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HANOI, Vietnam (AFP) — Vietnam has discovered a new Covid-19 variant which spreads quickly by air and is a combination of the Indian and British strains, health officials confirmed Saturday. The country is struggling to deal with fresh outbreaks across more than half of its territory, including industrial zones and big cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. More than 6,800 cases including 47 deaths have been reported in Vietnam, with the […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — China on Monday relaxed its two-child policy to allow couples to have three children, a shift aimed at tackling an ageing society. Here is a timeline of the country’s evolving family planning policy. – One child – In 1979, China imposed a policy forcing couples to have only one baby, introduced by top leader Deng Xiaoping to curb population growth and boost economic development. The population stood at 969 million […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — China has relaxed its family planning policy to allow couples to have three children after a census showed its population is rapidly ageing, state media reported Monday, further unwinding four decades of controls in the world’s most populous nation which have strangled the birthrate. For almost 40 years, China enforced a controversial “one-child policy” — one of the strictest family planning regulations worldwide — which was relaxed in 2016 to […]
TERNATE, Indonesia (AFP) — Search teams are looking for one missing person after rescuing all other passengers from a large ferry that caught fire in Indonesia, an official said Sunday. The KM Karya Indah was heading to Sanana, a remote port in the northeast of the Indonesian archipelago when it was engulfed in flames. Shortly after departing, the ferry caught fire, forcing passengers and crew to jump into the sea to save themselves. […]
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AFP) — Malaysia announced on Friday it will impose a nationwide lockdown for the first time in over a year as it battles a rapidly escalating coronavirus outbreak that has strained the country’s healthcare system. Officials believe more infectious variants have contributed to the surge, as well as gatherings in the Muslim-majority country during the holy month of Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr holiday earlier this month. After a new daily record […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — Japan will extend a coronavirus state of emergency in Tokyo and other areas on Friday until just a month before the Olympics, in a move that is likely to fuel concerns over whether the Games can be held safely. Tokyo and nine other parts of the country are currently under emergency orders which mostly involve closing bars and restaurants early and banning them from selling alcohol. The emergency was supposed to […]
HANOI, Vietnam (AFP) — Vietnam began vaccinating hundreds of thousands of factory workers in its industrialized north on Thursday to combat its largest Covid-19 outbreak so far, days after the country reported a daily record in new cases. The communist country has been widely applauded for its aggressive pandemic response — with mass quarantines and strict contact tracing helping keep infection rates low — but clusters have now been reported in around half of its […]
DAMASCUS, Syria (AFP) — Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has been re-elected with 95.1 percent of the votes cast, the parliamentary speaker announced Thursday, following an election criticised by the opposition and Western nations. The two other presidential candidates, former state minister Abdallah Salloum Abdallah and Mahmud Merhi, a member of the so-called “tolerated opposition”, received 1.5 percent and 3.3 percent of the vote respectively, according to the official results of Wednesday’s election. In a country […]
TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) — Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday announced a four-month ban on all cryptocurrency mining, a day after his energy minister apologized for unplanned power cuts in major cities. Iranian officials have regularly blamed unlicensed cryptocurrency miners for using vast amounts of electricity. “Cryptocurrency activities and mining cryptocurrencies must be stopped” until September 22, Rouhani said in televised remarks. Power cuts in the peak summer months are not uncommon in Iran, but […]
TOKYO, Japan (AFP) — A Japanese fishing boat collided with a Russian ship off the northern island of Hokkaido on Wednesday, killing three crew members, Tokyo said. Japan’s coast guard was informed that five crew members from the fishing boat were recovered by a Russian cargo ship, government spokesman Katsunobu Kato told reporters. “We have been told that three were confirmed dead, while the remaining two suffered non-life-threatening injuries,” he added. Japan and Russia are […]
by Dibyangshu SARKAR DIGHA, India (AFP) — Heavy rains and howling winds lashed eastern India on Wednesday as the Covid-stricken country’s second cyclone in as many weeks battered the coast, forcing more than 1.2 million people to seek shelter. Many scientists say cyclones are becoming more frequent and severe in the northern Indian Ocean as climate change warms the sea. Last week Cyclone Tauktae claimed at least 155 lives in western India. The latest system, […]
by Sunghee Hwang SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — Nuclear-armed North Korea is advancing on the front lines of cyberwarfare, analysts say, stealing billions of dollars and presenting a clearer and more present danger than its banned weapons programmes. Pyongyang is under multiple international sanctions over its atomic bomb and ballistic missile programmes, which have seen rapid progress under North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. But while the world’s diplomatic focus has been on its nuclear […]
