International news with relevance to Thai and regional readers
LONDON (Reuters) – One hundred former presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers have urged the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations to pay for global coronavirus vaccinations to help stop the virus mutating and returning as a worldwide threat. The leaders made their appeal ahead of a G7 summit in England which begins on Friday,
A huge roadside billboard, calling for the liberation of Palestine, was erected on top of a building at the expressway exit on Sathupradit Road in Bangkok’s Yan Nawa district last week, by a group of Thai Muslims supporting the Palestinian cause. The billboard featured the Palestine flag and the text “Free Palestine.” It was reported
China has approved emergency use of Sinovac Biotech’s (SVA.O) COVID-19 vaccine in people aged between three and 17, its chairman Yin Weidong told state TV late on Friday. China’s mass vaccination drive, which administered 723.5 million doses of vaccines as of June 3, is currently only open to those aged 18 and above. When Sinovac’s
Twitter Inc said it will roll out a new subscription product initially in Australia and Canada called Twitter Blue, which will let paying users edit their tweets before posting and change the color theme of their app. Details of the feature were first uncovered last month by software engineer Jane Manchun Wong, who is well-known
HONG KONG (AP) — For years, China has quashed any discussion on the mainland of its bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, nearly erasing what happened from the collective consciousness. Now it may be Hong Kong’s turn, as China’s ruling Communist Party pulls the city more directly into its orbit. The
Japan has been backed into a corner over the Tokyo Games, a member of the country’s Olympic committee said Friday, arguing the virus-postponed event has “lost meaning” — but adding that it’s too late to cancel. Public opposition to holding the Olympics this summer remains high, but organisers insist they will go ahead safely under
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden announced Thursday the U.S. will swiftly donate an initial allotment of 25 million doses of surplus vaccine overseas through the United Nations-backed COVAX program, promising infusions for South and Central America, Asia, Africa and others at a time of glaring shortages abroad and more than ample supplies at home.
More than two billion Covid-19 vaccines have been given across the world, according to an AFP tally Thursday drawn from official sources. The milestone comes six months after the first vaccination campaigns against Covid-19 began. At least 2,109,696,022 shots have been given in 215 countries and territories, according to the count from an AFP database
The pandemic has pushed over 100 million more workers into poverty after working hours plummeted and access to good quality jobs evaporated, according to the annual World Employment and Social Outlook report by the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO). In the report, ILO cautioned that the labor market crisis created by the pandemic was far from
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Tuesday formally ended a Trump-era immigration policy that forced asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court. A seven-page memo by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas marked the end of the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” which returned about 70,000 asylum-seekers to Mexico from January 2019 until it
A project to disinter a Ku Klux Klan leader and move his remains to a museum started Tuesday, local US media reported, adding the work would be funded by $200,000 of anonymous donations. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a leading pro-slavery Confederate army general during the American Civil War, and the first “Grand Wizard” of the
China has jailed a popular blogger for “defaming martyrs” after he suggested the death toll of the China-India border clash last year was higher than the official count of four. Qiu Ziming — with over 2.5 million followers on China’s twitter-like Weibo — was sentenced to eight months in prison, the court in the eastern
