Incoming Taiwan president Lai to pledge steady approach to relationship with China

TAIPEI, May 18 (Reuters) – Taiwan’s next president, Lai Ching-te, will pledge to secure stability by maintaining the status quo in the island’s relationship with China in his inauguration speech on Monday, an incoming senior security official said. Lai, who succeeds President Tsai Ing-wen after having been her vice president for the past four years, […]

Read More

North Korea’s Kim seeks to shore up nuclear force, oversees missile test, KCNA says

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered accelerated production to strengthen the country’s nuclear force more rapidly, on the same day he oversaw a test of tactical ballistic missiles with new guidance system, state media KCNA said on Saturday. While visiting an arms factory on Friday, Kim made the production order “to cope with …the […]

Read More

UN, ASEAN urged to act to save Rohingyas from further genocide in Myanmar

Parliamentarians from Southeast Asia on Saturday urgently called on the United Nations, ASEAN, and the wider international community to take immediate action in order to prevent the mass killing of Rohingyas who are under siege by the Arakan Army in northern Rakhine State. “We are extremely alarmed and concerned by reports that the Arakan Army […]

Read More

Singapore Airlines rewards staff with 8-month salary bonus after record profit

The payout is in effect higher than Singapore Airlines’ previous year’s earnings high, which resulted in a profit-sharing bonus equivalent to 6.65 months’ pay and a maximum of 1.5 months’ salary of ex-gratia bonus related to the pandemic. Singapore Airlines declined to comment. The city-state carrier delivered a record S$2.67 billion ($1.98 billion) annual profit […]

Read More

Why Kyrgyzstan hostels housing Indian, Pakistani students were targeted

By Abhishek De Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, has been on the boil over the last couple of days, with violent mobs targeting hostels housing students from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Three Pakistani students have been reportedly killed in the violence, prompting Islamabad and New Delhi to issue advisories for its nationals in Kyrgyzstan. Local reports said the […]

Read More

India condemns dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza as Israel-Hamas war intensifies

Against the context of Israel’s military operation against Hamas in Gaza, India has denounced the conflict’s civilian casualties and called the humanitarian catastrophe it has created in the area “simply unacceptable.” Per an ANI report, “The conflict in Gaza has been going on for over seven months, and the humanitarian crisis it has triggered has […]

Read More

Global coral bleaching event expanding to new countries: Scientists

The massive coral bleaching episode signaled by US authorities last month is expanding and deepening in reefs around the globe, scientists warned Thursday. Amid record ocean temperatures, coral bleaching has been recorded in 62 countries and territories since February 2023, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said — an increase of nine from […]

Read More

Russo-Chinese Power Play in Central Asia: A Global Concern with Far-Reaching Implications

By M Masum Billah In the geopolitical theater of Central Asia, the ongoing power play between Russia and China is not just a regional affair but a global concern with far-reaching implications. As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Beijing underscores, the alliance between these two giants, rooted in shared suspicion of the West […]

Read More