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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AFP) — Saudi Arabia’s ageing King Salman has been admitted to hospital for unspecified tests, state media reported Sunday. The kingdom has generally sought to quell speculation over the health of the 86-year-old monarch, who has ruled the top oil exporter and the Arab world’s biggest economy since 2015. He entered King Faisal Specialist Hospital in the coastal city of Jeddah on Saturday “to conduct some medical examinations”, according to an […]
by Joshua Melvin, with David Stout in Kyiv Agence France Presse All vulnerable civilians have been evacuated from Mariupol, Ukraine said Saturday, presaging a showdown between Kyiv’s last remaining soldiers there and the besieging Russian forces ahead of celebrations marking the Soviet World War II victory. The Azovstal steelworks, the final Ukrainian holdout in the devastated port city, has taken on a symbolic value in the war. Kyiv fears a renewed intensity to Moscow’s […]
SEOUL, North Korea (AFP) — North Korea fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile Saturday, Seoul said, its second missile launch in three days after the United States warned Pyongyang could be preparing for a nuclear test. North Korea has dramatically ramped up its sanctions-busting missile launches this year, conducting 15 weapons tests including firing an intercontinental ballistic missile at full range for the first time since 2017. The Saturday launch comes two days before South […]
by Rigoberto DIAZ Agence France Presse HAVANA, Cuba (AFP) — The death toll from a powerful explosion at a five-star hotel in central Havana climbed to 22 Friday with more than 50 people injured after a suspected gas leak, according to official tallies. Rescuers pulled four newly discovered bodies out of the rubble in the early evening as they combed through what remained of the prestigious Saratoga Hotel looking for survivors. At least one […]
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AFP) — Three children in Indonesia have died from a mysterious liver disease, the country’s health ministry said, raising to at least four the global death toll of a fatal ailment puzzling doctors from the US to Asia. This severe strain of acute hepatitis has been identified in nearly 230 children in 20 countries, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, raising concerns of the disease’s “unknown origin”. The symptoms afflicting the children […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — President Joe Biden announced Friday a new US weapons package worth $150 million for Ukraine’s fight to repel Russia’s invasion. “I am announcing another package of security assistance that will provide additional artillery munitions, radars, and other equipment to Ukraine,” Biden said, while warning that funding was close to running out and urging Congress to authorize more. According to a senior US official, the package includes 25,000 155mm artillery […]
by Marlowe HOOD Agence France Presse The devastating heatwave that gripped India and Pakistan over the last two months is unprecedented, but worse — perhaps far worse — is on the horizon as climate change continues apace, top climate scientists told AFP. Even without additional global warming South Asia is, statistically speaking, ripe for a “big one” in the same way that California is said to be overdue for a major earthquake, according to […]
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AFP) — China sent 18 warplanes including fighters and bombers into Taiwan’s air defence zone on Friday, the island’s government said, in the second-largest one-day incursion this year. Taiwan lives under the constant threat of invasion by Beijing, which sees the self-ruled democratic island as part of its territory to be retaken one day, by force if necessary. The final quarter of 2021 saw a spike in incursions by China into Taiwan’s […]
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AFP) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Friday blasted European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen for “attacking” EU unity with a plan to ban Russian oil, saying it crosses a red line and has been sent back. “The European Commission president, intentionally or unintentionally, has attacked the European unity that had been worked out,” Orban said on state radio. “From the first moment we made clear that there will be […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — Mass testing of China’s vast population could bring fresh misery to the economy, experts warned Friday, after Beijing vowed to regain control of the narrative around a zero-Covid policy that has strangled growth and fanned anger across the country. Leaders have taken a hardline approach to stamping out virus outbreaks, locking down Shanghai — the country’s economic dynamo and biggest city — and slowly restricting movement in Beijing over dozens of […]
by Kelly MACNAMARA Food is fundamental to the efforts to tackle climate change, according to a scientist who has spent decades tracing the interactions between global warming and what we eat. Cynthia Rosenzweig, head of the Climate Impacts Group at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was Thursday awarded the prestigious World Food Prize for her research. That includes stark warnings about the potential effect climate change will have on food. Her comments to AFP […]
by Holmes Chan and Su Xinqi © Agence France-Presse HONG KONG, China (AFP) — Hong Kong’s next leader John Lee is inheriting a once vibrant Asian business hub mired in its third year of pandemic isolation but he may prioritize security over an economic reboot, business leaders and observers say. Lee, a former security chief, is expected to be confirmed Hong Kong’s next chief executive on Sunday by a committee of 1,463 elites after running […]
