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Fiji military called in to ‘help maintain order’ after disputed election

Fiji’s military will assist police in maintaining law and order, Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said on Thursday, December 22, citing growing concerns of racial tensions after last week’s election delivered a hung parliament. Fiji is waiting for its president to recall parliament so lawmakers can vote for a new prime minister after a national election […]

US flouting trade rules by mislabelling products from Hong Kong as ‘Made in China’, says WTO

Image used for representational purpose. AP Hong Kong: The United States is flouting international trade rules by labelling imports from Hong Kong as those from China, the World Trade Organization ruled Wednesday, an outcome that Washington rejects. The WTO ruling addressed a decision under former president Donald Trump’s administration after Beijing imposed a sweeping security […]

Asian shares track Wall St rally on upbeat consumer data

Shares advanced in Asia on Thursday after a rally on Wall Street as investors welcomed a report showing US consumer confidence is holding up despite the Federal Reserve’s campaign to fight inflation by raising interest rates. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped more than 2 per cent and benchmarks also rose in Tokyo, Sydney and Seoul. […]

Travellers stranded amid B.C. snowfall rely on kindness of strangers to get home

With hundreds of cancelled flights at Vancouver International Airport (YVR) after the region was blanketed with snow, some travellers have had to rely on strangers to get home. A B.C. woman says she managed to make her way from YVR to her home in Kelowna, after connecting with a person who was driving back to the city in […]

Chinese singer Jane Zhang deliberately infected herself with COVID-19. Here’s why

Popular Chinese singer Jane Zhang received backlash after she said in a social media post that she met people infected with the coronavirus so that she could catch it. Image courtesy: janezhang/Instagram It’s a worrying situation in China. There is a surge in COVID-19 cases, chaos at hospitals, crematoriums are overcrowded and there’s a medicine […]

Malaysia floods force tens of thousands to evacuate

Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian towns were left inundated with muddy water in the wake of torrential rains, footage shared on social media and verified by Reuters showed on Wednesday, forcing more than 72,000 people to evacuate as rainfall and floods were forecast to persist. At least two people have died as floods hit five states this […]

WRAPUP 4-Hearses queue at Beijing crematorium, even as China reports no new COVID deaths

Dozens of hearses queued outside a Beijing crematorium on Wednesday, even as China reported no new COVID-19 deaths in its growing outbreak, sparking criticism of its virus accounting as the capital braces for a surge of cases. Following widespread protests, the country of 1.4 billion people this month began dismantling its unpopular “zero-COVID” regime of […]

Mask Network Acquires Pawoo.net, one of the largest Mastodon instances

TOKYO, Dec. 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The Social Coop Limited (Social Coop), the entity affiliated with Mask Network has acquired Pawoo.net, one of the largest Mastodon instances. The new team will be taking over the operation and maintenance of Pawoo.net starting from December 21st, 2022, with no impact on existing users. Pawoo, operated from Japan since 2017, […]

Volkswagen asks China factory staff to work longer hours to recoup Covid losses

Image used for representational purpose. AFP German motor vehicle manufacturer Volkswagen (VW) has asked its staff and workers in China to work overtime to recover the production losses it suffered following the wave COVID illness. Workers at a VW factory – that runs a joint venture with China’s FAW group — in Chengdu, Sichuan district […]

Long waits, high fees for cremation services in Beijing as COVID cases surge

BEIJING/HONG KONG, Dec 21 (Reuters) – Some residents in Beijing face waiting days to cremate relatives or paying steep fees to secure timely services, funeral home workers said, indicating a growing death toll as the Chinese capital battles a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases. Workers at two different funeral parlours in Beijing told Reuters over […]

US offers Covid vaccines to China to stem outbreak

Representational Image. ANI Washington: The United States on Tuesday offered to share vaccines with China to stem soaring Covid cases, saying containing the outbreak was in the interest of the world. It is unlikely that China would accept the offer from the United States, its frequent adversary, after Beijing invested heavily in Covid diplomacy that […]

Trump tax audits required by IRS were delayed, panel says

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, talks to the media after the House Ways & Means Committee voted on whether to publicly release years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2022. AP PHOTO House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, […]

China says no new COVID-19 deaths after changing criteria

Representational image. AP Beijing: China said Wednesday that not a single person had died of Covid-19 the previous day, after changing the criteria for recording virus deaths to mean most are no longer counted. Hospitals are struggling, pharmacy shelves are stripped bare and crematoriums are overwhelmed in the wake of the Chinese government’s sudden decision […]

In Switzerland, Chinese dissidents now know they are not alone

Protesters in Chinese cities, like the ones above in Beijing on November 27, held up blank sheets of paper signalling limits on freedom of speech, a gesture replicated by those who took part in vigils in other parts of the world, including Switzerland. Keystone / Mark R. Cristino After protests in China against the government’s […]

Japanese Web3 start-ups expand into neutral Switzerland

Takashi Oka, founder of Overlay, explaining his project at University of Zurich Blockchain Center, where he graduated summer school in 2020. swissinfo.ch The next generation blockchain-powered internet, known as Web3, is a growth area for start-ups. In the race to attract the hottest new companies, Switzerland faces strong competition from the likes of Dubai and […]

From zero-Covid to no plan: Behind China’s pandemic U-turn

The southwestern city of Chongqing was the latest frontline of Xi Jinping’s “zero-Covid” war, until it came to epitomise China’s potentially devastating about-face that has cracked the Communist Party’s edifice of absolute control. The city last month was enduring one of the biggest outbreaks cropping up across China, when the national leader, Xi, ordered officials […]

Paul O’Grady ‘taking a year off’ for Christmas

Paul O’Grady is taking a break from one of his normal Christmas projects this year. The For the Love of Dogs presenter usually takes to the stage each festive season to perform in a Pantomime. But when talking to ITV producers about a one-off Royal edition of his dog show, he revealed he planned to […]

Why Covid cases are now rising in China

China’s health authorities on Monday (December 19) announced two Covid-19 deaths — the country’s first reported fatalities in weeks — amid an expected surge of illnesses after it eased its strict “zero-COVID” approach, the AP reported. Scary pictures and videos of crowded hospital beds and piled-up bodies have appeared on social media, even though they […]

Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya is Fox regular, climate denier, anti-lockdown. Twitter his new foe

Indian-origin Stanford University professor Jay Bhattacharya appeared on Fox News 33 times in 2021 alone. At the peak of the pandemic, he was a fixture on Tucker Carlson’s show amplifying conspiracy theories linking Covid to China’s biological weapons research programme, disparaging the lockdown and vaccines, and attacking the United States of America’s chief medical advisor Dr […]

Head-on | Decoding dynasts Bilawal Bhutto and Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi, 52, and Bilawal Bhutto, 34, are living proof that political dynasties have an expiry date. Bilawal’s grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had a chequered career. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Bhutto went to Oxford University. Returning to Pakistan, he plunged headlong into the newly independent country’s theocratic politics. Bhutto was by […]

Tributes Pour In For Young Irishman Who Died While Kayaking In Thailand

Tributes have poured in for a young Irishman that has tragically died following a kayaking incident while in Thailand. Odhrán O’Neill, 22, was last seen kayaking in Khao Sok National Park in Bangkok, Thailand at around 1pm on Saturday (December 17). His sister Michaela raised the alarm on social media, launching an appeal while describing […]

New Malaysian state legislature to prohibit women from ‘acting like men’

Image used for representative purpose. AFP Malaysia has introduced a state law that seeks to criminalise out-of-wedlock pregnancies and punish women who ‘dress like men.’ As many as 14 human rights groups, including the All-Women’s Action Society, have flagged concerns about the legislative changes introduced by Malaysia’s north-eastern state of Terengganu. These groups say that […]

SenseTime Partners with Bank of Ningbo to Unveil AI-Generated Content Live Show with Digital Human

Digital Employee to Boost Customer Engagement of the Bank HONG KONG, Dec. 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — SenseTime, a leading global artificial intelligence (AI) software company, partnered with Bank of Ningbo (Shanghai Branch) to develop a digital human named Xiaoning. Leveraging SenseTime’s original virtual IP solution and AI technologies, the bank’s first digital employee helps it […]

Elon Musk launches poll asking if he should quit as Twitter CEO

Twitter CEO Elon Musk launched a poll on the social media platform on Sunday asking users whether he should step down as head of the company, adding that he would abide by the poll results. As of 0557 GMT, almost 12 million users had participated in the poll, with 56.3% voting in favor of him […]