International news with relevance to Thai and regional readers
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has accused top officials of “self-protection and defeatism” and largely blamed them for the country’s economic plight, state media reported Friday. At a meeting of top cadres, state news agency KCNA said Kim had “sharply criticised” officials responsible for laying out plans for various sectors’ growth this year, saying
Facebook said it began rolling out news feeds with less political subject matter in line with a plan outlined by chief Mark Zuckerberg to reduce inflammatory content. The leading social network said it would begin testing the change “for a small percentage of people” in Canada, Brazil and Indonesia this week, and the United States in the
The World Health Organization expert mission to China ended this week without finding the source of the coronavirus that has killed over 2.3 million worldwide. But the team of foreign experts did agree the virus likely jumped from bats to an unknown animal species, before being transmitted to humans. It also concluded that it was
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday ordered new sanctions against the military regime in Myanmar, taking action after the military this month staged a coup in the Southeast Asian country and arrested de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior politicians. Biden said he was issuing an executive order that will
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A divided U.S. Senate voted largely along party lines on Tuesday to move ahead with Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on a charge of inciting the deadly assault on the Capitol, but conviction appears unlikely barring a major shift among Republicans. The Senate voted 56-44 to proceed to the first-ever trial of a
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden says China is in for “extreme competition” from the U.S. under his administration, but that the new relationship he wants to forge need not be one of conflict. In an interview broadcast Sunday, Biden acknowledged that he has yet to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping since his inauguration
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi in a phone call on Friday the United States will stand up for human rights and democratic values in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, the State Department said. Blinken also pressed China to condemn the military coup in Myanmar, and
(Reuters) – Myanmar’s junta shut down the internet in the country on Saturday as thousands of people took to the streets of Yangon to denounce this week’s coup and demand the release of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In the first such demonstration since the generals seized power on Monday, activists chanted, “Military dictator,
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea on Saturday eased curfews on businesses outside the capital Seoul, letting them stay open an hour later, amid a public backlash over tight curbs to contain COVID-19. After using aggressive testing and tracing to blunt several earlier waves of the coronavirus without drastic lockdowns, the authorities have imposed increasingly rigid
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Australia’s second-most populous state of Victoria reported no local coronavirus cases on Saturday for the second straight day, boding well for the Australian Open tennis tournament due to start in Melbourne on Monday. More than 500 staff and players in the Grand Slam event tested negative for the coronavirus virus on Friday
LONDON (Reuters) – British researchers are to explore mixing doses of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines in a world first trial aimed at finding new ways to swiftly reduce coronavirus infections as new mutated variants emerge. While thousands of individual changes have arisen as the virus mutates on replication and evolves into new variants,
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun on Thursday ordered a revamp of social distancing guidelines in a bid to win greater public support for efforts to stop local transmission of the new coronavirus. The country’s five-tier social distancing system has faced a public backlash for imposing unfair restrictions and curfews on specific
