CHONGQING, China (AFP) - Elderly patients lined the wards of hospitals in major cities in China Thursday as the country battled a wave of COVID cases. The virus is surging across China in an outbreak authorities say is impossible to track after the end of mandatory mass testing. Attached to a breathing tube under a pile of blankets, an old man racked with COVID-19 lay groaning on a stretcher in...

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- China only counts deaths from pneumonia or respiratory failure in its official COVID-19 death toll, a Chinese health official said, in a narrow definition that limits the number of deaths reported, as an outbreak of the virus surges following the easing of pandemic-related restrictions. Deaths that occur in patients with pre-existing illnesses are not counted as COVID-19 deaths...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Elon Musk said Tuesday that he plans on remaining as Twitter's CEO until he can find someone willing to replace him in the job. Musk's announcement came after millions of Twitter users asked him to step down in an unscientific poll the billionaire himself created and promised to abide by. "I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!" Musk twee...

The first attempt to survey the extent of violence and harassment at work around the globe has found that workplace abuse is widespread, and particularly pronounced among young people, migrants, and wage earners, especially women. More than 22.8 percent of the nearly 75,000 workers in 121 countries surveyed last year reported having experienced at least one type of violence or harassment, accord...

WASHINGTON -- The House Jan. 6 committee urged the US Justice Department on Monday to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump for the violent 2021 Capitol insurrection, calling for accountability for the former president and “a time of reflection and reckoning.” After one of the most exhaustive and aggressive congressional probes in memory, the panel’s seven Democrats and two Republicans are...

New York and Singapore are jointly the world’s most expensive cities after inflation soared this year, an annual survey showed. The pair displaced last year’s number one Tel Aviv, which fell to third place this time round in the Worldwide Cost of Living index from London-based Economist Intelligence Unit. New York hit the top spot for the first time, while Damascus and Tripoli remained the chea...

Nearly three-quarters of people over the age of 10 now own a mobile phone, potentially opening the way to broader internet use, the United Nations said. The UN’s International Telecommunication Union has provided its first estimate of regional and global ownership, revealing that 73 percent of the world’s population over 10 years of age owned a cellphone in 2022. But it cautioned that mobile ph...

NASA’s Orion capsule made a blisteringly fast return from the moon Sunday, parachuting into the Pacific off Mexico to conclude a test flight that should clear the way for astronauts on the next lunar flyby. The incoming capsule hit the atmosphere at Mach 32, or 32 times the speed of sound, and endured reentry temperatures of 2,760 degrees Celsius before splashing down west of Baja California nea...

US colleges and universities are seeing more international students enroll following a sharp decline during the COVID-19 pandemic. A new survey, released from the Institute of International Education and the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, found first-time international student enrollment was up by 80 percent last year compared to the year before. During the last ...

Repatriations of foreign women and children affiliated with Islamic State from detention camps in northeast Syria hit a record high in 2022, Kurdish authorities said. Thousands of foreigners including women and children had gone to Syria to live in IS' so-called "caliphate" until 2019, when US-backed Kurdish forces snatched the last pocket of Syrian territory from the jihadists. Fleeing women a...

BEIJING (AFP) -- Former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin died Wednesday at the age of 96, state media reported, hailing him as a great communist revolutionary who helped quell the 1989 pro-democracy protests. Jiang took power in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, in which the military used deadly force to end the uprising, and led China towards its emergence as a global economic powerhou...

WASHINGTON -- Twitter's owner Elon Musk has pledged the platform will not become a "hellscape," but experts fear a staff exodus following mass layoffs may have devastated its ability to combat misinformation, impersonation and data theft. Twitter devolved into what campaigners described as a cesspit of falsehoods and hate speech after recent layoffs cut half the company's 7,500 staff and fake ac...

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday criticised Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in person over alleged leaks of their closed-door meeting at the G20 summit, a rare public display of annoyance by the Chinese leader. In video footage published by Canadian broadcasters, Xi and Trudeau can be seen standing close to each other and conversing via a translator at the summit on the Indonesia...

US officials says missile that hit Poland fired by Ukrainian forces

NUSA DUA -- President Joe Biden convened an "emergency" meeting of the Group of Seven and NATO leaders in Indonesia Wednesday morning for consultations after NATO-ally Poland said a "Russian-made" missile killed two people in the eastern part of its country near the Ukraine border. Biden, who was awakened overnight by staff with the news of the missile explosion while in Indonesia for the Group ...