CNN – Asia/Pacific

By Clarissa Ward, Tim Lister, Angela Dewan and Saleem Mehsud, CNN Taliban fighters entered Afghanistan’s Presidential Palace hours after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on Sunday, a milestone in the insurgent group’s assumption of control over capital city Kabul. One unit shared pictures of the palace interior — intact, but empty and apparently abandoned

By Jessie Yeung, CNN Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), the pro-democracy group that organized some of Hong Kong’s biggest protests, announced Sunday that it was disbanding — the latest of a string of civic organizations that have dissolved in the wake of a sweeping national security law. CHRF, an over-arching organization of local pro-democracy groups,

By Emiko Jozuka, CNN At least four people are presumed dead and two are missing after torrential rain triggered mudslides throughout Japan. Three of those victims in Nagano prefecture’s Okaya City were presumed dead, though workers were able to pull out five people alive. Authorities said Friday that a 59-year-old woman in Unzen, Nagasaki prefecture,

By Cyril Vanier and Jo Shelley, CNN It’s been years since Haji and his wife have had a good night’s sleep. “All night, my wife wakes up,” says Haji. “She’s scared. If [she hears] somebody is coming, she calls me, ‘Haji, someone is coming!’” His wife says the first thing she does is hide the

By Lauren Said-Moorhouse, CNN Over the last week, the Taliban has made significant gains across Afghanistan and now control over half of the country’s provincial capitals. Cities like Kandahar, Herat and Kunduz are among those now under control of the Taliban, whose fighters are circling ever closer to the capital, Kabul. CNN spoke to Afghans

By Akanksha Sharma, Masrur Jamaluddin and Hilary Whiteman, CNN Taufiq Hidayat enters the homes of the dead to claim bodies no one will touch. He leads a dozen volunteer undertakers who take calls from grieving families in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, the center of one of the world’s largest Covid-19 outbreaks. “It’s really tough and

By Nectar Gan, CNN Chinese health authorities have issued new guidelines upping the requirement of mask wearing for the public — including in outdoor areas, as the country grapples with its worst resurgence of Covid-19 in more than a year. The Delta variant outbreak spreading across more than half of China’s provinces has put authorities

By Nectar Gan, Jessie Yeung and Steve George, CNN After spending nearly 1,000 days in a Chinese jail cell, Canadian businessman Michael Spavor has finally received his court verdict — yet there is still no clarity on how much longer he will actually remain behind bars. Spavor, an entrepreneur with business ties in North Korea,

By Clarissa Ward, Brad Lendon and Rob Picheta, CNN The Taliban have seized Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city, and a number of other provincial capitals, as the insurgent group accelerates its rapid advance towards the capital Kabul. Afghan Member of Parliament Gul Ahmad Kamin told CNN on Friday that Kandahar had been taken. The city, which

By Sophia Saifi and Ben Westcott, CNN Pakistan’s foreign minister has accused India and Afghanistan of backing a suicide bombing which killed nine Chinese workers on July 14, and called for the remaining perpetrators to be handed over to Islamabad for trial. The attack, which took place in Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, left 13

By Yoonjung Seo and Jessie Yeung, CNN Former K-pop star Seungri was sentenced to three years in jail on Thursday by a South Korean military court, more than two years after sexual assault allegations first emerged stunning the country. The former Big Bang member had been indicted without detention in 2020 for allegedly organizing prostitutes

By Jessie Yeung, CNN Scientists have confirmed the discovery of two massive new dinosaur species in northwest China — some of the first vertebrates uncovered in the region, according to a new study published Thursday. A number of fossils have emerged from China’s northwest region in recent years, including Xinjiang and the Turpan-Hami Basin. The

Story by Reuters A Panamanian-registered ship ran aground in a northern Japan harbor, then split in two and was leaking oil, but there were no injuries among the 21 crew and the oil leak was being controlled with no signs it had reached shore, the Japan Coast Guard said. The 39,910-ton vessel, the “Crimson Polaris,”