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SINGAPORE, Singapore (AFP) — Myanmar has “all the ingredients for civil war”, Cambodia, chair of Southeast Asia’s regional bloc, has warned ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Hun Sen to the crisis-wracked country. Myanmar has been in chaos since a coup last year, with more than 1,400 people killed in a crackdown on dissent by security forces, according to a local monitoring group. Hun Sen, whose country this year holds the rotating chairmanship of […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — The city of Zhengzhou ordered its 12 million residents to take Covid-19 tests Wednesday after a handful of cases were detected, as China fights to stamp out virus clusters ahead of the Winter Olympics. Everyone in Zhengzhou, which has been placed under a partial lockdown, must be tested to “thoroughly uncover infections hidden among the public”, the city’s government said in a statement Wednesday. Zhengzhou has detected 11 cases in recent […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — Covid cases in the locked-down Chinese city of Xi’an fell to their lowest in weeks on Wednesday, as officials said an outbreak there had been largely “brought under control” after two weeks of a stay-at-home order. But other urban hubs where clusters have been detected face restrictions including a new partial lockdown in the city of Zhengzhou. China has stuck to a rigid approach of stamping out Covid cases when they […]
The snow storm is over but the travel misery lingered: drivers on a major highway outside Washington reported Tuesday they were stuck in their cars in freezing weather for 24 hours or more. As families tried to return home from the long New Year weekend, I-95 in Virginia was dangerously icy, gas tanks were running low and for hours there was no help in sight, drivers said. Aerial footage showed seemingly endless lines of cars […]
by Sunghee Hwang North Korea has fired a projectile into the sea, the South’s military and the Japanese coast guard said Wednesday, in what would be the first such launch by Pyongyang this year. In the decade since Kim Jong Un took power, North Korea has seen rapid progress in its military technology at the cost of international sanctions. Despite severe economic difficulties during the coronavirus pandemic, Kim said last week the country would continue […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — President Joe Biden announced Tuesday a doubling of US government purchases of new Pfizer therapeutic pills designed to combat the worst effects of Covid-19. At a meeting with his White House pandemic response team, Biden said the new order will take the stockpile to 20 million from 10 million pills. “These pills are going to dramatically decrease hospitalizations and deaths,” he said. “We already placed the largest order in the […]
by Daniel Lawler with AFP bureaus PARIS, France (AFP) — The US, Britain, France and Australia have all announced record numbers of daily Covid-19 cases as the WHO warned Tuesday that Omicron’s dizzying spread increased the risk of newer, more dangerous variants emerging. Britain breached 200,000 cases for the first time on Tuesday, Australia posted almost 50,000 and France registered more than 270,000, all three countries easily topping their previous records. But dwarfing even those […]
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AFP) — Sudanese security forces fired tear gas Tuesday at anti-coup protesters in Khartoum chanting slogans against the military days after the resignation of the country’s civilian premier, witnesses said. Protesters shouted “No, no to military rule” and called for the disbandment of Sudan’s ruling council headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who led an October 25 coup that derailed a transition to civilian rule. Thousands of protesters gathered across Sudan, including in […]
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) — Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will not need surgery, his doctors said Tuesday, a day after the far-right leader was rushed to the hospital with a partially blocked intestine. “President Jair Messias Bolsonaro’s intestinal subocclusion has been eliminated, with no need for surgery,” the Vila Nova Star hospital in Sao Paulo said in a statement. “The patient is making satisfactory progress in both clinical evaluations and laboratory exams, and will begin […]
by James PHEBY LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Britain on Tuesday faced warnings of an impending hospital crisis due to staff shortages caused by a wave of Omicron infections, as the country returned to work after holiday Daily case numbers chalked up multiple records in the run-up to New Year, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson promising action to plug staffing gaps in the worst-hit areas. Hospital admissions have not hit anything like the peaks of […]
TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) — At least eight people have been killed in flash flooding in Iran’s south due to heavy rains expected to last until later this week, state media reported on Tuesday. “Following the floods and rains of the past few days in the southern regions of the country, we have seen an increase in casualties and deaths,” spokesman for the national rescue service Mojtaba Khaledi said, quoted by state news agency IRNA. “So […]
NEW DELHI, India (AFP) — India’s capital New Delhi will lock down over the weekend as authorities grapple with a fresh surge in coronavirus cases, partly fuelled by the fast-spreading Omicron variant. The country was battered by a devastating Covid outbreak last year that overwhelmed hospitals and crematoriums, but daily case numbers had since then stayed reasonably low until last week. Delhi’s new restrictions came the same day the sprawling megacity’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, […]
