Kenya’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a recount of ballots cast across 15 voting stations on August 9 during Kenya’s presidential election, Voice of America (VOA) reported.
North Korea has likely amassed between 2,500 and 5,000 tons of chemical weapons, including extremely toxic nerve agents such as sarin, in recent years, according to estimates published in a joint report on Tuesday by the RAND Corporation and South Korea’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, the website NK News reported.
The government of Noto, a central Japanese town known for its squid fishery, said Monday that its once controversial decision to erect a giant squid statue with pandemic relief funds in October 2020 had paid off, as it had since boosted tourism in the area and thus generated significant income for the local economy, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) reported Tuesday.
Taiwan’s military fired live ammunition on a Chinese drone on Tuesday after the drone intruded into the airspace above one of the sovereign island nation’s outer islets, the online newspaper Taiwan News reported, noting that the incident marked the first time Taipei has used live ammunition to fire warning shots on a Chinese drone.
Police in Ikongo, Madagascar, fatally shot at least 19 people on Monday after a 500-person-strong lynch mob overpowered a local police station holding four people suspected of kidnapping an albino child and murdering the child’s mother, Deutsche Welle (DW) reported Tuesday.
Christians who have remained in Afghanistan since the Sunni Islam-based Taliban terror group seized control of the country last August “face routine torture and persecution” from Taliban members and various other Afghans, the Afghan newspaper Etilaat Roz reported on Monday citing an original report by Fox News.
Roughly a third of Pakistan was considered underwater as of Monday due to ongoing flooding that has killed at least 1,136 people since the nation’s monsoon season began in June, Pakistan Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Kenyan national police service’s investigative unit, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), allegedly determined in recent days that three Venezuelan nationals had illegal access to Kenya’s electoral commission servers five months ahead of the country’s general election on August 9, during which a disputed presidential vote occurred, Kenya’s the Nation newspaper reported on Monday.
Authorities in Noida, India, used 8,100 pounds of explosives to detonate twin residential towers on Sunday after India’s Supreme Court ruled that they were illegally constructed, Reuters reported.
Researchers at the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) recently claimed to have engineered the “world’s first mammal with fully reprogrammed genes,” the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported over the weekend.
The Indian government’s representative office in Sri Lanka used the term “militarization” in a post on Twitter on Saturday to describe China’s recent actions in the Taiwan Strait, which separates the sovereign island nation of Taiwan from China’s southeastern coast, the Hindu reported on Sunday, noting that it was the first time New Delhi had used such strong rhetoric to refer to the China-Taiwan dispute.
Torrential rain hammered southern China’s Sichuan province over the weekend after several weeks of drought causing the region’s landscape to suffer flash flooding that forced the evacuation of nearly 50,000 people as of Sunday, China’s state-run Global Times reported.
Members of Afghanistan’s Taliban conducted door-to-door raids of homes in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif on Thursday in part to search for and confiscate weapons, including firearms, deemed “illegal” by the terror group, which seized control of Afghanistan’s government in August 2021, the Kabul-based Khaama Press News Agency reported.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin issued a decree on Thursday to increase the size of the Russian Armed Forces by 137,000 men by January 2023, Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency reported.
Chinese Communist Party officials hosted a “China-Africa Media Cooperation” virtual forum on Thursday from Beijing, the Global Times reported, noting that delegates from both sides agreed to foment “an international public opinion atmosphere of cohesive development” between Beijing and 40-plus African nations and regions.
A United Nations (U.N.) diplomatic representative of South Sudan successfully fled to his home country this week after he was arrested on August 21 for allegedly raping a woman in New York City but released the next day after invoking diplomatic immunity, the New York Post reported on Thursday.
Photographs of giant panda keepers at China’s Wolong National Nature Reserve recently circulated online showing the staff wearing panda costumes smeared with feces and urine while they cared for the captive animals as part of an effort to minimize the natural scent of the human zookeepers, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Thursday.
Brazil received from Portugal the preserved heart of Dom Pedro I, a 19th-century Portuguese monarch who granted Brazil independence from Portugal in 1822, on Tuesday with honors reserved for a head of state to mark the nation’s 200th independence day, Reuters reported.
South Korea recorded the world’s lowest fertility rate in 2021, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, noting that the development supports a current prediction by demographers that South Korea’s population of 51 million will more than halve by 2100.
China’s National Health Commission (NHC) told Reuters this week that ongoing Chinese coronavirus lockdowns nationwide have had a “clear impact on the marriage and childbirth arrangements of some people” within the country and have contributed to the nation’s plummeting fertility rate and shrinking population, the news agency reported on Tuesday.
Japan’s federal government said on Wednesday it is mulling over plans to build “next-generation nuclear power plants,” Kyodo News reported, noting that the admission marks a major shift from previous statements by Tokyo that it would not pursue “new nuclear energy” in the wake of the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan.
Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin on Monday urged Indonesians not to worry about the recent global outbreak of monkeypox, noting at a press conference that while its signature sores would “definitely” make one “look ugly,” the disease has a low fatality rate.
Russian military aircraft entered South Korea’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Tuesday without giving Seoul prior notice, prompting the Republic of Korea Air Force to scramble fighter jets in response, Yonhap News Agency reported.
China’s ruling Communist Party ordered its meteorological bureau to dispatch special rain-making aircraft to drought-afflicted areas of the country’s south on Tuesday as part of a wider effort to protect China’s autumn harvest from ruination by a regional heatwave that began in June, the Global Times reported.
Turkey doubled its Russian oil imports year-on-year over a period spanning January to August 2022, Reuters reported on Monday citing new data from the financial analyst platform Refinitiv Eikon.
Bushfires have reportedly engulfed “several mountains” in Chongqing, a municipality within southern China’s Sichuan province, in recent days, the Global Times reported on Monday, noting that the wildfires have merely exacerbated an ongoing heatwave and drought across most of China’s southern region that began in June.
China’s Ministry of Education (MOE) “punished” 27 employees Monday for their roles in approving illustrations in public primary school textbooks that were deemed “ugly” and “problematic,” China’s state-run Global Times and Xinhua News Agency reported.
Police officers in New York City arrested a United Nations (U.N.) diplomat from South Sudan on Sunday after he was accused of rape by a woman that day — but released him from custody Monday morning after he successfully claimed diplomatic immunity, the New York Post reported.
More than 20 colleges and universities across six regions in China postponed the start of their fall semesters in recent days in an effort to curb local outbreaks of the Chinese coronavirus, the Global Times reported on Sunday.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday urged governments and private sectors worldwide to allow Russian food and fertilizer “unimpeded access” to the global market as they are “not subject to sanctions” imposed on Moscow by the U.S. government and its allies in response to Russia’s latest war with Ukraine, Turkey’s Hürriyet Daily News reported.
China’s central government on Monday was “ramping up” efforts to prevent an ongoing heatwave and drought from ruining much of the nation’s autumn grain harvest across China’s southern region, the Global Times reported, noting that the autumn grain harvest in jeopardy contributes 75 percent of China’s annual grain production on average.
Most primary and secondary schools in the Philippines held in-person classes on Monday for the first time since March 2020 when Manila ordered learning institutions nationwide to shut down in response to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, the Philippine Star reported.
China’s central government issued its first national drought alert of 2022 on Thursday, advising authorities to “produce artificial rainfall when necessary” due to the “risk of wildfires” across vast swathes of China’s central and southern regions, according to Xinhua, the country’s official state press agency.
Japan’s government recently kicked off a marketing campaign aimed at increasing alcohol sales among younger citizens, aged 20 to 39, in response to record decreases in alcohol tax income in Japan over the past few years, the Hindustan Times reported Friday.
Police in southern Nigeria’s Edo State recently discovered “20 mummified corpses” inside of a building believed to have formed part of a “shrine for ritual killings,” Nigeria’s Premium Times online newspaper reported on Thursday.
A family in Aukland, New Zealand, recently discovered the remains of two children aged 5 and 10 years old inside suitcases they purchased unseen at an auction for an unclaimed storage locker, Reuters reported on Friday, noting that New Zealand authorities have launched a criminal investigation into the children’s deaths as they suspect they were murdered.
A pre-candidate for Panama’s 2024 presidential election named Dimitri Flores filmed himself traveling inside a helicopter as it crashed into a Panamanian mountainside on August 10, Brazil’s Universo Online (UOL) media outlet reported on Wednesday, noting that the politician survived the crash along with four other passengers and the helicopter’s pilot.
Russian energy export earnings are projected to rise nearly 40 percent year-on-year to $337.5 billion in 2022, Reuters reported Wednesday citing an official document from the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation.
Researchers from the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences claimed in a recently published study to have developed a gene-editing method that is allegedly “more efficient and safer” than established techniques because it uses the CRISPR gene-editing tool to target RNA instead of DNA, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Wednesday.
The local government of Xiamen, China, recently ordered municipal workers to test both fishermen and their catch, including “live fish” and crabs, for the Chinese coronavirus out of alleged concern that international fishing activity in the area may have sparked local outbreaks of the virus, the Chinese government-controlled news outlet Sixth Tone on Thursday.
