BANGKOK: An ultra royalist group in Thailand launched a new political party on Wednesday (Jan 20) to defend King Maha Vajiralongkorn, amid unprecedented calls for reform of the monarchy by a youth-led protest movement. The Thai Pakdee (Loyal Thai) ...

Thailand's ministry of digital economy and society will file a criminal complaint of defaming the country's monarchy against banned opposition politician Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the ministry said on Wednesday.

South Korea may secure additional coronavirus vaccines for 20 million people from U.S. drugmaker Novavax Inc, President Moon Jae-in said, according to a statement from the presidential office on Wednesday.

DENPASAR, Indonesia: Foreigners caught not wearing face masks on the Indonesian resort island of Bali are being subject to an unusual punishment: Push-ups. Video footage circulating on social media this week shows tourists in T-shirts and shorts bei...

India started exporting coronavirus vaccines on Wednesday with the first shipment to the neighbouring Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, the foreign ministry said.

BEIJING: A partial lockdown was imposed on the Chinese capital on Wednesday (Jan 20), with 1.6 million residents banned from leaving Beijing, after a handful of cases were detected. Seven cases were reported in the city on Wednesday, including six ...

Rescuers are widening a communication shaft in the hope of extracting a group of Chinese gold miners who have been trapped deep underground for 10 days in rising floodwaters, state media said Wednesday.

HONG KONG: A top British barrister has pulled out of leading a team prosecuting a group of prominent Hong Kong dissidents, the city's authorities said on Wednesday (Jan 20), following growing criticism in the UK. David Perry was announced last week...

Seven former and current bank employees have been arrested in Hong Kong as part of a major operation against a US$810 million international money-laundering syndicate, police said Wednesday.

THULASENDRAPURAM, India: A tiny, lush-green Indian village surrounded by rice paddy fields was beaming with joy on Wednesday (Jan 20) hours before its descendant, Kamala Harris, takes her oath of office and becomes the United States vice president. ...

Japan's top government spokesman said on Wednesday that the timeline for vaccinating the broader population against the coronavirus would be decided and disclosed to the public after the approval of a vaccine.

Japan aims to start vaccinating the general public against the coronavirus in May - just two months before the postponed Olympics - after targeted jabs for the most vulnerable, reports said on Wednesday (Jan 20).

SHANGHAI: Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma met 100 rural teachers in China via a live video meeting on Wednesday (Jan 20) morning, in the businessman's first appearance since October. Social media speculation over the whereabouts of China's highest-pro...

BEIJING: China's capital Beijing said on Wednesday (Jan 20) it will investigate all individuals who entered the city from abroad from Dec 10 and shut down a subway station after reporting the biggest daily jump in new COVID-19 cases in more than thr...

World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee says Australia's plan to force digital giants to pay media outlets for news content is "unworkable" and undermines a "fundamental principle" of the Internet.

Like China, India will be looking to leverage the diplomatic benefit of its ability to manufacture vast amounts of the vaccines, says an observer.

KUALA LUMPUR: Traders in Kuala Lumpur and beyond who were anticipating a busy season in the lead up to Chinese New Year are now bracing themselves for potential losses, after the government again enforced a Movement Control Order (MCO) in almost a...

The United States declared Tuesday that China is carrying out genocide against the Uighurs and other mostly Muslim people, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dramatically raising pressure over Beijing's sweeping incarceration of minorities on his la...

Thai leader threatens punishment for false vaccine news

TOKYO: At least 134 cars were involved in a series of crashes in Japan on Tuesday (Jan 19) when a snowstorm struck a stretch of highway, with one person killed and a dozen hurt in the chaos. Ten people were taken to hospital, two of them seriously ...

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia reported 14 new COVID-19 deaths on Tuesday (Jan 19), as the government moved to expand its movement control order (MCO) to all states except Sarawak. The latest fatalities come amid a nationwide state of emergency as Malaysia...

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's National Unity Minister Halimah Mohamed Sadique has tested positive for COVID-19, becoming the fifth member of the Cabinet to be diagnosed with the disease.  She will undergo treatment and quarantine in Johor Bahru.  In a...

China is using localised tactics to battle a wave of COVID-19 outbreaks, an approach that avoids the sort of widespread shutdowns that devastated the economy last year but is also sowing uncertainty ahead of the Lunar New Year travel season.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s Senior Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said on Tuesday (Jan 19) that all states in Malaysia, with the exception of Sarawak, will be placed under Movement Control Order (MCO) from this Friday. In a press conference, Mr Ismail...

Thailand’s government defended its coronavirus vaccine strategy on Tuesday against opposition criticism that it is too reliant on a company owned by King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

TAIPEI: Taiwan on Tuesday (Jan 19) cancelled a major festival during the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday as the island reported four locally transmitted cases of COVID-19, the biggest daily rise in local infections in nearly 11 months. Taiwan, wh...

Medical experts say the South Korea governent is not taking the steps necessary to achieve its goal of reaching herd immunity to the coronavirus through mass vaccinations by November.

Four UNICEF schools for Rohingya children in refugee camps in Bangladesh have been destroyed in a fire, officials said Tuesday, with the UN children's agency calling it arson.

BEIJING: Profit at state-owned companies that dominate China's banking, oil and most other industries rose by as much as 25 per cent last year as the country recovered from the coronavirus pandemic, the government said on Tuesday (Jan 19). Total rev...

Social media was abuzz Tuesday after India secured a historic fourth Test and series win over Australia by three wickets after a thrilling final day.

Thai court gives record 43-year sentence for insulting king

Philippine students and activists protested on Tuesday against a government decision to allow security forces to patrol the campuses of the country's biggest university after authorities accused it of being a breeding ground for communist rebels.

An out-of-control dumper truck crushed fifteen people to death as they slept by the roadside early Tuesday in western India, authorities said.

Warriors rally from 14 down in 4th, beat Lakers 115-113

MANILA: The Philippines is now free of the highly pathogenic H5N6 bird flu virus, the Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday (Jan 19), citing a declaration by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). "As of Jan 8, the country is now free ...

JAKARTA: Indonesia's air accident investigator is still hoping to recover the cockpit voice recorder from a crashed Sriwijaya Air jet to better understand information obtained from the flight data recorder, an official said on Tuesday (Jan 19). The ...

MAMUJU, Indonesia: Relief workers worked to clear up rubble of collapsed buildings on Tuesday (Jan 19) on an Indonesian island where a deadly earthquake left thousands of people homeless. The 6.2 magnitude earthquake on Friday that killed at least 8...

BEIJING: Rescuers are in telephone contact with workers trapped for more than a week following an explosion in a gold mine in China and have been able to send them food and medicine, an official said on Tuesday (Jan 19). Chen Fei, the mayor of the ...

HSINCHU, Taiwan: Taiwanese troops using tanks, mortars and small arms staged a drill on Tuesday (Jan 19) aimed at repelling an attack from China, which has increased its threats to reclaim the island and its own displays of military might. “No m...

As Vietnam's ruling Communist Party gears up for its most important meeting in years, its leadership has presided over an intensified crackdown on dissent, according to rights groups, activists and data collated by Reuters.

TOKYO: Yuichiro welled up as he collected a food parcel at a Tokyo outreach event offering help to the growing number of Japanese pushed into poverty by the COVID-19 pandemic. "There is no work. Absolutely none," said the 46-year-old, until recently...

Pakistan on Monday approved the Chinese Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, a government statement said, two days after AstraZeneca's vaccine developed with Oxford University received a similar authorization.

TOKYO: Japan's foreign minister accused South Korea on Monday (Jan 18) of worsening already strained ties by making "illegal" demands for compensation for the sexual abuse of Korean women and use of forced labourers during World War II. Toshimitsu M...

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday the government will extend social distancing measures due to expire this week as the city remains on heightened alert after the number of COVID-19 infections climbed back into triple digits.

SHANGHAI: China reported more than 100 new COVID-19 cases for a seventh day on Tuesday (Jan 19) in the worst domestic outbreak since March last year, with one northeastern province seeing a record daily increase. Mainland China posted 118 new cases ...

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Monday (Jan 18) he would not stop Filipinos from getting shots of the COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech, despite reports in Norway of deaths among frail elderly people after being inoculated.

Myanmar on Monday announced it was cancelling contracts with a Thai industrial giant to work on a controversial deep sea port project.

Japanese doctors have detected a fast-spreading variant of the new coronavirus first discovered in Britain in three people who had not travelled there, the Health Ministry said on Monday.

Nearly three million people were put under lockdown in China Monday after a surge in coronavirus cases linked to a travelling salesman in the country's northeast.

Lunar rocks retrieved by a historic Chinese mission to the moon weighed less than initially targeted, but China is still willing to study the samples with foreign scientists, the mission's spokesman said on Monday.

HONG KONG: Hong Kong reported 107 new COVID-19 cases on Monday (Jan 18), the highest toll in nearly a month as authorities tested thousands of residents after an outbreak in an old residential building located in a busy commercial and residential are...

BEIJING: US officials who have engaged in "nasty" behaviour over Chinese-claimed Taiwan will face sanctions, China's Foreign Ministry said on Monday (Jan 18), after Washington lifted curbs on exchanges between US and Taiwanese officials. Ties have w...

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has announced a new economic assistance package worth RM15 billion (US$3.7 billion) on Monday (Jan 18) to mitigate the impact of COVID-19.  In a televised address, Mr Muhyiddin said the p...

SEOUL: A South Korean court sentenced Samsung Electronics vice chairman Jay Y. Lee to two and a half years in prison on Monday, which could delay the group's ownership restructuring following the death of Lee's father in October. The ruling als...

BEIJING: Twelve out of 22 workers trapped for a week by an explosion in a gold mine are alive, Chinese state media said on Monday (Jan 18), as hundreds of rescuers worked to bring them to safety. The Xinhua News Agency said Monday a note passed thro...

MANILA: Coronavirus infections in the Philippines have surged past 500,000 in a new bleak milestone, with the government facing criticism for failing to immediately launch a vaccination program amid a global scramble for COVID-19 vaccines. The Depa...

The de facto chief of South Korea's Samsung business empire was convicted on Monday (Jan 18) over a huge corruption scandal and jailed for two-and-a-half years, in a ruling that deprives the tech giant of its top decision-maker.

SEOUL: South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Monday (Jan 18) that US President-elect Joe Biden should hold talks with North Korea to build on progress that President Donald Trump had made with leader Kim Jong Un. Biden takes office on Wednesday...

SHANGHAI: Chinese conservationists have criticised a plan to dam a key flood outlet for the Yangtze river, the Poyang lake, fearing a hammer blow for an already fragile ecosystem, a rest area for migratory birds and home of the endangered Yangtze ri...

MAMUJU, Indonesia: Aid packages were handed out on Monday (Jan 18) to thousands of people left homeless and struggling after an earthquake killed at least 81 people on an Indonesian island. More rescuers and volunteers were deployed to the hard...

BEIJING: China reported more than 100 new COVID-19 cases for the sixth consecutive day, with rising infections in the northeast fuelling concerns of another national wave ahead of a major holiday season. The National Health Commission said in a sta...

TOKYO: Major firms including Sony, Panasonic and Nissan on Monday (Jan 18) urged the Japanese government to make its 2030 renewable energy target twice as ambitious. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga last year set a 2050 deadline for Japan to become ca...

SEOUL: North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament has passed decisions made by a major ruling party meeting where leader Kim Jong Un vowed to bolster his nuclear deterrent and established plans to salvage a dismal economy. The North’s Korean Central ...

TOKYO: Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga vowed on Monday (Jan 18) to forge ahead with preparations to hold the Tokyo Olympics this summer, in the face of growing public opposition as Japan battles a surge in coronavirus infections. Suga faces heightened...

BEIJING: China's economic recovery beat analyst expectations in the fourth quarter, expanding 6.5 per cent from a year earlier, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Monday (Jan 18). The gross domestic product (GDP) growth was faster...

Climate action has become yet another front in the competition between the world's two largest economies, say observers.

JAKARTA: As Indonesia grapples with the impact of COVID-19, terrorism cells in the country continue to spread radical messages, actively seeking new recruits and plotting their next attacks, a senior counterterrorism official said. In an exclusive i...

JOHOR BAHRU: Johor police this week seized drugs worth RM201 million (US$49.8 million), making it the biggest haul in the history of Malaysia's anti-narcotics department, said the authorities on Sunday (Jan 17). Officers conducted three raids on Th...

Tens of thousands evacuated amid Indonesia floods

MAMUJU, Indonesia: Torrential monsoon rains hampered the hunt on Sunday (Jan 17) for anyone still buried alive under buildings flattened by a powerful earthquake on Indonesia's Sulawesi island, after the huge tremor killed at least 81 and left thou...

Cambodian opposition figure blocked from planned return home

Reigning Olympic champion Carolina Marin has bolstered her chances of defending in Tokyo later this year after claiming the Thailand Open in Bangkok Sunday over top seed Tai Tzu-ying.

India's COVID-19 vaccination drive hit a bump on the first day due to glitches in an app called Co-Win that is being used to coordinate the campaign, according to several officials involved in the immunisation programme.

Worries simmered in mainland China about a potential fresh wave of coronavirus cases ahead of the Lunar New Year next month as authorities on Sunday reported 109 new COVID-19 cases, most of them in Hebei province surrounding Beijing.

Gunmen shot dead two Afghan women judges working for the Supreme Court in an early morning ambush in the country's capital Sunday, officials said, as a wave of assassinations continues to rattle the nation.

India's Covid-19 vaccination drive had a successful start with more than 190,000 people receiving their first jabs and no one hospitalised for major side effects, the health ministry said, but reports emerged about concerns over the homegrown vaccine...

For Yuuki Hamazono, it was a relief to find bars and restaurants in Tokyo flouting the Japanese government's request to close by 8 p.m.

HONG KONG: E-commerce workers who kept China fed during the COVID-19 pandemic, making their billionaire bosses even richer, are so unhappy with their pay and treatment that one just set himself on fire in protest. China’s Internet industries alr...

SEOUL: North Korea’s parliament was scheduled to convene on Sunday (Jan 17) to pass decisions made by a major ruling party meeting where leader Kim Jong Un vowed maximum efforts to expand his nuclear weapons programme in face of what he described a...

SINGAPORE: A team from Singapore's Transport Safety Investigation Bureau is assisting with the probe into the Sriwijaya Air plane crash, said Singapore's Ministry of Transport on Sunday (Jan 17). The two investigators arrived in Jakarta on Wedne...

BEIJING: The coronavirus was found on ice cream produced in eastern China, prompting a recall of cartons from the same batch, according to the government. The Daqiaodao Food Co in Tianjin, adjacent to Beijing, was sealed and its employees were bei...

At least 60 people have been killed after an earthquake struck Indonesia's West Sulawesi province on Friday, the disaster mitigation agency (BNPB) said on Sunday, the latest in a string of disasters to hit the Southeast Asian country.

For years, legal troubles have cast a cloud over Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Jay Y. Lee as he stood on the cusp of stepping out of his father's shadow and making a name for himself as the leader of the global tech giant.

BATANGAS, Philippines: When the Philippines' second most active volcano Taal erupted in 1965, Teodora Caraig, born and brought up on Volcano Island, fled but returned a year later. She went on to raise her children and grandchildren on the island, wh...

BANGKOK: During good times, mining for Bitcoin is an around the clock job. In Nonthaburi, a province outside Bangkok, through the day and night one facility’s thousands of machines are on the hunt. An ordinary factory from the outside, inside row...

Students piled bamboo canes and stationery in front of Thailand's Ministry of Education and splashed crimson paint on it to protest corporal punishment, one of several protests that took place across the capital on Saturday.

Foreign ministers of China and the Philippines on Saturday committed to prioritising post-pandemic recovery efforts as senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi wrapped up a week-long visit to four Southeast Asian countries.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia on Saturday (Jan 16) reported a record high of 4,029 new COVID-19 cases and eight more deaths. Apart from eight imported cases, the rest are local transmissions, said health director-general Noor Hisham Abdullah. This takes...

The US Forces in Korea (USFK) said on Saturday it has imposed a shelter-in-place order on two of its largest bases - US Army Garrison Yongsan and Camp Humphreys - until Tuesday after a cluster of coronavirus infections.

Clusters of cases in China's COVID-19 outbreak in its northern provinces such as Hebei, Liaoning and Heilongjiang, as well as the capital Beijing since December have been caused by cases from overseas, state media reported on Saturday.

Myanmar police scuffled on Saturday with dozens of followers of Buddhist nationalist monk Ashin Wirathu at a demonstration calling for him to be put on trial more than two months after he handed himself in to face sedition charges.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is taking legal action at the global trade watchdog against the European Union and member states France and Lithuania for restricting palm oil-based biofuels, the government said. The world's second largest palm oil producer, ...

JAKARTA: A team from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has arrived in Indonesia's capital to join the investigation into the crash of a Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500, the head of Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee...

BEIJING: China on Saturday (Jan 16) finished building a 1,500-room hospital for COVID-19 patients in five days to fight a surge in infections in a city south of Beijing, state media reported. The hospital is one of six with a total of 6,500 rooms be...

Hong Kong on Saturday (Jan 16) hit back at the United States over its latest sanctions on six officials, slamming the move as "insane, shameless and despicable".

JAKARTA: An aftershock hit Indonesia's Sulawesi island on Saturday (Jan 16) as rescue workers searched for people trapped under rubble after an earthquake killed at least 45 people, injured hundreds and sent thousands fleeing. Indonesia's disaster ...

TAIPEI: A Chinese lawyer who represented a Hong Kong activist was stripped of his licence by China on Friday (Jan 15). Lu Siwei, who represented one of 12 Hong Kong activists who tried to flee to Taiwan, had his licence revoked by the Sichuan Prov...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch the "world's largest" vaccination campaign on Saturday as the populous nation tries to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control starting with two locally-manufactured shots.

In the climate debate, calculating which economies should bear bigger responsibilities is an impossible task. Focusing on how countries can reduce their carbon footprint together may be a more productive focus for the climate action agenda, says SUSS...

KUALA LUMPUR: It was already late on Jan 4, but the 42 passengers on a sleeper bus from Kota Bharu to Kuala Lumpur were wide awake. Along the way, the bus had encountered a flood at Jeram Besu in Pahang state, as a result of a torrential downpour...