TORONTO (AP) -- Canada has ended evacuations from Kabul's airport, a Canadian general said Thursday, as the clock ticks down on dramatic Western efforts to help people flee the Taliban takeover ahead of a full American withdrawal. General Wayne Eyre, the country's acting chief of Defense Staff, said the vast majority of Canadian personnel left the airport and all the other countries have to leave before the Americans can wrap up their mission. Canadian military flights evacuated about 3,700 peo

TAIPEI (AFP) -- Taiwan will tighten its laws in an effort to fight talent poaching and intellectual property theft from its lucrative tech industry by China, officials said Thursday. The planned amendment to the island's national security act will make economic espionage a crime punishable by a jail term of between five to 12 years. It aims to protect "trade secrets in key technologies" from being poached by China or other "hostile external forces", the justice ministry sai

KABUL (AFP) - Western nations warned their citizens Thursday to immediately leave the surrounds of Kabul airport over a terror threat, as thousands of people try to reach a dwindling number of evacuation flights. Nearly 90,000 Afghans and foreigners have fled Afghanistan via the US-led airlift since the hardline Islamist Taliban movement took control of the country on August 15. Huge crowds continue to throng the airport, their bid for a way out of Taliban rule becoming increasingly desperate

HONG KONG (AFP) -- A powerful new Hong Kong committee tasked with vetting politicians and officials for their loyalty disqualified an opposition lawmaker for the first time on Thursday, as authorities purge its institutions of anyone deemed disloyal to Beijing. Cheng Chung-tai, one of just two opposition figures left in the city's legislature, was deemed disloyal on the basis of his previous statements and behaviour, chief secretary John Lee, who heads the vetting committee, told reporters. &q

TOKYO (AFP) -- Japan will halt the use of 1.63 million doses of Moderna's Covid vaccine after reports of contamination in several vials, drugmaker Takeda and the health ministry said Thursday. Takeda, which is in charge of sales and distribution of the Moderna shot in Japan, said it had "received reports from several vaccination centres that foreign substances have been found inside unopened vials". "Upon consultation with the health ministry, we have decided to suspend the use

Russian President Vladimir Putin called for guaranteeing the security of North Korea to resolve the standoff over its nuclear program, stressing that pressure and sanctions alone are not going to solve the quandary. Putin made the remark during a virtual session with chiefs of global news agencies at an annual economic forum in St. Petersburg on Friday (Russia time), as the nuclear negotiations between the North and the United States remain deadlocked after the breakdown of the Hanoi summit be

Singaporean Ambassador suggests ‘discuss first, launch later’ strategy for travel bubble

The “comfort women” issue has come to the fore again in the lingering feud between Seoul and Tokyo. The two neighbors were seen locking horns at the United Nations Human Rights Council last week; separately, a South Korean victim of Japanese military sexual slavery pleaded with Seoul and Tokyo to take the thorny issue to the International Court of Justice for a resolution.  Lee Yong-soo, one of the survivors, called for the matter to be settled in the UN’s highest court

CALIFORNIA (AP) -- A woman was dragged by a car in Oakland's Asian business district during a robbery that her husband says left her bruised and shaken, marking the latest in a series of attacks against people of Asian descent in the San Francisco Bay Area and in other parts of the US. Eric Nghiem said his wife, Jenny, who is Vietnamese, had her purse crossed around her neck and shoulder as she was walking to a grocery store when a thief grabbed it and jumped into the passenger side of a car W

Japan on Sunday formally approved its first COVID-19 vaccine and said it would start nationwide inoculations within days, but months behind the US and many other countries. Japan's health ministry said it had approved the vaccine co-developed and supplied by Pfizer Inc. The announcement comes after a government panel on Friday confirmed that final results of clinical testing done in Japan showed that the vaccine had an efficacy similar to what overseas tests showed. Many countries began vacc

South Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have agreed to launch a working-level dialogue to strengthen cooperation in protecting the environment and tackling climate change, the foreign ministry said Wednesday.  The two sides have wrapped up weeks of discussions to establish the "South Korea-ASEAN Dialogue on Environment and Climate Change" and plan to hold the first meeting next year, the ministry said.  South Korea is the third partner after Japan

The top economic policymakers of Korea and China held talks for the first time in nearly three years Friday, focused on ways to boost tourism battered by the new coronavirus outbreak. Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki had the virtual meeting with his Chinese counterpart He Lifeng, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, according to Seoul's finance ministry. The high-level economic talks were last held in February 2018. They discussed ways to bolster exchanges in the tourism an

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will visit South Korea next week for talks with high level officials there, the state department said Tuesday. His planned visit comes after South Korean President Moon Jae-in proposed declaring an end to the Korean War as a way of bringing North Korea back to the dialogue table over its denuclearization process. It will be part of his three-nation trip that will begin Sunday, according to the state department. He will first head to Tokyo where he will meet w

TOKYO (AP) -- IOC member John Coates, who oversees planning for next year's Tokyo Olympics, has claimed the postponed games could help "kick start" Japan's economy. Japan has been devastated like many countries by the coronavirus pandemic and could be in a recession when the Olympics are to open on July 23, 2021. "These games are a very positive opportunity for an economic stimulus," Coates said in a teleconference on Thursday with the Tokyo organizing committee. "T

US President Donald Trump has rejected South Korea's offer to raise its contribution to shared defense costs by at least 13 percent, a news report said Friday. Trump made the decision last week after consultations with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Reuters said, quoting unidentified current and former US officials. Esper made a phone call to South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo earlier this week to press Seoul to quickly agree to much higher con