International

Thousands stranded at Philippine airports due to power outage

Manila, Philippines (AFP) Tens of thousands of travellers were stranded at Philippine airports on Sunday after a power outage knocked out communication and radar equipment at the country’s busiest hub in Manila, forcing hundreds of flights to be cancelled, delayed or diverted. Aviation authorities detected a “technical issue” on Sunday morning involving the air traffic management centre at Manila’s domestic and international airport. More than 360 flights in and out of Manila were cancelled, diverted […]

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Police make arrest in Idaho student murders

Los Angeles, United States (AFP) US police investigating the frenzied stabbing of four students at a small Idaho university said Friday they had arrested a man on the other side of the country. The brutal killings in mid-November left the college town of Moscow in shock as residents struggled to come to grips with the first murders there in several years. The students –- Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Kernodle’s […]

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France, Britain impose Covid tests on travelers from China

France and Britain on Friday joined a growing list of nations imposing Covid tests on travelers from China, and the World Health Organization pressed Beijing to be more forthcoming on real-time data amid an explosion of cases there. Spain, South Korea and Israel also said they would require proof of a negative test for travelers leaving China. Despite its hospitals and morgues being overwhelmed — and international concern over the low official figures on infections […]

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North Korea fires ‘unspecified ballistic missile’

  North Korea fired at least one “unspecified ballistic missile” Saturday, Seoul’s military said, just days after five of Pyongyang’s drones flew across the shared border and into the South’s airspace. Military tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen sharply this year as the North has carried out an unprecedented blitz of weapons tests, including the launch of its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile ever last month. “North Korea fires an unidentified ballistic missile into […]

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Bulgaria moves to replace Russia nuclear fuel supplies

Bulgaria’s sole nuclear power plant signed a nuclear fuel supply deal with a French firm on Friday in efforts to replace shipments from Russia in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The state-owned Kozloduy plant on the Danube river currently relies on Russian fuel for its two Soviet-built 1,000-megawatt reactors. Under a 10-year agreement signed Friday, Framatome, a subsidiary of French energy giant EDF, will supply nuclear fuel to Kozloduy’s unit 5 reactor from […]

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Incitement, gold bars, walkie talkies: the charges against Myanmar’s Suu Kyi

  Yangon, Myanmar (AFP) Myanmar’s junta has thrown the book at Aung San Suu Kyi since it ousted her government last year, charging the democracy figurehead with a clutch of offences from illegally possessing walkie talkies to corruption. She has been found guilty of every charge so far in proceedings that critics and rights groups have slammed as a sham designed to banish the military’s most famous opponent from the political scene. AFP takes a […]

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Ousted Myanmar leader Suu Kyi jailed for total of 33 years

  Ousted Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to another seven years in jail as her long series of trials ended on Friday, with the Nobel laureate now facing more than three decades behind bars. A prisoner of the military since a coup last year, Suu Kyi, 77, has been convicted on every charge levelled against her ranging from corruption to illegally possessing walkie-talkies and flouting Covid restrictions. On Friday she was […]

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Indonesia lifts Covid-19 curbs as cases ease

Indonesia on Friday removed all remaining domestic Covid-19 restrictions with immediate effect after case numbers in the Southeast Asian nation eased in recent months. The country became the epicentre of Asia’s outbreak in July last year as the Delta variant spread and overwhelmed the healthcare system. “No more crowd or movement restrictions,” President Joko Widodo told a press conference Friday, saying that key pandemic indicators for Indonesia were “below” World Health Organization standards. But he […]

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Death toll from Cambodia casino fire reaches 26 as search called off

Rescuers finished searching the charred ruins of a Cambodian hotel and casino complex Friday after the death toll from a fire that forced people to jump from windows rose to 26. Hundreds of people are believed to have been inside the Grand Diamond City venue, located in the northwestern town of Poipet within sight of the Thai border, when the blaze broke out late Wednesday night. “The death toll is 26, including 21 Thai nationals,” […]

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Six dead in South Korea road tunnel fire

SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) – Six people have been killed after a bus and truck crash caused a huge fire at an expressway tunnel on the outskirts of Seoul, the local fire department told AFP. Images of the scene in local media showed huge flames and plumes of smoke rising from the tunnel, as hundreds of firefighters battled to bring the blaze under control. The fire started when a bus collided with a truck at around […]

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Limited Twitter outage rattles users: monitors

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) – Thousands of Twitter users reported an outage on Wednesday, according to tracking sites Downdetector.com and Netblocks, but the issue appeared to be resolving, with error messages and missing tweets reappearing. At the peak of the outage, at about 0035 GMT, DownDetector said more than 10,000 people reported problems with the platform, which is now owned by the mercurial billionaire Elon Musk. AFP journalists in the United States and Asia were among […]

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2022 set to be UK’s hottest year on record

LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) – British experts on Wednesday said 2022 was set to be the UK’s warmest on record after a year of heatwaves and minimal rainfall. The findings come as communities across the globe reel from a catalogue of extreme weather this year including soaring temperatures and drought across Europe that saw crops wither and forest fires ravage swathes of land. This year had the “highest annual average temperature across the UK, exceeding the […]

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