CNN – Asia/Pacific

By Karen Smith and Hira Humayun, CNN Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan says three bullets were taken from his right leg from the shooting which injured him last week. Khan survived the shooting at a political rally in Gujranwala on Thursday, an incident that his party has called an assassination attempt. In an interview

By Yoonjung Seo and Hilary Whiteman, CNN North Korean state media has released images purporting to show last week’s missile launches with a warning that the so-called “reckless military hysteria” of the United States and its allies is moving the Korean peninsula towards “unstable confrontation.” But it made no mention of the suspected failed launch

By Nectar Gan, CNN China has reiterated its unswerving commitment to its longstanding zero-Covid policy, despite mounting public frustration the stringent measures are costing the very lives they’re intended to protect. Unfounded rumors of an exit from the costly strategy had sent Chinese stocks soaring last week, but at a news conference Saturday, Chinese health

By Jessie Yeung and Kristie Lu Stout, CNN At a glitzy finance summit in Hong Kong this week, the city’s leader triumphantly told a room packed with top Wall Street executives that the Asian hub was back in business. “The worst is behind us,” he declared. Two days later, tens of thousands of rugby fans

By Jessie Yeung and Teele Rebane, CNN A fresh graduate in her first full-time job; a teenager who helped raise her siblings after their father’s death; a foreign exchange student excited for his first trip to Asia. In the seven days since 156 people were killed in a Halloween crush in the South Korean capital,

By Sophia Saifi, CNN Tensions escalated in Pakistan on Friday as former Prime Minister Imran Khan blamed establishment figures for a plot to kill him — a claim strenuously denied by governing and security officials. A day after after he survived a shooting at a political rally outside the town of Gujranwala, Punjab province, Khan

By Yoonjung Seo and Heather Chen, CNN South Korea scrambled about 80 fighter jets after detecting a large number of North Korean warplanes during a four-hour period Friday, the country’s military said, in a further escalation of regional tensions. In a statement, the South Korean military said it spotted about 180 North Korean military aircraft

By Nectar Gan, CNN The death of a 3-year-old boy following a suspected gas leak at a locked down residential compound in northwestern China has triggered a fresh wave of outrage at the country’s stringent zero-Covid policy. The boy’s father claimed in a social media post that Covid workers tried to prevent him from leaving

By Rebecca Wright, Ivan Watson, Jake Kwon and Tom Booth, CNN When he arrived in the South Korean city of Seoul in late August, American exchange student Steven Blesi quickly developed a wide circle of friends from around the world. The 20-year-old from Atlanta was studying at the city’s Hangyang University, as part of a

By Gawon Bae, Junko Ogura and Yoonjung Seo, CNN North Korea‘s suspected launch of its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) failed on Thursday morning, according to a South Korean government source, as Pyongyang intensified its battery of missile tests against a backdrop of US and South Korean military drills that had been scheduled to

By Jessie Yeung and In Jeong Kim, CNN Investigators probing the crowd crush that killed 156 people during Halloween festivities in South Korea raided police stations across Seoul on Wednesday. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said the investigators raided eight of its offices and seized internal reports and documents relating to reports made by members

By Yoonjung Seo, Sophie Jeong, Junko Ogura and Hilary Whiteman, CNN The South Korean military said Wednesday North Korea launched the highest number of short-range missiles in a day as Seoul retaliated to Pyongyang’s latest barrage of weapons tests, further escalating tensions in the region. North Korea fired as many as 23 missiles of different

By Jake Kwon, Sophie Jeong, In Jeong and Heather Chen, CNN ln a cavernous Seoul gymnasium Tuesday, grieving families inspected neat rows of belongings left behind at the scene of the deadly street crush in Itaewon. Shoes, bags, glasses, notebooks, wallets, cardholders and colorful hats were laid out on makeshift tables and exercise mats along

By Manveena Suri, Swati Gupta and Hira Humayun, CNN Nine people have been arrested over the collapse of a suspension bridge in India’s western Gujarat state that killed at least 134 people on Sunday, police said. The suspects are all associated with Oreva, a Gujarat-based electrical appliances manufacturer that performed maintenance on the 230-meter long

By Christian Edwards, CNN British entrepreneur Richard Branson has declined an invitation from the Singaporean government to take part in a live television debate on the death penalty. Branson — a long-time campaigner against capital punishment — had criticized Singapore’s decision in April this year to execute 33-year-old Nagaenthran Dharmalingam for drug trafficking. In a

By Sophie Jeong, Gawon Bae, Paula Hancocks, Hilary Whiteman and Jessie Yeung, CNN Most weekends, the narrow alleys of Itaewon, the neon-lit nightlife district in South Korea’s capital Seoul, are busy with partygoers and tourists. Now it’s the site of one of the country’s worst disasters. On Saturday night, tens of thousands of people flooded

By Gawon Bae, Paula Hancocks, Sophie Jeong, Jessie Yeung and Will Ripley, CNN South Korea is searching for answers after Halloween celebrations in the capital Seoul turned into one of the country’s worst disasters, with authorities declaring a national mourning period as they investigate how a chaotic crush left at least 151 people dead. Tens

By Heather Chen, Philip Wang and Angus Watson, CNN Tropical Storm Nalgae has killed at least 45 people and injured dozens more in the Philippines, the country’s disaster agency said Saturday. A further 14 people were missing after the storm, known locally as Paeng, made landfall on Friday packing winds of 75 kilometers (46 miles)

By Gawon Bae, Heather Chen and Jake Kwon, CNN North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missile into waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula on Friday, according to South Korean military officials, adding to tensions in the region. The missiles were fired from Tongchon county in North Korea’s eastern Kangwon province between 11:59

By Heather Chen, CNN A man who fooled dozens of women into sending him photos of their genitalia by posing as a female gynecologist on Facebook has been sentenced to jail in Singapore. The state courts on Wednesday found Ooi Chuen Wei, 37, from Malaysia, guilty of “cheating by personation” and sentenced him to three

By Jessie Yeung and Yoonjung Seo, CNN South Korean authorities have launched an investigation after the decomposing remains of a North Korean defector were found in the capital Seoul last Wednesday. The defector was a woman in her 40s who escaped to South Korea in 2002, according to police and South Korea’s Unification Ministry. The

By Heather Chen, CNN The Malaysian government’s insistence on holding a snap general election next month during a monsoon season that’s expected to bring devastating floods risks putting politics above people’s lives, opposition lawmakers and political analysts say. Malaysia will head to the polls on November 19, the country’s election commission announced last week, following

By Sandi Sidhu, Jessie Yeung, Eyad Kourdi and Salai TZ, CNN Dozens of people have reportedly been killed in military airstrikes at a celebratory event in Myanmar‘s mountainous Kachin state on Sunday, drawing international condemnation of the junta that seized power in the country more than a year and a half ago. Victims had been

By CNN Staff Jolie’s nerves were running high as she walked into the campus of Goldsmiths, the University of London, last Friday morning. She’d planned to arrive early enough that the campus would be deserted, but her fellow students were already beginning to filter in to start their day. In the hallway of an academic

By Simone McCarthy, Nectar Gan, Steven Jiang, Yong Xiong and Wayne Chang, CNN Chinese leader Xi Jinping has formally stepped into his norm-breaking third term ruling China with an iron grip on power, as he revealed a new leadership team stacked with loyal allies. On Sunday, a day after the close of the five-yearly Communist

By Jessie Yeung, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

By Nectar Gan and Simone McCarthy, CNN China’s top leader Xi Jinping is set to begin a norm-breaking third term with an even greater concentration of power, after retiring key party leaders from the top ruling body to make room for his own allies. The week-long Communist Party Congress concluded Saturday with the ushering in

By Simone McCarthy, Yong Xiong and Steven Jiang, CNN China’s former top leader, Hu Jintao, was unexpectedly led out of Saturday’s closing ceremony of the Communist Party Congress, in a moment of drama during what is typically a highly choreographed event. Hu, 79, was seated in a prominent position at the front table in the

By Jessie Yeung, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

By Heather Chen, CNN Nazira Lajim Hertslet can’t help but gush over pictures of her brother Nazeri. “Doesn’t he look so tall and so handsome,” she said of a series of photos of the 64-year-old grandfather dressed in casual wear. He smiles in one photo, standing tall against a white floral curtain and even comes

By Sophia Saifi, Rhea Mogul and Azaz Syed, CNN Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan will be disqualified from holding political office for five years, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) ruled on Friday, a move likely to further inflame political tensions in the country. While reading out the recommendation, ECP chief Sikandar Sultan Raja

By Samantha Beech, CNN The United States has charged seven Chinese nationals over an alleged long-running plot to intimidate a US resident into returning to China to face criminal charges. The case is related to the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s Operation Fox Hunt, an international anti-corruption campaign targeting Chinese fugitives. The Chinese government launched Operation

By Heather Chen and Masrur Jamaluddin, CNN Indonesia has halted the sale of all syrup and liquid medicines following the deaths of nearly 100 children and an unexplained spike in cases of acute kidney injuries. The ban, announced by the country’s Health Ministry on Wednesday, will remain until authorities complete an investigation into unregistered medical

By Emiko Jozuka and Tara Subramaniam, CNN A building believed to house the oldest toilet in Japan faced its biggest threat in centuries on Monday when a conservation worker accidentally reversed his car into it, according to local officials. Koudou Uno, a spokesman for the Tofukuji Temple in Kyoto, said the doors of the approximately

By Emiko Jozuka and Jessie Yeung, CNN Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has ordered an investigation into the Unification Church amid a growing scandal tying his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to the controversial religious group. Kishida announced the probe during a parliamentary session on Monday and said it would be carried out using “the

By Jessie Yeung and Simone McCarthy, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

By Nectar Gan and Simone McCarthy, CNN Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Sunday vowed to steer China through grave challenges toward national rejuvenation, advancing a nationalistic vision that has put it on a collision path with the West. Speaking at the opening of the 20th Party Congress, where he is poised to secure a norm-breaking

By Brad Lendon, Yoonjung Seo and Gawon Bae, CNN New tensions are flaring between the Koreas, with the North flying warplanes near their shared border and launching the latest in a series of missiles and the South holding a live-fire artillery drill. North Korean aircraft approached the no-fly zone straddling the border between 10:30 p.m.

By Nectar Gan and Selina Wang, CNN When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he inherited a country at a crossroads. Outwardly, China seemed an unstoppable rising power. It had recently overtaken Japan as the world’s second-largest economy, the country still basking in the afterglow of the dazzling 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. But deep

By Kathleen Magramo and CNN’s Beijing bureau A young woman stands on her balcony, crying out in desperation after her building was ordered into lockdown. Fighting back tears, she shouts abuse at the hazmat-suited workers below in a video that has recently gone viral on social media platform Weibo and which appears to encapsulate the

By CNN’s Beijing bureau A rare protest against Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his policies was swiftly ended in Beijing Thursday, just days before he is set to secure a third term in power at a key meeting of the ruling Communist Party. Photos circulating on Twitter Thursday afternoon show two banners hung on an

By Brad Lendon and Yoonjung Seo, CNN North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Thursday warned adversaries his nuclear forces are fully prepared for “actual war,” a day after the isolated country’s latest launch in a recent flurry of missile tests. “Our nuclear combat forces … proved again their full preparedness for actual war to

By Heather Chen, CNN A Singapore court on Tuesday sentenced an OnlyFans creator to three weeks in prison for breaching a police order to stay off the adult subscription site while he was under investigation for allegedly breaking obscenity laws. Titus Low, 22, pleaded guilty to the charge and another count of transmitting obscene material

By Rhea Mogul and Jake Kwon, CNN A court in military-run Myanmar has sentenced Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s deposed former leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, to three additional years in jail for corruption, a source familiar with the case told CNN, extending her total prison term to 26 years. Wednesday’s verdict is

By Kathleen Magramo, CNN Malaysia’s 97-year-old former leader Mahathir Mohamad is to run for parliament in the country’s looming general election, but is remaining tight-lipped on whether he could be prime minister for a third time. Mahathir, who was hospitalized earlier this year with a heart condition, said Tuesday he will defend his seat representing

By Simone McCarthy, CNN Xi Jinping is poised to cement his role as China’s most powerful leader in decades, as members of the country’s ruling Communist Party meet for a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle that begins Sunday. In recent years, these meetings have seen a streamlined transfer of power: the convention is for the top party

By Kathleen Magramo, CNN Hundreds of pilot whales have died after becoming stranded near the shark-infested waters of a remote island chain in the South Pacific, according to rescue teams and conservationists. New Zealand’s Department of Conservation told CNN nearly 500 whales washed up in the Chatham Islands, 840 kilometers (520 miles) east of the

By Heather Chen, CNN Buddhist funeral rites have begun in the grieving town of Uthai Sawan in northeastern Thailand, where families are mourning the loss of children killed in a massacre at a day care center. Toys, flowers, milk bottles and sweets were placed alongside the small child-sized coffins, many bearing photographs of children killed

By Eric Cheung, CNN Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen said Monday there is “no room for compromise” over the self-ruled island’s sovereignty but she is willing to work with China to find “mutually acceptable ways” to maintain peace across the Taiwan Strait. “The consensus of the Taiwanese people … is to defend our sovereignty and our

By Brad Lendon, Yoonjung Seo and Gawon Bae, CNN North Korean state media has broken its silence over the country’s recent spate of missile tests, claiming they were part of a series of simulated procedures intended to demonstrate its readiness to fire tactical nuclear warheads at potential targets in South Korea. The Kim regime has

By Mitchell McCluskey, Emiko Jozuka and Gawon Bae, CNN North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles from the Munchon area of Kangwon Province to the waters off the peninsula’s eastern coast, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters on Sunday. The missiles were launched between 1:47 a.m. and 1:53 a.m. local time Sunday, according

By Jessie Yeung, Paula Hancocks and Yoonjung Seo, CNN Tensions are running high in the Korean Peninsula, as the United States and its allies respond to North Korea’s flurry of recent missile tests — including one that flew over neighboring Japan without warning. North Korea has tested ballistic missiles seven times since September 25 —

By Kocha Olarn, Anna Coren and Hilary Whiteman, CNN Smears of dried blood still stained the wooden floor of a classroom in northeastern Thailand on Friday, a day after one of the country’s worst massacres unfolded in perhaps one of the most unlikely places. At the Child Development Center Uthai Sawan, school bags sat uncollected

By Emiko Jozuka and Heather Chen, CNN A military court in Myanmar has sentenced a Japanese journalist to 10 years in prison for sedition and violating a law on electronic communications after he filmed an anti-government protest in July, a Japanese diplomat said on Thursday. Toru Kubota, 26, was arrested by plainclothes police in Yangon,

By Kathleen Magramo, CNN China is facing extreme weather as scorching heat breaks records in some drought-stricken parts of the country, while cool weather sweeps through other regions as the climate crisis makes conditions more unstable. In the south, dozens of drought alerts have been issued for cities and counties in Jiangxi province, warning that

By Heather Chen, CNN A 236 million peso ($4 million) lottery jackpot shared among a record number of more than 400 winners has sparked questions in the Philippine Senate as skeptical lawmakers demand an inquiry into the results. The government-run Grand Lotto draw raised eyebrows on Saturday when each of the 433 winners claimed a

By Brad Lendon, Yoonjung Seo and Caitlin Hu, CNN United States, South Korean and Japanese warships performed a missile defense exercise in the Sea of Japan on Thursday, two days after North Korean sent a ballistic missile over Japan, the US-Indo Pacific Command said in a statement. The two US warships, the guided-missile cruiser USS

By Jessie Yeung, Yong Xiong and Nectar Gan, CNN China has banned residents from leaving Xinjiang over a Covid-19 outbreak — just weeks after the far-western region began relaxing restrictions from a stringent extended lockdown, fueling public frustration among those scarred by food shortages and plunging incomes. On Tuesday, the region — home to 22

By Masrur Jamaluddin, Heather Chen and Jake Kwon, CNN Fans attempting to escape the chaos that erupted at Indonesia’s Kanjuruhan Stadium last Saturday became trapped after security failed to open multiple exit gates, according to the national football association, contributing to the crowd crush in which at least 131 people died. Security forces are facing

By Manveena Suri and Kathleen Magramo, CNN At least four people were killed and 28 people remain missing after an avalanche hit a group of mountaineers in the Indian Himalayas on Tuesday, according to an Indian mountaineering organization. In a statement Tuesday, the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering said a team of 34 trainees and seven

By Yoonjung Seo, Caitlin Hu, Eric Cheung and Brad Lendon, CNN The United States and South Korea launched four missiles off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula on Wednesday morning local time, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. The test was the allies’ second exercise in under 24 hours, following a provocative

By Tara Subramaniam, CNN Australia, which has one of the world’s worst records on extinctions, on Tuesday announced a 10-year plan to prevent any more species from dying out in the country by protecting its most threatened plants and animals. Launching the plan at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia’s Minister for the Environment and Water

By Jessie Yeung, Yoonjung Seo, Brad Lendon and Emiko Jozuka, CNN North Korea fired a ballistic missile without warning over Japan on Tuesday for the first time in five years, a highly provocative and reckless act that marks a significant escalation in its weapons testing program. The missile traveled over northern Japan early in the

By Yoonjung Seo, Emiko Jozuka, Junko Ogura, Brad Lendon and Simone McCarthy, CNN Japan urged residents to take shelter early Tuesday morning after North Korea fired a ballistic missile without warning over the country for the first time in five years, in a major and potentially dangerous escalation of recent weapons tests by the Kim

By Heather Chen, CNN As Indonesian families bury their dead, questions are being asked as to how a soccer match attended only by supporters of the home team descended into chaos resulting in one of the sport’s worst ever tragedies. At least 125 people were killed and more than 300 others injured at the Kanjuruhan

By Masrur Jamaluddin, Heather Chen, Raja Razek, Jake Kwon and Kareem El Damanhoury, CNN At least 125 people are dead after chaos and violence erupted during an Indonesian league soccer match into the early hours of Sunday, according to Indonesia’s National Police Chief in what is one of the world’s deadliest stadium disasters of all

By Kathleen Magramo and Jan Camenzind Broomby, CNN Residents on the small resort island of Polillo are accustomed to severe weather — their island sits in the northeastern Philippines, on the edge of the Pacific Ocean where storms typically gather strength and turn into typhoons. But even they were stunned by the intensity of Typhoon

By Martin Goillandeau and Tara Subramaniam, CNN Australian women working on research bases in Antarctica have been plagued by a widespread culture of sexual harassment, a recently released report found. The report, commissioned by the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), notes that the women reported unwelcome requests for sex, inappropriate sexual comments and displays of offensive