in Israel.” © Agence France-Presse
KABUL, Afghanistan (AFP) — Afghanistan’s health system is on the verge of collapse, a top Red Cross official warned Thursday, saying more than 2,000 health facilities had been shuttered across the conflict-ravaged country. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warned that a dire lack of funding was pushing Afghanistan’s health system to the brink. “People might agree to work without salaries for a few more weeks,” Alexander Matheou, IFRC’s Asia […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s influential sister has been appointed to the country’s top government body, the official KCNA news agency reported Thursday. Kim Yo Jong, a key adviser to her brother, was promoted to a position on the State Affairs Commission, amid a raft of changes approved by the Supreme People’s Assembly, the rubber-stamp parliament. No fewer than nine members of the commission were dismissed, including one of […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un condemned a US offer of dialogue as a “facade”, state media reported Thursday, and accused the Joe Biden administration of continuing a hostile policy against his nuclear-armed country. Talks between Pyongyang and Washington have been largely at a standstill since the collapse of the Hanoi summit between Kim and then-president Donald Trump over sanctions relief and what the North would be willing to give […]
MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Russia on Wednesday recorded its highest coronavirus death toll for a second day running, as infections are on the rise driven by the Delta variant and slow vaccination rates. A government tally reported 857 fatalities over the past 24 hours and 22,430 new cases. The new figure brings the country’s total deaths from Covid-19 to 206,388 — the highest in Europe. Authorities have been accused of downplaying the severity of the […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — A 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck off Japan’s northwestern coast on Wednesday but no tsunami warning was issued, Japanese and US authorities said. The quake produced shaking across a large swath of the northeastern coast and was also felt in Tokyo, but there were no immediate reports of damage. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake hit at a depth of 368 kilometres (228 miles) in the Sea of Japan, known […]
by Katie Forster TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Japan’s next leader Fumio Kishida is a soft-spoken former foreign minister from a Hiroshima family of politicians, with a reputation of seeking the middle ground and a fondness for baseball. The 64-year-old won the ruling party’s leadership vote on Wednesday, beating popular vaccine chief Taro Kono to finally clinch a job he has long targeted. It was second time lucky for the experienced politician: he lost out in […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korea has successfully tested a hypersonic gliding missile, state media reported Wednesday, in what would be the nuclear-armed nation’s latest advance in weapons technology. Tuesday’s launch was of “great strategic significance”, the official Korean Central News Agency said, as the North seeks to increase its defence capabilities a “thousand-fold”. Hypersonic missiles move far faster and are more nimble than ordinary ones, making them much harder for missile defence systems […]
by Claire LEE Agence France Presse SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — Nuclear-armed North Korea fired a presumed short-range missile into the sea on Tuesday, the South’s military said, as Pyongyang’s UN ambassador insisted it had an undeniable right to test its weapons. The projectile was fired from the northern province of Jagang into waters off the east coast, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Japanese defence ministry spokesman told AFP […]
