International news with relevance to Thai and regional readers
WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department on Sunday ordered the families of all American personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine to leave the country amid heightened fears of a Russian invasion. The department told the dependents of staffers at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv that they must leave the country. It also said that
Human rights and the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, where hunger threatens millions, will be in focus at talks opening Sunday in Oslo between the Taliban, the West and members of Afghan civil society. In their first visit to Europe since returning to power in August, the Taliban will meet Norwegian officials as well as representatives of the United
AFP – The Omicron variant has moved the Covid-19 pandemic into a new phase and could bring it to an end in Europe, the WHO Europe director said Sunday. “It’s plausible that the region is moving towards a kind of pandemic endgame,” Hans Kluge told AFP in an interview, adding that Omicron could infect 60 percent of Europeans by
Jan 23 (Reuters) – Families have stopped children playing outside as Tonga struggles to deal with ash and the psychological fallout of last week’s volcanic eruption and tsunami, aid workers and residents said. Communication with the outside world remained difficult on Sunday, with few internet services, and outlying islands still cut off from the phone
HONG KONG, Jan 21 (Reuters) – Hong Kong police will deal with pet lovers who try to stop people giving up their hamsters to be put down, or who offer to care for abandoned hamsters, authorities said, after they ordered a cull of the cuddly rodents to curb the coronavirus. On Tuesday, officials ordered the
GENEVA (AP) — U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday that any Russian troop movements across Ukraine’s border would constitute an invasion and that Moscow would “pay a heavy price” for such an action. It was the latest White House effort to clear up comments Biden made a day earlier when he suggested that a “minor
MOSCOW, Jan 20 (Reuters) – A small preliminary laboratory study has shown that levels of Omicron-neutralising antibodies of people vaccinated with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine did not decline as much as of those who had Pfizer shots. The joint Russian-Italian study – funded by the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which markets Sputnik V abroad –
A long-awaited report on sexual abuse in Germany’s Munich diocese on Thursday faulted retired Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of four cases when he was archbishop in the 1970s and 1980s. The law firm that drew up the report said that Benedict strongly denies any wrongdoing. The report also faulted the current archbishop, a prominent ally
WASHINGTON (AP) – US President Joe Biden ends his first year in the White House with a clear majority of Americans for the first time disapproving of his handling of the presidency in the face of an unrelenting pandemic and roaring inflation, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs
LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson defied calls to resign in a feisty performance Wednesday in Parliament — but it may be too little to prevent his Conservative Party’s lawmakers from trying to oust him over a string of lockdown-flouting government parties. Pressure on the prime minister grew as one Conservative lawmaker defected
WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A 57-year-old Tongan man who said he swam around 27 hours after getting swept out to sea during Saturday’s devastating tsunami has been hailed a ‘real life Aquaman’. The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano on Saturday killed at least three people, sent tsunami waves rolling across the archipelago, damaging villages,
SYDNEY (AP) — Three of Tonga’s smaller islands suffered serious damage from tsunami waves, officials and the Red Cross said Wednesday, as a wider picture begins to emerge of the destruction caused by the eruption of an undersea volcano near the Pacific archipelago nation. Communications have been down throughout Tonga since the eruption on Saturday,
