Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

BEIJING, Oct 29 (APP): Pakistan National Pavilion at the Sichuan Agriculture Expo in Chengdu has introduced the famous touristic sites in Pakistan and displayed a number of the agricultural goods produced by the country.

More than a dozen Pakistani companies displayed their agricultural products here. The Pavilion attracted great interest from the participants attending the Expo.

Pakistan’s Ambassador to China, Moin ul Haque, inaugurated the Pavilion.

TOKYO, Oct 29 (NNN-NHK) – Japan has logged the 1,000th case of organ donations from brain-dead people, 26 years after the country’s organ transplant law came into force in 1997, according to the Japan Organ Transplant Network.

The 1,000th donor was a man in his 60s, who had been declared brain-dead at a hospital in western Japan, based on the law, the network said. His organs were harvested yesterday, and his heart, lungs, liver and kidneys were to be transplanted to recipients.

COLOMBO, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Maldives will work to return Indian military personnel from its shores "as soon as possible," President-elect Mohamed Muizzu told Reuters on Sunday, insisting it was the top foreign policy priority for the tiny Indian Ocean island chain.

Muizzu won Maldives' presidential election last month, beating incumbent President Ibrahim Solih in a second-round runoff.

Solih had followed an "India first" policy but Muizzu in his election campaign promised to remove a small Indian military presence of some 75 personnel in Maldives.

TOKYO, Oct 29 (Reuters) - The Group of Seven (G7) industrial powers called on Sunday for the "immediate repeal" of import curbs on Japanese food products, a reference to China's restrictions after Japan began releasing wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The G7 trade ministers, in a statement after a weekend meeting on Osaka, did not mention China but they also denounced what they consider its rising economic coercion through trade.

BANGKOK (AP) — China’s Environment Minister Huang Runqiu said Thursday his country wants to strengthen cooperation with the United States to combat climate change, as he met in Beijing with California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Newsom is on a weeklong tour of China where he is pushing for climate cooperation. His trip as governor, once considered routine, is drawing attention as it comes after years of heightening tensions between the U.S. and China.

27 October 2023; MEMO: China, on Friday, refused to give a clear response to whether Beijing will hold talks with the Palestinian Resistance group, Hamas, Anadolu Agency reports.

"China is in communication with all parties concerned in the Palestinian issue" said Mao Ning, spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

BEIJING, Oct 27 (APP): Amid a mounting death toll and expanding humanitarian crisis in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Zhai Jun, Special Envoy of the Chinese Government on Middle East issues, visited Saudi Arabia to advance China’s efforts to cool down the situation.

Zhai told Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed Al-Khuraiji during his visit to the country that the current situation between Palestine and Israel was grim.

HONG KONG (AP) — The sudden death of China’s former second-ranking leader, Li Keqiang, has shocked many people in the country, with tributes offered up to the ex-official who promised market-oriented reforms but was politically sidelined.

Li, who died early Friday of a heart attack, was China’s top economic official for a decade, helping navigate the world’s second-largest economy through challenges such as rising political, economic and military tensions with the United States and the COVID-19 pandemic.

MANILA, Oct 26 (NNN-PNA) – Four people died in a landslide that hit a remote village in Quezon province of the Philippines, a Philippine Air Force spokesperson said, today.

Colonel Ma. Consuelo Castillo, chief of the Philippine Air Force Public Affairs Office, said, bodies of the four buried alive by the landslide that struck the village on Tuesday night were retrieved yesterday.

Local and military officials in the province confirmed the incident, saying the landslide buried five houses at the foot of the mountain.

BEIJING, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The youngest-ever crew of Chinese astronauts departed for China's space station on Thursday, paving the way for a new generation of "taikonauts" to advance the country's space ambitions in the future.

The spacecraft Shenzhou-17, or "Divine Vessel", and its three passengers lifted off atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China.

Leading the six-month mission was former air force pilot Tang Hongbo, 48, who was on the first crewed mission to the space station in 2021.