International news with relevance to Thai and regional readers
Tokyo (AFP) – A first coronavirus case has been detected in the Paralympic Village, days before the Games open, organisers said Thursday as Japan battles a record wave of infections. The case involves a Games-related member of staff who is not resident in Japan, according to organisers, who did not give further details. Organisers have so
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States is urging the more than 150 countries planning to send their leader or a government minister to New York to speak in person at the U.N. General Assembly next month to consider giving a video address instead to prevent the annual high-level week from becoming “a super-spreader event.”
KABUL (Reuters) – Armed members of the Taliban kept people desperate to flee Afghanistan from reaching Kabul‘s airport on Wednesday, witnesses said, while President Joe Biden vowed to keep U.S. troops in the country until all Americans are evacuated. Since the Taliban entered Kabul over the weekend, scenes of chaos have unfolded as thousands seek to leave, fearing a return to the austere interpretation of Islamic law imposed during
Les Cayes, Haiti (AFP) – The death toll from a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti has risen to 1,941, the Caribbean nation’s civil protection agency said Tuesday, as a tropical storm brought torrential downpours on survivors already coping with catastrophe. More than 9,900 people were wounded when the quake struck the southwestern part of the Caribbean nation
KABUL (Reuters) – The Taliban said on Tuesday they wanted peaceful relations with other countries and would respect the rights of women within the framework of Islamic law, as they held their first official news briefing since their lightning seizure of Kabul. The Taliban announcements, short on details but suggesting a softer line than during their rule 20 years ago, came as the
WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern put New Zealand under strict lockdown on Tuesday after the country’s first coronavirus case in six months was reported in the largest city of Auckland. Ardern’s “go hard, go early” strategy has helped curb COVID-19 but her announcement left people struggling to stack up essentials, businesses shutting abruptly and schools and offices making last-minute changes
LES CAYES, Haiti (AP) — A hospital in southwestern Haiti, where a powerful earthquake flattened homes, shops and other buildings over the weekend, was so overwhelmed with patients that many had to lie in patios, corridors, verandas and hallways. Then the approach of a storm expected to drench the quake zone Monday night forced officials
WASHINGTON (AP) — A defiant President Joe Biden rejected blame Monday for chaotic scenes of Afghans clinging to U.S. military planes in Kabul in a desperate bid to flee their home country after the Taliban’s easy victory over an Afghan military that America and NATO allies had spent two decades trying to build. At the White
Two Afghan officials, one from former President Hamid Karzai’s office and another an aide on the Afghan security council, said President Ashraf Ghani had left the country on Sunday amid the Taliban advance into Kabul, according to Associates Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief journalists. Ghani left
The death toll in Haiti’s powerful earthquake jumped to over 1,200 on Sunday, as crews desperately dug through collapsed buildings for survivors in the Caribbean nation still reeling from its president’s assassination. In Les Cayes, as in other hard-hit cities on the southwestern peninsula, most of the population spent the night sleeping outdoors in front
Japan marked the 76th anniversary of its World War II surrender on Sunday with a somber ceremony in which Prime Minister Yosihide Suga pledged for the tragedy of war to never be repeated but avoided apologizing for his country’s aggression. Suga said Japan never forgets that the peace the country enjoys today is built on
KABUL (Reuters) – The Taliban declared the war in Afghanistan was over after insurgents took control of the presidential palace in Kabul as U.S.-led forces departed and Western nations scrambled on Monday to evacuate their citizens. President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on Sunday as the Islamist militants entered the city, saying he wanted to avoid bloodshed, while hundreds of Afghans desperate
