Asia

Climate and weather related disasters surge five-fold over 50 years, but early warnings save lives – WMO report

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrLaT1wyLaE   Climate change and increasingly extreme weather events, have caused a surge in natural disasters over the past 50 years disproportionately impacting poorer countries, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) said on Wednesday. According to the agencies’ Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes, from 1970 to 2019, these natural hazards accounted for 50 per cent of all disasters, 45 per cent […]

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Taiwan receives first batch of politically charged Pfizer vaccines

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AFP) — Taiwan received its first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccines on Thursday, a delivery organized by two tech giants and a charity because of diplomatic pressure from China. The 930,000 doses are the first of 15 million jabs acquired by Foxconn and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), as well as Buddhist charity Tzu Chi foundation, in deals with a China-based distributor after months of wrangling. Despite donations of several million doses from […]

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Israel starts new school year as virus cases surge

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israel reopened its schools Wednesday after the summer break but the coronavirus forced many students to stay home amid an infection surge fuelled by the highly transmissible Delta variant. Of the 2.4 million children due to attend educational institutions from kindergarten to high school, 250,000 were kept home on the first day of school, said the education ministry. Some 90,000 of them were infected with Covid or in quarantine, a ministry spokeswoman […]

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Sri Lanka raids sugar stocks as food shortages bite

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AFP) — Sri Lankan government officials on Wednesday raided private warehouses to seize thousands of tonnes of sugar, a day after a state of emergency was declared over food shortages caused by a currency crisis. A military officer put in charge of efforts to bolster food stocks said at least 13,000 tonnes of white and brown sugar were found in the raids. “The objective is to prevent hoarding,” Major General Senarath Niwunhella, […]

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Moderna says, tainted Covid vaccines sent to Japan contained steel

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Moderna said Wednesday that tainted batches of its Covid-19 vaccine sent to Japan were contaminated with stainless steel particles, but the company did not expect it posed “an undue risk to patient safety.” The US biotech firm is facing major setbacks in Japan, with hundreds of thousands of doses suspended following reports of foreign substances detected in vials. Authorities are also investigating the deaths of two men who received doses […]

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Sri Lanka declares food emergency as forex crisis worsens

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AFP) — Sri Lanka on Tuesday declared a state of emergency over food shortages as private banks ran out of foreign exchange to finance imports. With the country suffering a hard-hitting economic crisis, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said he ordered emergency regulations to counter the hoarding of sugar, rice and other essential foods. Rajapaksa has named a top army officer as “Commissioner General of Essential Services to coordinate the supply of paddy, rice, […]

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Floods threaten hundreds of thousands in northeast India

GUWAHATI, India (AFP) — Flood waters rose Monday across northeastern India, where hundreds of thousands of people are stranded on the roofs of their homes or have fled to higher ground as more torrential rain fell. Incessant downpours for more than a week forced the Brahmaputra and other major rivers to burst their banks across Assam and Bihar states. Up to two metres (6.6 feet) of water has submerged many villages. Experts say annual floods […]

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Rockets fly in Kabul as US evacuations wind down

KABUL, Afghanistan (AFP) — Rockets flew across the Afghan capital on Monday as the United States raced to complete its withdrawal from Afghanistan, with the evacuation of civilians all but over and terror attack fears high. President Joe Biden has set a deadline of Tuesday to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan, drawing to a close his nation’s longest military conflict, which began in retaliation for the September 11 attacks. The return of the hardline […]

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North Korea appears to have restarted nuclear reactor: UN agency

SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — Nuclear-armed North Korea appears to have restarted its plutonium-producing reprocessing reactor in a “deeply troubling” development, the UN atomic agency has said, a possible sign Pyongyang is expanding its banned weapons programme. The development on the 5-megawatt reactor in Yongbyon — North Korea’s main nuclear complex — comes with nuclear talks between Pyongyang and Washington at a standstill. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered to dismantle part of the […]

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UAE says it will resume visas for tourists vaccinated against Covid

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AFP) — The United Arab Emirates announced it will resume issuing visas to all tourists fully vaccinated against Covid from Monday, a month before Dubai hosts the delayed Expo 2020 trade fair. The move comes amid a drop in coronavirus infections in the oil-rich Gulf country, after it reported less than 1,000 cases per day last week for the first time in months. The UAE’s decision to reopen its doors to […]

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Israel offers Covid vaccine booster to ages 12 and up

JERUSALEM, Undefined (AFP) — Israel Sunday widened access to a third coronavirus vaccine jab to anyone aged 12 and up, with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett insisting it was an effective way to contain an infection surge. Moves by several nations to offer third jabs have faced criticism including from the World Health Organization, which insists poorer countries should gain wider access to vaccines before wealthy ones offer booster shots. But with Israel, a country of […]

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URGENT: Blast heard in Afghan capital Kabul: AFP journalists

A loud blast was heard in the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday by AFP journalists, hours after US officials warned of the possibility of a terror attack. A security official from the recently deposed government told AFP it was a rocket that “initial information shows hit a house”. bur/ecl/jds/fox/axn © Agence France-Presse

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