Asia

Kim Jong Un’s sister vowed North Korea would amp up its national defense and deterrence after joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises that she demanded be canceled appeared likely to begin next week.

Afghanistan’s foreign minister called for international sanctions to be reimposed on Taliban leaders and warned of a threat to international peace and security as the insurgents took three more provincial capitals and civilians fled to Kabul.

Deep into a Covid-19 outbreak partly fueled by the Delta variant, the targeting of healthcare workers by Myanmar’s military junta has forced them into the shadows, just when they are needed most.

The setback came after a warlord switched sides, as President Ashraf Ghani faces renewed pressure to create common front or resign.

The U.S. withdrawal is leaving helicopter mechanics who once worked side-by-side with American contractors to rely on texts and Zoom calls as they seek help keeping aircraft available to fight the militants.

He is one of 5,000 former prisoners released by the Afghan government last year under pressure from the U.S. who have returned to the battlefield.

North Korea wants sanctions restrictions relaxed to allow exporting minerals and importing more refined fuel, South Korea’s spy agency said, before it would consider restarting nuclear talks with the U.S.

Asia is emerging as a weak link in an otherwise strong global economic recovery, as rising Covid-19 cases and slow progress on vaccinations begin to paralyze a region that had kept the coronavirus in check.

For 18 months, a town in a remote, heavily forested part of eastern Borneo island had avoided the worst of Indonesia’s Covid-19 pandemic. Then, in early July, doctors in Tanah Grogot started seeing what they had long feared.

The first person convicted under Hong Kong’s Beijing-imposed national-security law was sentenced to nine years in prison Friday, in a case closely watched as a bellwether for how strictly the city’s judges will enforce the law.

The fate of the Visiting Forces Agreement had been in limbo since the Philippines notified the U.S. in early 2020 that it would withdraw.

The Delta variant has backed many Asia-Pacific countries into a corner, short of vaccines and left with strategies that worked in the past but appear insufficient against this highly transmissible version of the virus.

The engineers targeted had come to Pakistan to fit Chinese equipment at a Pakistani-owned plastic manufacturer in Karachi.

While bigger South Asian neighbors such as India and Bangladesh are way behind in their vaccination campaigns, Bhutan has inoculated 90% of eligible adults.

China’s foreign minister, meeting with the Taliban on Chinese soil, urged the group to distance itself from terrorist groups and take steps to establish peace in Afghanistan.

The world’s fourth most-populous nation, where about 7% of people are fully vaccinated, reported more than 2,000 daily fatalities for the first time.

The reopening of the cross-border phone line raises the prospect that the Kim Jong Un regime could be ready for engagement after a protracted period of diplomatic silence.

U.S. and Chinese officials sparred over Covid-19, human rights and cybersecurity in a tense exchange in the highest-level meetings between the two countries on Chinese soil since Joe Biden became president.

Chris Tun came back as a democratic transition was under way and foreign companies took an interest in his native country. A military coup brought the new era to a sudden end.

Myanmar’s Covid-19 wave looks like those in India and Indonesia, with hospitals turning away the sick and bodies piling up at crematoriums. But health experts on the ground warn that Myanmar is far more vulnerable.