China reported 13,000 COVID cases on Sunday, the most since the peak of the first pandemic wave over two years ago, as health officials said they have found a suspected new subtype of the Omicron variant in the Shanghai area.China's "zero-COVID" strategy is under extreme pressure as the virus whips across the country.Until March, China had successfully kept the daily caseload down to double or triple digits, with hard, localised lockdowns, mass testing and travel restrictions.B

In the same week that Taiwanese took to the streets to repudiate Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Taiwan’s leaders rolled out the red carpet for a visit by former United States (US) President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.

Nearly all of Shanghai's 25 million residents were under stay-at-home orders on Saturday, as parents raised fears of being separated from their children in the event of a positive COVID-19 test.The city, which is the epicentre of China's most severe COVID outbreak since the first months of the pandemic, has faced weeks of phased lockdowns.Authorities had vowed not to shut down the whole city, China's finance hub, but have conceded to rare failures in their attempts to control t

Shanghai has not declared any new COVID deaths in the city since the outbreak of the latest wave of the virus.But people working at the Donghai Elderly Care Hospital in the city's eastern Pudong area have described a dire situation and desperate attempts to help dozens of elderly patients, some of whom have died.A nurse said that the first positive cases were discovered at the facility – one of the biggest of its kind in Shanghai – three weeks ago.Since then, it has been sealed off, and

A top Shanghai official conceded Thursday the Chinese financial hub had been "insufficiently prepared" for its latest COVID outbreak, as criticism mounts over lockdowns that have caught residents off guard.The eastern megacity of 25 million has been split in two as part of a rolling lockdown plan to battle China's worst outbreak in two years.The spread of the Omicron variant is testing the country's zero-COVID strategy, which aims to crush virus clusters as soon as they em

Sitting at the entrance of Chengdu’s East Railway Station, Fu Guobin stared at a screen displaying infrared images of people passing through the station’s gates. As each person entered, a number popped up next to their image indicating their body temperature.“This is making my life much easier,” the station employee said as he sat in his booth. “Before this, I’d have to test everyone’s temperature with an ear thermometer.

Two United Kingdom (UK) Supreme Court judges resigned from Hong Kong's top court on Wednesday, as the government in London said it was "impossible" for them to keep serving in the former colony famed for its hybrid legal system.British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said that senior UK judges continuing to occupy roles there risked "legitimising oppression", following the imposition of China's controversial national security law in 2020.The stance taken by Britain –

President Joe Biden said Tuesday that the United States (US) is forging "strongly" ahead on its growing Asia-Pacific priorities, despite the crisis sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.Hosting Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in the Oval Office, Biden said the world's "rules-based order" faces "unprecedented challenges," but that Washington has not been distracted by the Ukraine war."Even as we address the crisis in Europe, my adm

Shanghai, China’s biggest city and financial capital, will be locked down in two phases over nine days, as authorities seek to lessen the economic disruption of its zero-tolerance approach to COVID-19. The city’s Pudong financial district and nearby areas – the section east of the Huangpu River that runs through Shanghai – will be locked down until Friday as residents are confined to their homes for mass testing.

Millions of people in China's financial hub were confined to their homes on Monday as the eastern half of Shanghai went into lockdown to curb the nation's biggest COVID outbreak.Authorities announced late on Sunday that it would carry out a two-phased lockdown of the city of around 25 million people to carry out mass testing.The government had sought to avoid the kind of hard lockdowns regularly deployed in other Chinese cities, opting instead for rolling localised lockdowns, in an