CNN – Asia/Pacific

By Helen Regan and Jamie Crawford, CNN Two Myanmar citizens have been charged in New York with allegedly plotting to kill or injure Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kyaw Moe Tun, the US Attorney’s Office said Friday. The duo are accused of conspiring with an arms dealer in Thailand who sells weapons to the

By Julia Hollingsworth, Yong Xiong and David Culver, CNN When Dennis Hu came home to China for the 2020 Lunar New Year, he thought it would be a brief visit. He planned to enjoy the festivities with his family, renew his United States visa, and then head back to Boston to continue the fourth year

By Clarissa Ward, Brent Swails and Laura Smith-Spark, CNN A wedding hall in the west of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city, now lies on the front line of fierce fighting between Taliban forces and Afghan government troops. Dust coats the chairs where the guests would normally sit. Instead of the chatter of celebration, gun shots crack

By Sara Spary and Masrur Jamaluddin, CNN The Indonesian army has hinted that it will end mandatory “virginity tests” for female recruits, in a move that has been welcomed by human rights groups. For decades, the army has subjected female recruits — as well as, in some instances, the prospective wives of male soldiers —

By Yasmin Coles, Sophie Jeong and Jessie Yeung, CNN Residents in the Philippine capital are rushing to get Covid-19 vaccines, crowding into vaccination centers and waiting in long lines outside, ahead of a two-week lockdown that goes into effect Friday evening. Restrictions will be imposed across greater Manila, an urban sprawl of 16 cities that

Story by Reuters A Myanmar militia force fighting the army in a central part of the country and residents have found at least 40 bodies in jungle areas in recent weeks, including some showing signs of torture, said a militia member and Myanmar’s UN envoy. Since the military overthrew the elected government of Aung San

By Nectar Gan and Steve George, CNN As Beijing grapples with a worsening outbreak of the Delta variant, an outlandish conspiracy theory linking the origin of the coronavirus to the United States military has gained renewed traction in China. The wholly unfounded theory, which claims the virus may have been leaked from a US Army

By Helen Regan, CNN Countries across Asia are grappling with their worst coronavirus outbreaks of the pandemic, spurred by low vaccine rates and the highly-contagious Delta variant. While nations such as China, Japan and South Korea are seeing growing outbreaks, the sharp edge of the Delta wave is being keenly felt in Southeast Asia, with

By Nectar Gan, CNN China’s spiraling Delta variant outbreak has reached Wuhan, the original epicenter of the pandemic, prompting citywide coronavirus testing as authorities scramble to contain the city’s first reported local infections in more than a year. China is grappling with its worst outbreak in months, with more than 300 cases detected in more

By Brad Lendon, CNN India is sending a task force of four warships into the South China Sea on a two-month deployment that will include exercises with Quad partners the United States, Japan and Australia, India’s Defense Ministry announced Monday. The warships will depart India early this month, the Defense Ministry statement said, without giving

By Jessie Yeung, CNN The death toll from floods that ravaged central China last month now stands at 302, local authorities said Monday — more than triple the last estimate. Heavy rainfall hit the province of Henan on July 20, causing flooding in numerous towns and cities. Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of 12 million people,

By Nick Paton Walsh, Tim Lister and Barbara Starr, CNN The Taliban have taken over a TV station in Afghanistan’s strategic Helmand province, a source at the TV and radio station told CNN on Monday, marking the latest of a series of advances by the militant group in the country. The Helmand TV station, located

By Nectar Gan and Steve George, CNN China’s hardline zero Covid strategy is facing a fresh challenge from the rapid spread of the Delta variant, amid concerns over the efficacy of Chinese vaccines against the highly contagious strain. The Delta variant, which appears to cause more severe illness and spreads as easily as chickenpox according

By Jessie Yeung, CNN Chinese-Canadian pop star Kris Wu has been detained by Beijing police on suspicion of rape after allegedly “repeatedly seducing young women into having sex,” police said in a statement Saturday night. The case against Wu, 30 — whose Chinese name is Wu Yifan — is still under investigation, police in the

By Yong Xiong, CNN A reactor at Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in southern China’s Guangdong province has been shut down because of fuel rod damages, the company that runs the plant said in a statement on Friday. State-owned China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) said in the statement that “a small amount of fuel damage”

By Julia Hollingsworth, Nectar Gan and CNN staff, CNN In a meeting room decorated with a stylized hammer and sickle flag, Kelly Hu detailed her shortcomings. Since childhood, the 20-year-old student had wanted to join the longest-running and largest communist party in the world, having grown up hearing “red tales” of its revolutionary past from

By Eric Cheung, CNN Hong Kong police have arrested a man after he allegedly booed the Chinese national anthem while watching an Olympics award ceremony inside a shopping mall, authorities said on Friday. The 40-year-old man was accused of “insulting” the anthem when watching a live stream of an award ceremony on Monday, which showed