Australia and the Philippines are exploring the possibility of joint patrols in the disputed South China Sea, where recent “aggressive activities” by the Chinese Coast Guard towards a Philippine vessel saw Beijing’s envoy in Manila summoned by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.   Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Wednesday...
BEIJING (AP) — China on Wednesday sharply criticized a visit to Taiwan by a senior Pentagon official and reaffirmed it has sanctioned Lockheed Martin and a unit of Raytheon for supplying military equipment to the self-governing island democracy.   The comments from the Cabinet’s Taiwan Affairs Office underscore the dramatic deterioration...
-Ministers voluntarily take salary cuts, prime minister says -Country’s austerity move aimed at meeting IMF deal conditions   Pakistani ministers can no longer fly business class or stay in five-star hotels abroad. And the government thanks them for taking salary cuts. The South Asian nation fighting to stay solvent and avoid a debt...
As the United States was watching the skies in the aftermath of the spy balloon incident, China may have been acting at sea. In early February, maritime vessels disabled the two undersea cables connecting Taiwan’s Matsu Islands, a tiny archipelago just 10 nautical miles off China’s coast, to the...
In Henan, there were 8,000 more deaths than births last year, the province’s first population fall since 1961 Four of nine Chinese provinces that have released data for 2022 have reported natural population declines   Deaths outnumbered births for the first time in more than 60 years in China’s third...
China has begun a diplomatic “charm offensive”, a seeming shift from the aggressive “wolf warrior” tone of recent years. Last month, Vice Premier Liu He travelled to Davos for the World Economic Forum to declare to world economic leaders that “foreign investments are welcome in China, and the door to China will only...
London: A number of Indian medical experts on Monday supported calls from an eminent British Indian cardiologist for a full safety review into the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, administered in India as Covishield, over feared serious side effects such as heart attack and stroke. Dr Aseem Malhotra, a...
Kyiv: Russian forces are keeping Ukrainian troops tied down with fighting in the eastern Donbas region as Moscow assembles additional combat power there for an expected offensive in the coming weeks, Ukrainian officials said Monday. Weeks of intense fighting continued to rage around the city of Bakhmut and the nearby...
Syria: A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked wide swaths of Turkey and Syria early Monday, toppling hundreds of buildings and killing more than 1,900 people. Hundreds were still believed to be trapped under rubble, and the toll was expected to rise as rescue workers searched mounds of wreckage in cities...
  Vatican City: If ever there was a moment that embodied the surreal novelty created by the first papal resignation in 600 years, it came on the morning of March 23, 2013: Newly elected Pope Francis had travelled to the papal summer retreat south of Rome and was greeted on...