Category Archives: Asia Pacific

New Zealand Covid-19 cases all linked to single cluster, with more cases expected

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Cabinet to meet at 3pm to discuss Auckland lockdown as health minister Chris Hipkins says city not yet looking at moving from level three to four

New Zealand is not yet looking at a level 4 lockdown, because the rising number of Covid-19 cases are all related to a single cluster, the health minister has said.

Chris Hipkins told Radio NZ that more than one cluster would have to be circulating for the country to rise to level 4 restrictions, and so far there was no evidence of that, though more cases from the same cluster had emerged overnight.

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‘Here we go again’: Auckland fears a long lockdown as coronavirus returns

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Shops start stockpiling and charities helping with financial hardship expect flood of calls as PM warns outbreak will get worse

“I’m not afraid because I’m taking precautions,” says Nadeep Singh, a travel agent in Papatoetoe, the South Auckland suburb that has reportedly sparked a return to lockdown and a pivotal change in the country’s battle with the pandemic.

His business was closed to customers but Singh was working “flat out” – alone in his locked office – getting refunds for clients who are now unable to take the trips they had booked with him.

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‘Bombs can’t kill viruses’: Hawaii faces backlash as international war games approach

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As coronavirus case numbers soar, the state prepares to host Rimpac, the world’s largest international maritime military exercise

In a year when the coronavirus has caused multinational war games to be conducted virtually or canceled, the world’s largest international maritime military exercise begins in Hawaii next week.

The Rim of the Pacific (Rimpac) war games, which run through the end of August, come as Hawaii struggles to contain community spread of the coronavirus amid what has become the highest reproduction rate in the country.

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Jimmy Lai says swift arrest points to ‘great disorder’ between Hong Kong and China police

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Pro-democracy activist says he did not expect to be arrested so soon given the global outcry, and that it suggested chaos in the ranks

Jimmy Lai has said he was surprised to be arrested so quickly, and suggested there was “great disorder” among Chinese and Hong Kong authorities about how to handle the territory’s national security law.

The 71-year-old media tycoon and prominent pro-democracy figure was arrested on Monday, on suspicion of committing foreign collusion crimes in breach of Beijing’s national security law, and conspiracy to defraud.

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New Zealand PM says Covid-19 outbreak will ‘get worse’ as Auckland cluster grows

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Jacinda Ardern sound ominous tone, with expectation of a long lockdown for the country’s biggest city

Covid-19 may have been circulating in New Zealand’s biggest city for weeks, the country’s top health official has said, as 13 new community cases were confirmed – all linked to the four cases announced on Tuesday.

The prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the growing cluster in Auckland, now totalling 17, “would get worse before it gets better” in the city of more than 1.4 million people.

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South Korea installs anti-virus bus shelters with temperature sensors and UV lamps

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Glass-walled booths in Seoul won’t let you in unless your temperature is normal

South Korea has opened a high-tech new front in the battle against coronavirus, fortifying bus shelters in the capital with temperature-checking doors and ultraviolet disinfection lamps.

To enter, passengers must stand in front of an automated thermal-imaging camera, and the door will slide open only if their temperature is below 37.5C.

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Hero’s welcome for Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai after release on bail

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Apple Daily founder and pro-democracy activist returns to office following arrest under national security law

The Hong Kong pro-democracy figure and media mogul Jimmy Lai received a hero’s welcome as he returned to his newspaper after being arrested on allegations of foreign collusion, while Chinese state media labelled him a “genuine traitor”.

Lai, his sons, senior executives from his Next Digital media company and others including the activist Agnes Chow were detained under Beijing’s national security law on Monday. Hundreds of police officers also raided the offices and newsroom of Apple Daily, the popular tabloid Lai founded, in a move decried as an assault on press freedom.

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Japan PM sparks anger with near-identical speeches in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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‘It’s the same every year. He talks gibberish and leaves,’ says one survivor after plagiarism app detects 93% match in speeches given days apart

Survivors of the atomic bombings of 75 years ago have accused Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, of making light of their concerns after he delivered two near-identical speeches to mark the anniversaries of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

A plagiarism detection app found that Abe’s speech in Nagasaki on Sunday duplicated 93% of a speech he had given in Hiroshima three days earlier, the Mainichi Shimbun reported.

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Thailand protesters ‘cross the Rubicon’ and risk all to criticise the monarchy

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Anger has been building since 2014 coup in which prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha seized power, with students now holding rallies almost daily

Thai protesters have broken a long-standing taboo, risking lengthy jail terms to criticise the king, after weeks of student-led pro-democracy rallies that have swept across the country.

Over recent weeks, high school and university students have targeted the government of prime minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha, calling for its dissolution and for democratic reforms. Now, some protesters have begun openly criticising the country’s wealthy and powerful monarchy.

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Stock markets boom as hopes rise for US economic stimulus and Covid-19 vaccine

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S&P edges towards all-time record with oil prices and hospitality stocks rising as investor optimism rebounds

US stock markets moved closer to record highs on Tuesday after investors bet on a fresh round of government spending to lift the economy and counter the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The S&P 500, seen as the broadest measure of US investor sentiment, raced to a 10-point gain by mid afternoon to leave it just 16 points short of the all-time high reached in February.

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‘The next Hong Kong’: Taiwan’s foreign minister sounds warning over China

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Joseph Wu tells visiting US health secretary Taiwan lives under constant threat of its freedoms being quashed by Beijing

China is trying to turn Taiwan into another Hong Kong, the island’s foreign minister warned on Tuesday as he met with a senior US official making a historic diplomatic trip.

A crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong has gathered pace since China imposed a sweeping security law on the financial hub in June, with opposition politicians disqualified and activists arrested.

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Love of Stilton drives wedge between UK and Japan in post-Brexit trade talks

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Consensus crumbles after Liz Truss reportedly sought to make the cheese a part of negotiations

Having promised to rush through a post-Brexit trade deal, Japan and Britain made significant progress only to discover that the fate of Stilton has driven a wedge between them.

During recent talks in London, international trade secretary Liz Truss and the Japanese foreign minister, Toshimitsu Motegi, reached a “substantial” preliminary agreement on trade, promising to conclude a preliminary deal by the end of this month.

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Hong Kong’s Apple Daily vows to fight on after arrest of Jimmy Lai

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Readers queued for hours to get a copy of the pro-democracy tabloid, as US secretary of state says China has ‘eviscerated Hong Kong’s freedoms’

Hong Kong’s Apple Daily tabloid has responded with defiance to the arrest of owner Jimmy Lai under a new national security law imposed by Beijing, promising to “fight on” in a front-page headline above an image of Lai being detained..

Readers queued from the early hours to get a copy of the pro-democracy paper a day after police raided its offices and took Lai into detention, the highest-profile arrest so far under the national security law.

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Pacific states face instability, hunger and slow road to Covid recovery: Dame Meg Taylor

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While the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic has so far spared the Pacific, its economies are in free-fall, the region’s chief diplomat warns

Beyond the health and economic crises of Covid-19, the global pandemic has the potential to cause political instability and undermine state security across the Pacific, the region’s chief diplomat has warned.

Dame Meg Taylor, secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum, said the region’s economies were struggling with the virus-induced shocks, and a prolonged crisis could worsen existing problems of hunger, poor healthcare, and state fragility.

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Microsoft’s TikTok deal: bargain of the decade or a $50bn blunder?

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Jury is out on whether video-sharing site could make Microsoft a social media giant

As the clock ticks on Microsoft’s fast-track talks to buy TikTok the jury is out on whether it marks a unique opportunity to become a global social media giant overnight, or a $50bn (£38bn) geopolitically fuelled business blunder.

Donald Trump’s trade war with China has forced ByteDance, the privately owned Beijing-based parent of the video-sharing site TikTok, to pursue a sale of its US business after the president signed an executive order last week that could shut it down on 15 September.

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Jacinda Ardern must use her power to push New Zealand to more progressive politics | Morgan Godfery

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The PM promised transformative government, but has so far largely maintained the status quo

Jacinda Ardern was travelling in a taxi in July 2017, two months before the election that would make her prime minister, when arguably the most important message in her nine-year parliamentary career came through. Labour’s poll results were crashing, the message said, and the party leader – the austere Andrew Little – was considering stepping down. Would Ardern, the then deputy leader, consider stepping up?

In the following days calls went back and forth. The party activists (and MPs at risk of losing their seats) were in the pits, and Little told the country’s leading current affairs show resigning had crossed his mind. From that admission, the poll numbers could only fall further. The Greens were at 15% , sucking up votes to Labour’s left while the conservative National party was polling in the mid-to-high 40s, maintaining an iron grip on the centre right.

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Jacinda Ardern pushes stability over change in New Zealand’s ‘Covid election’

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The prime minister is pitching a mix of steady leadership and big-spending policies to voters after a world-leading coronavirus response

On her first public outing since launching her party’s election campaign the day before, New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, spent Sunday morning at a farmers’ market in central Auckland where she walked among friends, posed for selfies and did her vegetable shopping.

Ardern is riding high in the polls – as is the Labour party – on the back of her stewardship of the country’s Covid-19 response. Her strong position has been aided by troubles within the opposition National party, which is heading into September’s election with its third leader in as many months.

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Australia’s sheep left without shearers as Covid halts travel from New Zealand

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Nation is facing shortage of shearers for its 68 million sheep as hundreds are barred from taking their usual trip across the Tasman Sea

It’s a tradition that stretches back decades. Every year, hundreds of New Zealanders fly in to Australia for the spring shearing season – a huge mobilisation of workers essential to the success of the nation’s wool industry.

In dusty sheds on outback farms they join up with local shearers and, between them, relieve five million sheep of their fleeces over eight weeks.

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Thousands of baby turtles released into sea off Bali

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The Olive Ridley turtles are part of conservationists’ attempts to boost the population and promote environmental protection

More than 10,000 baby turtles were released into the sea off the Indonesian island of Bali, as part of conservationists’ attempts to boost the population of a vulnerable species and promote environmental protection.

Conservation groups carried crates each full of dozens of tiny turtles to the island’s Gianyar beach on Friday and encouraged local people and volunteers to line up on the sand and release the hatchlings together.

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