Hong Kong migrant worker groups on Saturday criticised plans to make coronavirus vaccines compulsory for all foreign domestic helpers, labelling the move "discriminatory and unjust".Health officials said they were planning to roll out mandatory inoculations for the 370,000 domestic helpers in the city, mostly poorly-paid women from the Philippines and Indonesia.Those wanting to apply for work visas – or renew their current ones – would need to show they had been vaccinated, official

Explosions rocked Myanmar's largest city Yangon on Saturday as protesters held flash marches for democracy, defying a brutal junta that has held onto power for three bloody months. The country has been in turmoil since the military ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on 1 February, bringing an abrupt end to Myanmar's short-lived experiment with democracy.The power grab has triggered a massive uprising which the authorities have tried to quell with lethal force and live

A Myanmar swimmer has abandoned his dream of competing at the Tokyo Olympics in protest at the junta ruling his homeland, saying that taking part would be "propaganda" for the regime.Win Htet Oo is one of Myanmar's top swimmers but in early April, the 26-year-old said he was no longer interested in going to Tokyo."To accept the MOC (Myanmar Olympic Committee) as it is currently led is to recognise the legitimacy of a murderous regime," he wrote in a statement on Faceb

Indonesia said Friday it will salvage a submarine that sank off the coast of Bali, as grieving relatives paid their respects to the dozens of crew killed in the disaster.Authorities had yet to confirm if they would try to haul up the KRI Nanggala 402 from the sea floor after it was spotted cracked in three pieces.The navy on Friday said it was waiting on the arrival of two ships, including a vessel sent by China, that are equipped to handle deep-sea salvage operations.High-powered magnets and

India on Friday posted another global record for daily coronavirus infections, pushing worldwide cases past 150 million as a pandemic that has killed almost 3.2 million worldwide continues to wreak devastation.The number of new daily cases has more than doubled since mid-February, an AFP tally showed, in an explosion in infections blamed in part on a new COVID-19 variant but also on failure to follow virus restrictions.The countries with the highest total number of cases are the United States

Thousands of ethnic Karen villagers in Myanmar are poised to cross into Thailand on Friday if, as expected, fighting intensifies between the Myanmar army and Karen fighters, joining those who have already escaped the turmoil that followed a 1 February coup.Karen rebels and the Myanmar army have clashed near the Thai border in the weeks since Myanmar’s generals deposed an elected government led by democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi, displacing villagers on both sides of the border. “

Seema Devgan has all but abandoned her day job, as she and a loose collection of overseas volunteers scramble to locate desperately needed supplies for COVID-19 stricken family, friends and strangers in India.From her apartment in Singapore, Devgan spends hours each day fielding frantic appeals for help on WhatsApp, phoning suppliers and scouting for desperately needed drugs and oxygen."It's so difficult," the 47-year-old said, briefly struggling to hold back tears in the face

Two Myanmar air force bases came under rocket attack on Thursday, the military said, as the country grapples with violence in the wake of the 1 February coup.Myanmar has been in turmoil since the generals seized power, ousting civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and unleashing a wave of near-daily street protests calling for a return to democracy.Security forces have sought to quell the unrest with a brutal crackdown on protests, with more than 750 civilians killed, according to a local monitori

Vietnam has detected four cases of a COVID-19 variant believed to be behind a devastating surge of the virus in India, state media said Thursday.Separately, the country also reported its first community outbreak in weeks on Thursday.Vietnam has so far kept case numbers low – reporting 2,910 of them and 35 deaths – thanks to mass quarantines and extensive contact tracing.All four of those infected with the B.1.617 variant of COVID-19, which was first found in India, had recently travelled from

Fast-spreading coronavirus variants have ignited global concern over whether existing vaccines will be able to protect the world from a virus that is constantly mutating.Variants that have emerged in Britain, South Africa, Brazil and now India have all been the focus of fears of implications for the COVID-19 pandemic. Here's what we know.How Many Variants?Viruses continually mutate as tiny errors are introduced each time they replicate and cause new variants to appear.