Asia

China warned Washington not to “play with fire” on Wednesday as a US delegation wrapped up a historic trip to the self-ruled island of Taiwan. Beijing has been infuriated by the highest-profile visit in decades to Taiwan, which it sees as part of its territory, as US-China relations plunge to …

Shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, Joe Biden’s campaign announced Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) as his running mate. At 4:45 p.m., Trump campaign aide Brad Parscale tweeted that the pick meant that the “Bernie Bros get burned,” pointing to a story about liberal resistance to her candidacy. …

South Korea and the United States are reportedly scaling back their joint military drills this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. South Korean media reported on Wednesday that US-based troops would not be mobilized for the drills this year. The exercises, which usually begin in August, involve tens of thousands …

There seems to be no end in sight for the police brutality and racial discrimination against people of color in the United States as new footage emerged in the US state of Georgia where a helpless father of five unarmed African American children desperately pleads with police officers not to …

Police in Hong Kong have reportedly arrested media tycoon Jimmy Lai, also a UK citizen, over suspected collusion with foreign forces. The 71-year-old was charged with illegal assembly and intimidation in February, but he was granted police bail. Lai’s newspaper Apple Daily said he was taken away from his home …

Indonesia’s rumbling Mount Sinabung erupted Monday, sending a column of volcanic materials as high as 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) into the sky and depositing ash on villages. Falling grit and ash accumulated up to 5 centimeters (2 inches) in already abandoned villages on the volcano’s slopes, said Armen Putra, an …

The death toll from a landslide at a tea plantation in the southern Indian state of Kerala rose to 43 on Sunday with nearly two dozen people feared trapped, a senior official said. The landslide, caused by heavy rain, hit the plantation in Idduki district in the early hours of …

Some areas have seen more than 40 consecutive days of rain – as fears also grow in North Korea about damage to crops. At least 30 people are dead and a dozen are missing after more than a week of devastating torrential rain caused landslides and floods in South Korea. …

Afghanistan agreed on Sunday to release 400 “hard-core” Taliban prisoners, paving the way for the beginning of peace talks aimed at ending more than 19 years of war. Under election-year pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump for a deal allowing him to bring home American troops, the war-torn country’s grand …

Eleven patients have died after a fire at a coronavirus treatment facility in India, as the country posted a record daily rise in confirmed cases of COVID-19. The blaze, the country’s second such incident in four days, ripped through the Hotel Swarna Palace in the city of Vijayawada, southeast India, …

At least 26 people have died after 46 days of heavy rains in South Korea, with the country’s longest monsoon in seven years causing more flooding, landslides and evacuations. Nearly 5,000 people had been evacuated as of 4:30 p.m. local time on Saturday (0730 GMT), according to Ministry of the …

China on Saturday slammed the United States for imposing “barbarous” sanctions in response to Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong, capping a dramatic week of deteriorating relations between the world’s two biggest economies. Meanwhile, the Hong Kong government described the sanctions as “shameless and despicable,” adding that it fully supported “countermeasures.” …

The US administration has imposed sanctions on Hong Kong’s leader and a number of other key officials over a security law that China enacted for the semi-autonomous region in late June. The Treasury Department announced on Friday that it was freezing US-based assets of Chief Executive Carrie Lam and 10 …

An Air India Express passenger flight en route from Dubai with 191 people on board has overshot the runway during landing at Kerala’s Kozhikode airport. Police confirmed 14 deaths with another 123 injured Malappuram police superintendent Abdul Kareem confirmed the numbers to the ANI news agency. Fifteen people are said …

China says it has no intention of ratcheting up tensions with the United States and engaging in a diplomatic war with Washington. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the remark in an interview with the official Xinhua news agency late on Wednesday, putting forward four principles to advance Sino-US ties. …

Testimonies of hibakusha ‘very important in changing the entire narrative about nuclear weapons’ “In a city of two hundred and forty-five thousand, nearly a hundred thousand people had been killed or doomed at one blow; a hundred thousand more were hurt.” These haunting words, written by the journalist John Hersey …

Survivors of the world’s first atomic bombing gathered in diminished numbers near an iconic, blasted dome Thursday to mark the attack’s 75th anniversary, many of them urging the world, and their own government, to do more to ban nuclear weapons. An upsurge of coronavirus cases in Japan meant a much …

The Philippines on Thursday recorded another jump in coronavirus cases to overtake neighbouring Indonesia as the country with the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 infections in East Asia. A recent surge in cases of the virus in and around the capital Manila has pushed authorities to reimpose a lockdown affecting …

China said ‘unilateral’ changes made in the status of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019 were ‘illegal and invalid’ India hit out on China on Wednesday for saying that “unilateral” changes made to the status of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019 were “illegal and invalid,” saying Beijing …

A leading role in the nuclear disarmament should be played by Moscow and Washington, but not Beijing, because China’s nuclear arsenal is noticeably smaller, according to Chinese Ambassador to US Cui Tiankai. During the annual Aspen Security Forum, the envoy was asked whether China was interested in signing any arms-control …