Regional

The government faced criticism for imposing an effective lockdown on more than 16 million people just days before Christmas, but Matt Hancock said Saturday’s decision was taken speedily after new evidence showed the new strain was responsible for spiraling Covid-19 cases. The variant, which officia…

The Employees Compensation Commission or ECC has decided to peg money assistance for the workers, including front-line workers, at only 10,000 pesos, Bello disclosed during an online press briefing last week. “Not enough to buy pain relievers. We need to increase the benefits of our workers,” he sa…

The Ministry of Defense will get a record 5.34 trillion yen ($51.7 billion) for the year starting in April, up 1.1% from this year. With Suga’s large majority in parliament, enactment of the budget is all but certain. Suga is continuing the controversial military expansion pursued by his predecesso…

While it is not the first time China’s carriers have passed close to Taiwan, it comes at a time of heightened tension between Taipei and Beijing, which claims the democratically ruled island as its territory. The Shandong carrier group sailed through the Taiwan Strait a day after a U.S. warship tra…

New South Wales or NSW said 15 people had tested positive for Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, down on the 36 infections detected a day earlier and bringing the total cases in the northern beaches outbreak to 83. NSW Premier Gladys Brejiklian said it was too early to say a larger outbreak had been av…

With daily infections over 1,000 for a fifth consecutive day, some medical experts criticized the government as being slow to introduce tighter social distancing rules. South Korea’s aggressive tracing and testing early in the pandemic had made the country a global success story when many nations s…

Amid record coronavirus infections and deaths, Moderna has already moved vaccine supplies from its manufacturing plants to warehouses operated by distributor McKesson Corp. Workers on Saturday were packing vaccines into containers and loading them on trucks, U.S. Army Gen. Gustave Perna said during…

This was confirmed by the Director of National Disaster Management office, Vasiti Soko when briefing the media in Suva .  Soko said one death occurred in Fiji’s s Western division and the second case in Labasa, Vanua Levu. Many houses in Fiji’s Vanua Levu have been destroyed, some families sh…