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US prosecutors now believe supporters of President Donald Trump planned to “capture and assassinate elected officials” in their siege of the Capitol building last week, according to a new court filing. The filing, submitted by Justice Department lawyers late Thursday, sought the detention of Jacob Chansley of Arizona, the QAnon conspiracy theorist pictured in the […]

Two experts on an international mission to investigate the origins of Covid-19 in China are still in Singapore after testing positive for Covid antibodies, the WHO said Thursday. The World Health Organization said earlier that the international team of experts had landed in Wuhan for the long-delayed mission, but it later tweeted that two had […]

by Glenn CHAPMAN Twitter chief Jack Dorsey on Wednesday backed the messaging platform’s ban of US President Donald Trump, but said it sets a “dangerous” precedent and represents a failure to promote healthy conversation on social networks. “Having to ban an account has real and significant ramifications,” Dorsey said in a string of tweets about […]

China’s President Xi Jinping has asked former Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz to help promote trade between Washington and Beijing in a rare missive to a foreign business figure, state media reported Thursday. Xi, responding to an earlier message from Schultz, urged the multi-billionaire to “continue to play an active role in promoting China-US economic and […]

Sobbing friends and relatives filed into a Jakarta cemetery Thursday to bury the remains of a flight attendant from the crashed Indonesian passenger jet, as divers restarted their hunt for its second black box. Okky Bisma, 29, was the first confirmed victim of Saturday’s disaster after fingerprints from his retrieved hand were matched to those […]

A closed-door mass trial of 150 Cambodian opposition figures resumed in Phnom Penh Thursday, in what critics labelled a politically motivated sham. The case is linked to attempts by exiled opposition figurehead Sam Rainsy to return to Cambodia in 2019 from France, where he has lived since 2015 to avoid jail for convictions that he […]

There has been a surge in Covid-19 cases in Malaysia that is threatening to overwhelm hospitals, prompting the Malaysian King to declare on Tuesday a nationwide state of emergency. A statement from the Royal Palace said the King had agreed to the declaration following a meeting on Monday with Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. The emergency […]

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged to strengthen his country’s nuclear arsenal as he delivered his closing address to a top ruling party meeting, state television showed Wednesday, days before Joe Biden takes office as US president. Kim is looking to grab the attention of the incoming Biden administration, analysts say, with his country […]

Bad weather forced scores of divers to temporarily suspend their hunt for a crashed Indonesian jet’s cockpit voice recorder Wednesday, as investigators worked to read critical details on a flight data device that had already been salvaged. The two “black boxes” could supply key clues as to why the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 plunged about […]

WhatsApp on Tuesday reassured users about privacy at the Facebook-owned messaging service as people flocked to rivals Telegram and Signal following a tweak to its terms. There was “a lot of misinformation” about an update to terms of service regarding an option to use WhatsApp to message businesses, Facebook executive Adam Mosseri, who heads Instagram, […]

Nearly a third of Taiwan’s corals are dying from bleaching caused by warming oceans in an alarming phenomenon that poses a severe threat to the island’s delicate underwater ecosystem, conservationists warned Wednesday. An investigation conducted last year in 62 locations around the island by the Taiwan Coral Bleaching Observation Network (TCBON) showed bleaching had reached […]

A Chinese province of more than 37 million declared an “emergency state” on Wednesday to snuff out a handful of Covid-19 cases, as the country moved decisively to contain infections. China had largely brought the coronavirus under control since its emergence in Wuhan late in 2019. But recent weeks have seen smatterings of cases, prompting […]

by Andrew MCKIRDY Tokyo Olympics organisers played down a poll showing plunging support for the Games on Tuesday and said a report claiming cancellation could be discussed next month was “fake news”. The comments, less than 200 days before the postponed Games start in July, come with greater Tokyo under a state of emergency over […]

Chinese authorities sealed off a city of almost five million people and imposed strict travel restrictions on several others on Tuesday as they worked to quash a number of Covid-19 clusters near Beijing. The country had largely curbed the spread of the coronavirus, which first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, with small outbreaks swiftly […]

by Danny KEMP with AFP bureaus The European Union started the approval process for its third vaccine on Tuesday after WHO scientists warned that herd immunity from coronavirus was unlikely this year even with mass inoculation schemes. The 27-nation EU — under fire for lengthy approval processes and slow national rollouts of drugs — promised […]