President Joe Biden and the leaders of Australia, India and Japan promised Friday to work together for a stable, open and democratic Indo-Pacific in a veiled dig at China during their first in-person summit together.In Biden's latest effort to cement United States (US) leadership in the face of a rising China, the so-called Quad agreed to move ahead on a joint plan to provide COVID-19 vaccines around Asia, launched a new climate initiative and said the four nations would begin holding an

Myanmar’s shadow government has called for a “people’s defensive war” against the country’s military, prompting a flare-up in fighting in borderlands, according to media reports, as several powerful ethnic groups expressed support for the call to arms.Duwa Lashi La, the acting president of the National Unity Government (NUG), formed by the elected legislators who were deposed in a 1 February coup, issued the call for the nationwide uprising on Tuesday. “With the responsibility to pro

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its partner countries in the Asia-Pacific are increasingly concerned about the challenges that an assertive China could pose to global security. Based on the report ‘NATO 2030: United for a New Era’ dated November 2020, these challenges are multi-domain. A political strategy is there but so are the hurdles.

"William" is refusing to take a coronavirus vaccine because he fears Indonesia's military will use the country's inoculation programme to poison him and wipe out his fellow Papuans. Decades of conflict, racism and human rights abuses are fuelling COVID conspiracy theories among his neighbours at a time when their breakaway region is facing a renewed threat from the pandemic."I won't take a vaccine if it's brought here by Indonesia," William, wh

There is no shortage of benchmarks to count the cost of the United States’ (US) longest war. Blood is by far the most precious metric. Treasure feels insignificant by comparison. But as images of Afghans swarming Kabul airport, desperately trying to flee Taliban rule, flood screens around the world, the vast sums the US spent trying to build Afghanistan into a liberal democracy deserve a thorough audit.

The Taliban raced closer to a complete military takeover of Afghanistan on Sunday after capturing more major cities, leaving only the isolated capital Kabul for them to conquer.The insurgents took control of the key eastern city of Jalalabad on Sunday, just hours after seizing the northern anti-Taliban bastion of Mazar-i-Sharif - furthering an astonishing rout of government forces and warlord militias achieved in just 10 days."We woke up this morning to the Taliban white flags all over t

Myanmar's multi-billion-dollar jade mines risk becoming a "slush fund" for military repression, Global Witness said Tuesday, urging consumers to boycott purchasing any jade and gemstones from the coup-wracked nation.The country has been in turmoil since the military toppled the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, with more than 880 killed in a junta crackdown on dissent, according to a local monitoring group.Myanmar is one of the world's biggest sources of jadeite and the indu

Deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in a junta court again Tuesday on trial for sedition and for flouting COVID restrictions during an election her ousted party won in a landslide.A mass uprising in Myanmar against a February military putsch has been met with a brutal crackdown that has killed more than 870 civilians, according to a local monitoring group.Under house arrest and invisible apart from a handful of court appearances, Suu Kyi has been hit with an eclectic raft of char

The Myanmar junta has hit deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi with corruption charges over claims she accepted illegal payments of gold and more than half a million dollars in cash, state media reported Thursday.The country has been in turmoil since the generals ousted Suu Kyi on 1 February, with more than 850 civilians killed in a brutal crackdown by security forces on near-daily protests against the coup.The 75-year-old Nobel laureate, who has been in custody since the putsch, is facin

It was only when he boarded the plane that would fly him to Europe that Mratt Kyaw Thu finally felt safe for the first time since Myanmar's military coup on 1 February.It had been an arduous few months for the journalist who quickly found himself on the military junta's wanted list for his reporting of its deadly crackdown on anti-coup protesters."I felt safe when I was on the plane, after passing immigration in Thailand, that was the moment when I felt a little bit freer,&quot