Asia

Beijing claimed the right to retaliate after the Pentagon shot down what it called a “spy balloon” China has blasted US President Joe Biden’s decision on Saturday to scramble an advanced F-22 stealth fighter jet to bring down a Chinese high-altitude balloon – after it traversed the United States – …

Pakistan has blocked Wikipedia after the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia refused to remove content deemed to be “blasphemous” in the Muslim-majority nation. Wikipedia had been blocked across the country on Friday “after it failed to respond to our repeated correspondence over the removal of the blasphemous content and meet the deadline,” …

Beijing has warned against speculation and efforts to hype up the story China is a responsible nation and doesn’t violate the airspace of other countries, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning has said following speculation that a spy balloon spotted over the US had been launched by Beijing. The Chinese …

Officials have blamed a suicide bombing that killed 100 people inside a mosque at a police and government compound in northwest Pakistan on a “security lapse.” The blast, which ripped through a mosque inside a major police facility in the city of Peshawar, was one of the deadliest attacks on …

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met his counterpart in Seoul on Tuesday, pledging to beef up joint drills and security cooperation as South Korea seeks nuclear reassurances in the face of growing North Korean threats. Seoul is eager to convince its increasingly nervous public of America’s so-called extended deterrence commitments, …

Japan and the Netherlands have reportedly bowed to pressure from Washington on tighter supply controls for microchips The United States has agreed a deal with Japan and the Netherlands to restrict China’s access to materials used to make advanced computer chips, the Associated Press reported on Monday, citing sources. According …

A powerful bomb explosion at a busy mosque in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar has killed at least 33 people and wounded 150, according to officials. A hospital official said many of the casualties were police officers who had gathered in the mosque for afternoon prayers. The mosque is located …

University students across India are either being suspended or being detained by the police, over the screening of a BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role during the deadly Gujarat sectarian riots in 2002, as India continues to stop even the personal viewing of the documentary. In one …

North Korea has denounced the US pledges of sending battle tanks to Ukraine, saying that the decision reflects a “sinister intention” and Washington is “further crossing the red line” to win hegemony by proxy war. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s influential sister Kim Yo Jong on Saturday warned against Washington’s escalating …

The documentary alleges that Modi ordered police to turn a blind eye to deadly riots while he was Gujarat state’s chief minister. Police have detained many students in the Indian capital, New Delhi, over the screening of a BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role during the deadly …

A new report has revealed that Indian security forces lost 26 out of 65 patrolling points in Eastern Ladakh amid an ongoing standoff with China along the 3,500-km disputed Himalayan border. The revelation was made in a research paper submitted at the annual Director General of Police (DGP) Conference of the …

The possibility of a large scale rebound of COVID-19 in China over the next two or three months is very small as 80 percent of the population has already been infected, the chief epidemiologist at the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Saturday. The mass movement of …

The BBC documentary features the findings of a British inquiry into the 2002 deadly riots, which reveals PM Modi failed to stop the violence. India’s foreign ministry on Thursday dismissed a BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi that questioned his leadership during the deadly 2002 Gujarat riots as “propaganda”. …

The Pakistani Taliban on Thursday claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack on a police post in northern Pakistan that killed three police officers. Attackers threw grenades at a police outpost near the Afghan border in northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and entered the premises where a suicide bomber detonated explosives, …

American “occupation troops” stationed in Syria are “looting” the country’s resources, Beijing has claimed China has blasted the United States for its “banditry” in Syria, claiming that Washington’s years-long military occupation and the “plundering” of Syrian resources have placed the country on the brink of a “humanitarian disaster.” Addressing reporters …

At least 70 people have died in a wave of freezing temperatures sweeping Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday, as extreme weather compounds a humanitarian crisis in the poverty-stricken nation. Since January 10, the mercury has plunged in Kabul and several other provinces, with the central region of Ghor recording the lowest …

China’s health authorities on Saturday reported almost 60,000 COVID-related deaths in just over a month, the first major death toll released by the government since the loosening of its virus restrictions in early December. China recorded 59,938 COVID-related deaths between December 8, 2022 and January 12 this year, Jiao Yahui, …

Multiple casualties have been reported, with the blast allegedly targeting the Taliban’s foreign ministry A blast in the Afghan capital of Kabul killed at least 20 people on Wednesday, a Taliban official said. The explosion apparently took place outside the Taliban government’s foreign ministry building, with photos from the scene …

A boat with 185 Rohingya refugees landed on the shores of Indonesia’s Aceh province on Sunday, a local disaster agency official said, following hundreds who arrived late last year fleeing desperate conditions in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Over half of those who arrived around 2:30 p.m. Sunday were women and …

South Korea says a North Korean drone intruded into the no-fly zone over the presidential office in the capital, Seoul, last month. On Thursday, South Korea’s military said that a North Korean drone had entered the no-fly zone over the presidential office in Seoul during a rare incursion last month. …