CNN – Asia/Pacific

By Nectar Gan and Selina Wang, CNN It’s been about two weeks since a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon entered American airspace late last month. In that time China’s response has shifted from conciliatory to indignant, and now, as the fallout continues, to outright confrontational. While China’s increasingly hardline stance plays to its domestic audience, it’s

CNN, KULR By Nectar Gan and Brad Lendon, CNN It’s known as the “Hawaii of China,” a tropical island paradise where the Chinese middle class enjoys sandy beaches, five-star resorts, and duty-free luxury shopping. It’s also China’s largest free-trade port and host of the Boao Forum, an annual meeting of political and business leaders dubbed

CNN By Nectar Gan and Selina Wang, CNN It’s been about two weeks since a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon entered American airspace late last month. In that time China’s response has shifted from conciliatory to indignant, and now, as the fallout continues, to outright confrontational. While China’s increasingly hardline stance plays to its domestic audience,

By Simone McCarthy, CNN China’s top diplomat will visit Russia this month, according to its Foreign Ministry, in the first visit to the country from a Chinese official in that role since Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Wang Yi, who was named Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s top foreign policy adviser last month, will visit Russia

By Hilary Whiteman and Taylor Ward, CNN New Zealand declared a National State of Emergency on Tuesday for the third time in its history as Cyclone Gabrielle pounded the North Island with wind and rain, knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes. Winds gusts of over 140 kilometers per hour (87 miles per

By Nectar Gan, Wayne Chang and CNN’s Beijing bureau China has accused the United States of “illegally” flying high-altitude balloons into its airspace more than 10 times since January 2022, claims that drew an immediate rebuttal from the White House, as bilateral tensions flare in the fallout from a Chinese balloon that was shot down

By Brad Lendon, CNN The Philippine Coast Guard has accused a China Coast Guard ship of pointing a “military grade” laser at some of its crew, temporarily blinding them, aboard a vessel in contested waters of the South China last week. The Chinese ship also “made dangerous maneuvers” in approaching within 150 yards (137 meters)

By Taylor Ward, CNN New Zealand declared a National State of Emergency on Tuesday for the third time in its history as Cyclone Gabrielle inches closer to the country. The cyclone has lashed New Zealand’s North Island with relentless wind, rain and waves since Sunday evening, but conditions overnight Monday into Tuesday morning warranted that

By Sophia Saifi and Rhea Mogul, CNN The alleged gang rape of a woman in a park in Pakistan has enraged women’s rights activists who are protesting against what they see as “increasing sexual barbarism” in the country. The woman, 24, was with a male colleague in the capital Islamabad’s Fatima Jinnah park — known

By Brad Lendon, CNN With his young daughter at this side at two splashy military events this week, Kim Jong Un told the world two things — the Kim family will rule North Korea for another generation and it will have the nuclear weapons to make sure no one can challenge that. The girl —

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN More than 3 tons of cocaine floating in the ocean have been seized by authorities in New Zealand in one of the country’s single biggest drugs busts. Some 81 bales of cocaine weighing 3.2 metric tons (3.5 short tons) were intercepted in the Pacific Ocean as part of Operation Hydros —

By Simone McCarthy, Nectar Gan and Wayne Chang, CNN In China’s eyes, the newest superpower battlefield sits between 12 and 60 miles above the Earth’s surface in a thin-aired layer of the atmosphere it calls “near space.” Lying above the flightpaths of most commercial and military jets and below satellites, near space is an in-between

By Brad Lendon, CNN North Korea showcased almost a dozen advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles at a nighttime military parade on Wednesday, in the biggest display yet of what its state-run media described as Pyongyang’s “nuclear attack capability.” The missiles were paraded through Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung square as leader Kim Jong Un, accompanied by his

By Kathleen Magramo, CNN China is planning to offer free fertility treatment to citizens under its national insurance scheme in a bid to reverse its plummeting birth rate. The National Healthcare Security Administration said on Friday it would extend its coverage to help shoulder the costs for families trying to conceive. It said the new

By Yoonjung Seo and Brad Lendon, CNN North Korean leader Kim Jong Un brought his daughter to a lavish banquet at a military barracks on Tuesday, the latest sign the girl is possibly being groomed as his eventual successor in an authoritarian family regime dating back decades. The girl — believed to be Kim’s second

By Heather Chen, CNN Separatist fighters in Indonesia’s restive Papua region have captured a pilot from New Zealand and are holding him hostage after setting fire to his plane, the group said in a statement. The pilot, identified by local police as Philip Merthens, was captured after landing a commercial charter flight at Paro Airport

By Pallabi Munsi, CNN In the summer of 2021, Chomden was abroad, thousands of miles away from her home in Myanmar, when a friend sent her an urgent message informing her that an intimate video of her was being shared online. When she saw the message, the 25-year-old said she froze “like a statue,” her