NEW DELHI: A vaccine developed by India's Bharat Biotech and a government research institute is likely to be effective against the British strain of the coronavirus, according to a study on 26 participants shared by the company on Wednesday (Jan 27)...

China has begun using anal swabs to test those it considers at high risk of contracting Covid-19, state TV reported, with social media users and travellers squirming over the invasive procedure which doctors say can be more effective in detecting the...

YANGON: Health workers in Myanmar on Wednesday (Jan 27) became the first people in the Southeast Asian country to be vaccinated against COVID-19, five days after the first vaccines were delivered from India. State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanma...

The United Nations human rights chief has called for an International Criminal Court investigation into Sri Lanka's Tamil separatist conflict, and sanctions on military officials accused of war crimes, according to a report obtained by AFP.

BANGKOK: Thailand on Wednesday (Jan 27) reported 819 new COVID-19 cases, taking its total infections to 15,465. One additional death was reported, bringing total fatalities to 76. More than 700 of the new infections were in Samut Sakhon province, ...

YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia: Indonesia’s most active volcano erupted on Wednesday (Jan 27) with a river of lava and searing gas clouds flowing 1,500m down its slopes. It was the Mount Merapi’s longest lava flow since authorities raised the volatile vo...

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga apologised on Wednesday (Jan 27) after lawmakers from his ruling coalition visited nightclubs despite his government's call for people to avoid unnecessary outings to curb the spread of COVID-19.

China has administered about 22.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, a health official said on Wednesday, as the country steps up its campaign ahead of next month's Lunar New Year holidays and the accompanying flurry of travel.

Hong Kong has begun using "ambush lockdowns" to suddenly close off and test everyone inside neighbourhoods where COVID-19 cases have spiked, as a spate of recent outbreaks lays bare the rampant inequality in the wealthy Chinese finance hub.

NEW DELHI: Tens of thousands of farmers who stormed the historic Red Fort on India's Republic Day were again camped outside the capital on Wednesday (Jan 27) after the most volatile day of their two-month standoff left one protester dead and more th...

MANILA: A Philippine province has cancelled its award of a US$10 billion airport deal south of the capital, among the biggest projects involving a Chinese firm under President Rodrigo Duterte who has pursued warmer ties with Beijing since taking offi...

SEOUL: South Korean authorities were scrambling on Wednesday (Jan 27) to contain coronavirus outbreaks centred around Christian schools as the country reported a jump in infections, dampening hopes of a speedy exit from a third wave of the pandemic. ...

Mainland China reported 75 new COVID-19 cases on Jan. 26, down from 82 cases a day earlier, the country's national health authority said on Wednesday.

TOKYO: Japan's vaccination roll-out faces logistical hurdles that could further delay the slow-moving campaign, experts and officials say, complicating plans to deliver widescale coronavirus inoculations in time for the Olympics. Already the last ma...

Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, both chastened by four years of Trumpian disruption, have a real chance to reverse the course of bilateral relations, say experts.

Armed with a spear and a sword, farmer Sher Singh climbed over the main gate of India's historic Red Fort and raised a Sikh religious flag to the cheers of a large crowd of protesters.

Thai court acquits 80-year-old writer of defaming monarchy

Afghan government negotiators holding peace talks with the Taliban charged Tuesday their opponents had been avoiding formal engagement for more than a week, an accusation the insurgents denied.

Relative of virus victim asks to meet WHO experts in Wuhan

The World Health Organization’s COVAX programme has pledged US$112 million for COVID-19 vaccines to reach 20per cent of Afghanistan’s population, an Afghan health official said on Tuesday.

Myanmar's powerful military on Tuesday raised the spectre of staging a coup as it ramped up demands for an investigation into alleged voter fraud during last year's election, swept by Aung San Suu Kyi's ruling party.

A team of Nepali climbers that made the first winter summit of K2, the world’s second tallest peak, arrived back in the country to a heroes' welcome on Tuesday from crowds of well-wishers.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has reimposed a ban on children aged 10 to 14 leaving home, telling them to watch TV instead, as the country battles an outbreak of a new coronavirus strain.

BANGKOK: Thailand reported a daily record of 959 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday (Jan 26), due to what authorities said was a ramping-up of testing at the epicentre of its most recent outbreak. The new infections, the highest daily rise since the 7...

Badminton's world number one Tai Tzu-ying was handed a tough draw at Thailand's World Tour Finals Tuesday as she was bracketed with home favourite Ratchanok Intanon and Indian star PV Sindhu.

The Iranian- and Panamanian-flagged vessels seized by Indonesian authorities for suspected illegal oil transfers are making their way to dock at Batam island in the country's Riau Islands province for further investigation, a Indonesia coast guard sp...

JAKARTA: Indonesia has received investment commitments of up to $10 billion from global firms for its ambitious sovereign wealth fund, a senior minister said on Tuesday (Jan 26), ahead of its launch expected this year. The Indonesia Investment Autho...

Tokyo has revised its contact-tracing strategy to prioritise outreach to higher-risk individuals affected by coronavirus, according to a letter sent by the metropolitan government to public health authorities last week.

DUSHANBE: Tajikistan's authoritarian leader Emomali Rakhmon said on Tuesday (Jan 26) that the coronavirus pandemic had ended in his impoverished Central Asian country but warned citizens to remain vigilant. The poorest country in the former Soviet U...

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has filed a lawsuit against Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and the federal government, by initiating a judicial review challenging Mr Muhyiddin's advice to the king to suspend paliamentary sitt...

Lawmakers say North Korean diplomat defected to South Korea

BANGKOK: Thai lawmakers have voted in favour of allowing abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy while retaining penalties for later terminations, a move that pro-choice activists said fell short of protecting the rights of the mother. In a late night ...

KATHMANDU: A team of 10 Nepalese climbers who became the first to scale the world's second-highest peak during the harsh winter season received a hero's welcome on return home to Nepal on Tuesday (Jan 26). Mountaineers, supporters, friends and famil...

South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor defied the coronavirus pandemic to post a surprise 78 percent surge in fourth-quarter profits Tuesday, as robust domestic sales offset weak overseas demand.

Thousands of Indian farmers, many on tractors, breached police barricades to launch a protest march into New Delhi on Tuesday as the government held its main Republic Day military parade.

TAINAN: Armed and ready to go, Taiwan air force jets screamed into the sky on Tuesday (Jan 26) in a drill to simulate a war scenario, showing its fleet's battle readiness after dozens of Chinese warplanes flew into the island's air defence zone over ...

MANILA: The Philippines has confirmed domestic transmission of the new, highly contagious British variant of the coronavirus, prompting President Rodrigo Duterte to abandon a plan to allow some minors to go outside their homes. "Right now, we have l...

WELLINGTON: China and New Zealand signed a deal that upgrades their existing free trade pact on Tuesday (Jan 26), giving exports from the Pacific nation greater access to the world's second-largest economy. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ...

HANOI: Vietnam's ruling Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong hailed booming economic development and containment of the COVID-19 pandemic as major achievements on Tuesday (Jan 26) as he presided over the opening of a key party congress in Hanoi. O...

Hong Kong authorities are scrutinizing the financial records of pro-democracy activists as they crack down on political opposition, according to some activists and a senior bank executive.

BEIJING: Iphie Nie, a 30-year-old designer in Beijing who usually travels to visit family in her hometown of Shenzhen during the Chinese New Year, has like many Chinese reluctantly decided against booking a flight for the mid-February holiday. To...

China said on Tuesday it will conduct military exercises in the South China Sea this week, just days after Beijing bristled at a U.S. aircraft carrier group's entry into the disputed waters.

SINGAPORE: Hotel Equatorial Penang will shut down operations by the end of March because of "adverse business conditions caused by COVID-19", the hotel's management announced on Tuesday (Jan 26). "This is a very sad and difficult decision," the ho...

JAKARTA: Indonesia surpassed 1 million coronavirus cases on Tuesday (Jan 26), a grim milestone for the Southeast Asian nation that has struggled since last March to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control. The country reported 13,094 new cases on T...

SHANGHAI: As an infant Kurt Wick escaped almost certain death in a Nazi concentration camp by taking refuge in Shanghai, a little-known sanctuary for thousands of Jews fleeing the Holocaust. Now 83, he has spent the last two decades spreading the wo...

PARIS: As Olympic organisers deny reports that the Tokyo Games this summer will be postponed again, they, and other sports bodies, are wrestling with the issue of vaccinating participants for COVID-19 at international events. On Monday (Jan 25), De...

BEIJING: China reported a fall in new COVID-19 infections as the number of cases in two of the provinces particularly hard hit by the latest coronavirus wave fell to single digits, official data showed on Tuesday (Jan 26). A total of 82 confirmed ca...

Pfizer will pursue its request for India to approve its COVID-19 vaccine if the government commits to buying shots, the U.S. drugmaker told Reuters on Monday, even as global supplies tighten.

South Korea recorded its worst growth in more than two decades in 2020, the central bank said Tuesday, but it is expected to be among the best-performing OECD economies in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

After a most unusual four years under the Trump administration, President Biden needs to recalibrate how he deals with North Korea and it has to tap on Asian allies, says this observer.

BANGKOK: Thailand on Monday (Jan 25) confirmed a record 914 new cases of COVID-19, all in Samut Sakhon province near Bangkok where a major outbreak began in December. The new cases shot the national total past 14,000. The previous high was on Jan 4...

US President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Monday (Jan 25) giving American companies and products priority in contracting with the federal government, as the new administration attempts to spur domestic manufacturing.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Klang Valley, comprising Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, accounted for about a third of Malaysia’s 3,048 new COVID-19 cases on Monday (Jan 25).  There were 1,035 cases in Selangor and 305 in the capital Kuala Lumpur. A further 529 in...

BEIJING: Chinese rescue workers have found the bodies of nine more miners after an explosion a fortnight ago, local officials said Monday (Jan 25), raising the death toll to 10. It comes a day after 11 miners were pulled out alive from the mine in e...

BEIJING: A sprawling quarantine centre of more than 4,000 rooms is being thrown up in northern China in response to a COVID-19 outbreak in Shijiazhuang, a city of more than 10 million people in Hebei province. Satellite images from the European Spa...

SEOUL: Drugmaker Pfizer has filed an application seeking approval of its COVID-19 vaccines to be used in South Korea as the country gears up to begin inoculations next month, authorities said on Monday (Jan 25). The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety...

JAKARTA: Iran has asked Indonesia to provide details about the seizure of an Iranian-flagged vessel, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Monday (Jan 25), a day after Jakarta said it had seized Iran and Panama-flagged tankers ...

BEIJING: The United States often sends ships and aircraft into the South China Sea to "flex its muscles" and this is not good for peace, China's Foreign Ministry said on Monday (Jan 25), after a US aircraft carrier group sailed into the disputed wate...

KATHMANDU: Nepal's caretaker Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli was ejected from the country's ruling Communist party on Monday (Jan 25), his opponents said, in protest at his abrupt move in December to dissolve parliament and call for an early general el...

Caravans of tractors clogged a key highway in northern India on Monday as tens of thousands of farmers protesting against agriculture reforms streamed into the capital ahead of celebrations for Republic Day.

Indian and Chinese troops clashed anew on their contested Himalayan border, resulting in injuries on both sides, officials said on Monday (Jan 25), highlighting the fraught state of relations between the giant nuclear-armed neighbours.

PARIS: Almost half a million people have died in natural disasters linked to extreme weather events in the last 20 years, according to a new assessment of the direct threat posed to humanity by climate change. The mortality burden of climate-relate...

LONDON: Japan is likely to achieve herd immunity to COVID-19 through mass inoculations only months after the planned Tokyo Olympics, even though it has locked in the biggest quantity of vaccines in Asia, according to a London-based forecaster. That ...

BEIJING: China has found harmless traces of the coronavirus in some COVID-19 inoculation sites potentially linked to vaccine liquid, its disease control centre said. Samples taken from tables, walls, doorknobs and hallways of the sites tested posit...

SEOUL: The head of a left-wing South Korean political party that has championed gender equality was sacked on Monday (Jan 25) for sexually harassing one of his own members of parliament, a prominent rights campaigner. Kim Jong-cheol was chairman of...

KORAPUT, India: Reena Jani rose early, finished her chores in the crisp January cold and walked uphill to the road skirting her remote tribal hamlet of Pendajam in eastern India. Riding pillion on a neighbour's motorcycle for 40 minutes through hill...

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga faced renewed pressure on Monday over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with a new opinion poll showing many believed the government was too slow to respond to the latest wave of infections.

HONG KONG: "Social robots like me can take care of the sick or elderly," Sophia says as she conducts a tour of her lab in Hong Kong. "I can help communicate, give therapy and provide social stimulation, even in difficult situations." Since being unv...

SEOUL: The de facto chief of South Korea's Samsung business empire will "humbly accept" the court ruling that sentenced him to two-and-a-half years in prison for corruption and will not appeal, his lawyer said on Monday (Jan 25). Lee Jae-yong, vice...

Almost 1,600 leading members of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party meet this week to approve future policy and help select the nation’s top leaders amid talk whether the current party chief will stay.

PHNOM PENH: Dinner is late. The laundry isn't done. The pickles aren't sour enough. When it comes to reasons for a man to beat his wife, Rem Ran has heard it all. For most his 40 years, the construction worker saw domestic violence as "a normal part...

EVRY, France: A French court will on Monday (Jan 25) hear a case against more than a dozen multinationals, accused by a French-Vietnamese woman of causing grievous harm to her and others by selling the Agent Orange defoliant to the US government, wh...

HONG KONG: The Hong Kong government lifted a lockdown in an area of Kowloon district in the early hours of Monday (Jan 25) after testing about 7,000 people for COVID-19 to curb an outbreak in the densely populated area. The government set up 51 te...

SHANGHAI: China reported a climb in new COVID-19 cases driven by a spike in infections among previously symptomless patients in northeastern Jilin province, official data showed on Monday (Jan 25). The total number of confirmed cases in the mainlan...

JAKARTA: The flimsy, makeshift bamboo walkway creaked and bent as Ade Djuhana treaded his steps carefully metres above trash-strewn water in a coastal area of Jakarta.  At the end of the 500m passageway, the rows of mangrove trees opened up reveali...

The US has reaffirmed its support for Taiwan following China’s dispatch of warplanes near the island in an apparent attempt to intimidate its democratic government and test the resolve of the new American presidential administration.

NEW DELHI: Police in India's capital New Delhi will allow thousands of protesting farmers to drive through the city after this week's Republic Day military parade, despite security concerns, a senior official said on Sunday (Jan 24). The police stat...

JAKARTA: Indonesian authorities said that they seized an Iranian tanker and Panamanian tanker suspected of carrying out the illegal transfer of oil in their country's waters on Sunday (Jan 24). The tankers - the Iranian-flagged MT Horse and the Pana...

TAIPEI: Taiwan will more than double the number of people who have to quarantine at home to more than 5,000 as it seeks to contain a rare domestic cluster of COVID-19 connected to a hospital, the health minister said on Sunday (Jan 24). While Taiwan...

MANILA: Four Philippine private universities rejected accusations on Sunday (Jan 24) by the authorities that they serve as recruitment grounds of Maoist rebels, days after students protested against security force patrols at some university campuses....

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia reported 3,346 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday (Jan 24), taking the national tally to 183,801 infections. There were also 11 more deaths involving ten citizens and one foreigner, aged 34 to 91. Malaysia’s death toll from the d...

DENPASAR: A Russian social media celebrity was being deported from Indonesia on Sunday (Jan 24) after he held a party at a luxury hotel on the resort island of Bali attended by more than 50 people despite COVID-19 restrictions. The party held on Jan...

BANGKOK: Reigning Olympic badminton champion Carolina Marin on Sunday (Jan 24) claimed her second Thailand Open title in a fortnight against the same opponent - women's singles top seed Tai Tzu-ying. Thailand is hosting three consecutive badminton t...

TAIPEI: A US aircraft carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt has entered the South China Sea to promote "freedom of the seas", the US military said on Sunday (Jan 24), at a time when tensions between China and Taiwan have raised concern in...

GREATER NOIDA, India: India's huge coronavirus vaccination drive is behind schedule, with a third of recipients not showing up for appointments because of safety fears, technical glitches and a belief that the pandemic is ending. After one week, In...

YANGON: Hammering at bamboo poles to erect a stilt house, minority Christians who have fled conflict in northern Myanmar are building a sanctuary on the outskirts of Yangon. The small Christian community in the Buddhist-majority nation is part of 2...

SYDNEY: The alleged ringleader of Asia's biggest crime syndicate and one of the world's most wanted men has been arrested in the Netherlands, with Australian authorities pushing for his extradition to face trial. Police had been chasing alleged drug...

BEIJING: Chinese rescuers pulled 11 gold miners to safety on Sunday (Jan 24), 14 days after they were trapped by an underground explosion, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Footage showed the first miner to be rescued, a black blindfold across his e...

Normal diets for trapped China miners as rescue continues

KARACHI: South Africa will play their first Test in Pakistan for 14 years this week, a match being described as a "monumental moment" for the revival of international cricket in the country. The match in the port city of Karachi starting on Tuesday ...

TAIPEI: Eight Chinese bomber planes and four fighter jets entered the south-western corner of Taiwan's air defence identification zone on Saturday (Jan 23), and Taiwan's air force deployed missiles to "monitor" the incursion, the island's defence min...

BEIJING: China reported 80 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday (Jan 23), down from 107 cases a day earlier, the country's national health authority said on Sunday. The National Health Commission, in a statement, said 65 of the new cases were local infe...

WUHAN: A year ago, a notice sent to smartphones in Wuhan at 2am announced the world's first coronavirus lockdown, bringing the bustling central Chinese industrial and transport centre to a virtual standstill almost overnight. It would last 76 days. ...

KUALA LUMPUR: Barangan keperluan harian 10 sen (US$0.03), perkhidmatan teksi 10 sen dan rumah transit yang mengenakan bayaran RM1 sehari. Semua ini merupakan sebahagian daripada usaha murni Kuan Chee Heng, 57, pengasas Persatuan Kepolisan Komuniti ...

KUALA LUMPUR: Daily necessities at RM0.10 (US$0.03), a taxi ride at RM0.10 and a transit hostel that costs RM1 a day.  These are some of the philanthropic initiatives by Kuan Chee Heng, 57, who founded non-governmental organisation (NGO) Communit...

Larry King, broadcasting giant for half-century, dies at 87

Malaysia health authorities reported 4,275 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, the highest daily infections so far, raising the total number of confirmed cases to 180,455.

The critically endangered Siamese crocodile has been spotted for only the second time in a decade at Thailand's largest national park, according to photos released on Saturday.

China on Saturday reported a slight increase in new cases of COVID-19 as it marks the anniversary of the world's first coronavirus lockdown, in the city of Wuhan where the disease emerged in late 2019.

China law empowers coast guard to use force amid disputes