International news with relevance to Thai and regional readers
The United States warned its citizens Monday not to travel to Olympic host Japan, citing the growing risk of the Covid-19 pandemic in the Asian nation just two months before the Games begin. But the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee said it was still “confident” that American athletes will be able to participate this summer
The European Union agreed Monday to impose sanctions on Belarus, including banning its airlines from using the airspace and airports of the 27-nation bloc, amid fury over the forced diversion of a passenger jet to arrest an opposition journalist. The Authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko sparked international outrage by dispatching a fighter jet Sunday to
Hong Kong may soon have to throw away millions of Coronavirus vaccine doses because they are approaching their expiry date and not enough people have signed up for the jabs, an official warned Tuesday. Hong Kong is one of the few places in the world fortunate enough to have secured more than enough doses to
The year-long surge in gun murders across the United States has shown no sign of easing as Covid lockdowns end, with a jump in shootings over the weekend that left dozens dead or injured. Homicides, mostly gun-driven, rocketed by a historic 30 percent last year over 2019, and are currently running an estimated 20-25 percent
Moderna Inc and Novavax Inc entered into a deal with the South Korean government to manufacture their COVID-19 vaccines, as the country has been under pressure to secure more and faster deliveries of U.S.-made vaccines. Saturday’s agreements with the U.S. drugmakers came a day after U.S. President Joe Biden said that he and South Korean President Moon
A UN official in war-battered Gaza called for a “genuine political process” to avert further bloodshed, after the military conflict between Israel and Islamist group Hamas that ravaged the Palestinian enclave. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, said the reconstruction needed to go hand in hand with efforts to create “a
The Israel-Hamas ceasefire held into a third day on Sunday as Israeli police admitted Jewish visitors to a contested Jerusalem holy site where earlier confrontations with Palestinian protesters helped to ignite the cross-border Gaza fighting. Police reported no unusual incidents at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, one of Islam’s holiest sites, as Israeli social media accounts showed a few dozen Jews
BEIJING (AP) — Twenty-one people running a mountain ultramarathon have died in northwestern China after hail, freezing rain and gale-force winds hit the high-altitude race, state media reported Sunday. After an all-night rescue operation in freezing temperatures involving more than 700 personnel, rescuers were able to confirm that 151 people were safe, out of a
After 14 months of lockdown and restrictions, New Yorkers can now enjoy a city where most of these limitations have been lifted. But many have retained the cautious approach they adopted at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and are hesitant about partying and returning to the social life they enjoyed “before.” Yesenia Herra, 33,
CHINA (AFP): China’s Mars rover drove from its landing platform and began exploring the surface on Saturday, state-run Xinhua news agency said, making the country only the second nation to land and operate a rover on the Red Planet. The launch last July of the Tianwen-1 Mars probe, which carried the Zhurong rover, marked a
Several thousand people marched Saturday in Paris and other French cities in support of Palestinians after an 11-day conflict with Israel that killed 260 people, most of whom Palestinians. This weekend’s Paris demonstration was restricted to a rally at the Place de la Republique. Last weekend, thousands of activists defied a ban on a similar
UNITED STATES (AFP): Vaxxing, not waxing, is the new must-do before a hot date, with dating apps joining the White House on Friday to promote Covid-19 shots. Tinder, Hinge, Match, OkCupid, BLK, Chispa, Plenty of Fish, Bumble, and Badoo are all adding vaccination status to the more expected details on dating profiles as part of a
