SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Friday that nearly 10% of its 26 million people have fallen ill and 65 people have died amid its first COVID-19 outbreak, as outside experts question the validity of its reported fatalities and worry about a possible humanitarian crisis.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden embarked Thursday on a six-day trip to South Korea and Japan aiming to build rapport with the two nations’ leaders while also sending an unmistakable message to China: Russia’s faltering invasion of Ukraine should give Beijing pause about its own saber-rattling in the Pacific.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — At Lautoka harbor in the heart of Fiji's sugar cane region, five U.S. federal agents boarded the Russian-owned Amadea, a luxurious superyacht the length of a football field.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — On a recent nighttime visit to a drugstore, a double-masked Kim Jong Un lamented the slow delivery of medicine. Separately, the North Korean leader's lieutenants have quarantined hundreds of thousands of suspected COVID-19 patients and urged people with mild symptoms to take willow leaf or honeysuckle tea.
BEIJING (AP) — The locked-down Chinese metropolis of Shanghai will reopen four of its 20 subway lines Sunday as it slowly eases pandemic restrictions that have kept most residents in their housing complexes for more than six weeks.
NEW DELHI (AP) — An Indian court on Thursday convicted a top Kashmiri separatist leader in a terrorism-related case that carries a maximum sentence of the death penalty or life imprisonment.
Mohammed Yasin Malik had been charged with terrorist acts, illegally raising funds, being a member of a terrorist organization, and criminal conspiracy and sedition.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka will lower the maximum amount of foreign currency that individuals can possess to $10,000 from $15,000 and penalize anyone who holds it for more than three months, the central bank announced Thursday, as police fired tear gas and water cannons at thousands of students demanding the government step down for failing to solve the country's economic crisis.
DILI, East Timor (AP) — Former East Timor independence fighter and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta was sworn in as president of Asia’s youngest country late Thursday as it marks its 20th anniversary of independence.
BANGKOK (AP) — Nine years after the last elections, and six years after the military government installed its governor, residents of the bustling Thai capital will finally cast their ballots Sunday for the city’s leader in a vote that could tip the balance in favor of the opposition ahead of an approaching general election.
TORONTO (AP) — Wireless carriers in Canada won’t be allowed to install Huawei equipment in their high-speed 5G networks, the Canadian government said Thursday, joining allies in banning the giant Chinese technology company.
May 13-19, 2022
This photo gallery highlights some of the most compelling images made or published by Associated Press photographers in Asia and Pacific.
The gallery was curated by AP photo editor Shuji Kajiyama in Tokyo.
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — The man accused of opening fire on a Southern California church congregation because of his political hatred of Taiwan dubbed himself a “destroying” angel in a seven-volume diary sent to a newspaper before the attack, the paper said Wednesday.
TOKYO (AP) — Japan announced Thursday that it will donate 2 million euros ($2.1 million) to the International Atomic Energy Agency for its efforts to ensure the safety of Ukrainian nuclear facilities that have come under Russian attack.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan's Taliban rulers ordered all female presenters on TV channels to cover their faces on air, the country's biggest media outlet said Thursday.
The order came in a statement from the Taliban's Virtue and Vice Ministry, tasked with enforcing the group's rulings, as well as from the Information and Culture Ministry, the TOLOnews channel said in a tweet.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The recent deadly shooting at Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in California didn’t just violate a sacred space.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia said Thursday it will lift a monthlong ban on palm oil export, citing improvements in the supply and domestic price of bulk cooking oil.
President Joko Widodo said exports will resume on Monday.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Thursday reported 262,270 more suspected COVID-19 cases as its pandemic caseload neared 2 million — a week after the country acknowledged the outbreak and scrambled to slow infections in its unvaccinated population.
TOKYO (AP) — The money was supposed to be COVID-19 assistance for low-income households in a small Japanese town, but it was mistakenly wired to a bank account of a resident who refused to return it and spent most of it on online gambling, police said.
PRAGUE (AP) — Prague’s zoo has introduced a pair of critically endangered Chinese pangolins to the public. It is only the the second animal park on the European continent to have the animals.
The arrival of the rare acquisition from Taiwan follows a political fallout with China that prevented the expected arrival of a pair of giant pandas.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Faced with rising violence, Pakistan is taking a tougher line to pressure Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to crack down on militants hiding on their soil, but so far the Taliban remain reluctant to take action — trying instead to broker a peace.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The daughter of a conservative federal lawmaker and granddaughter of a conservative cabinet minister, Sydney businessperson Allegra Spender has an impeccable pedigree for a career in Australian politics.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand’s government said Thursday it will hand out an extra few hundred dollars to more than 2 million lower-income adults to help them navigate what it describes as “the peak of the global inflation storm.”
U-TAPAO, Thailand (AP) — The remains of an American airman who went missing in action in World War II may finally be on their way home, thanks to a chance discovery of records in flood-threatened archives in Thailand.
SEOUL (AP) — For many South Koreans, the former presidential palace in Seoul was a little-visited, heavily secured mountainside landmark. That's now changed as thousands have been allowed a look inside for the first time in 74 years.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An Australian state attorney general on Wednesday declined to pardon a mother convicted almost 20 years ago of smothering her four children to death and instead ordered a new inquiry into whether there could be a medical explanation for the tragedies.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lankan protesters lit flames and offered prayers Wednesday remembering thousands — including ethnic Tamil civilians — killed in the final stages of the country’s decadeslong civil war, in the first-ever event where mostly majority ethnic Sinhalese openly memorialized the minority group.
HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii and the Central Pacific basin should expect two to four hurricanes, tropical depressions or tropical storms this year, federal forecasters said Wednesday.
The annual National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration outlook predicts there is a 60% chance of a below-average season.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — She has four limbs, expressive eyes and likes to stroll through greenery in New York City. Happy, by species, is an Asian elephant. But can she also be considered a person?
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence shows that it's a “genuine possibility” that North Korea will conduct another ballistic missile test or nuclear test around President Joe Biden's visit to South Korea and Japan that begins later this week, according to the White House.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Pakistani Taliban on Wednesday said they are extending a cease-fire with the government until May 30, after the two sides held an initial round of talks hosted by the Afghan Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.
BEIJING (AP) — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi criticized on Wednesday what he called negative moves by Washington and Tokyo against Beijing ahead of a meeting in Tokyo next week of the leaders of the U.S., Japan, Australia and India.
NEW DELHI (AP) — A wall collapsed in a salt packaging factory in western India on Wednesday, killing at least 12 workers and injuring another 13, a government administrator said.
The workers stocking salt in bags were found buried in the wall debris in the factory in Morbi district, 215 kilometers (135 miles) west of Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat state, said J.B.
BEIJING (AP) — China said Wednesday that U.S. investigators haven’t released any information about the cause of a China Eastern Airlines jetliner crash in March after The Wall Street Journal reported its flight data recorder indicated someone pushed the Boeing 737-800 into a steep dive.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Wednesday added hundreds of thousands of infections to its growing pandemic caseload but also said that a million people have already recovered from suspected COVID-19 just a week after disclosing an outbreak, a public health crisis it appears to be trying to manage in isolation as global experts express deep concern about dire consequences.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — U.S. authorities say the gunman behind an attack on a church in southern California in which one person was killed and five injured was motivated by a hatred for Taiwan.
TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s nuclear regulator on Wednesday approved plans by the operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant to release its CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s opposition leader Anthony Albanese said Wednesday that he will begin rebuilding trust in his nation if he wins weekend elections and attends a summit with U.S., Indian and Japanese leaders in Tokyo just three days later.
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Hundreds of climbers who scaled Mount Everest over the last few days taking advantage of favorable weather conditions have begun to return safely down the mountain.
Among them are climbers who set records on the world's highest peak, including the first Ukrainian woman to scale Mount Everest.
TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s economy shrank at a worse than expected annual rate of 1% in the first quarter, as rising prices and COVID-19 restrictions sapped spending and investment, according to data released Wednesday.
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — The man charged with opening fire on a Taiwanese church congregation of mainly elderly people in Southern California wanted to “execute in cold blood as many people in that room as possible,” a prosecutor said Tuesday in announcing murder, attempted murder and other charges for the shooting that killed one person and wounded five.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — During more than a decade as North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un has made “self-reliance” his governing lynchpin, shunning international help and striving instead for domestic strategies to fix his battered economy.
GENEVA (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization said China’s extreme approach to containing the coronavirus is unsustainable because of the highly infectious nature of the omicron variant, but that it’s up to every country to decide what policy to pursue.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department sued longtime Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn on Tuesday to compel him to register as a foreign agent because of lobbying work it says he performed at the behest of the Chinese government during the Trump administration.
A new study blames pollution of all types for 9 million deaths a year globally, with the death toll attributed to dirty air from cars, trucks and industry rising 55% since 2000.
That increase is offset by fewer pollution deaths from primitive indoor stoves and water contaminated with human and animal waste, so overall pollution deaths in 2019 are about the same as 2015.