Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

7 Dec 2018; AFP: Thousands of vulnerable women and girls from northern Myanmar are being trafficked to China and forced to marry, a study said Friday, offering a rare look at an issue that grips the conflict-hit borderlands.

China has around 33 million fewer women than men due to the decades-long one-child policy.

To plug the gap, tens of thousands of poor women from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam are sold as brides each year, some going willingly, while others are tricked or trafficked.

BEIJING (AP) — China was preparing to launch a ground-breaking mission early Saturday to soft-land a spacecraft on the largely unexplored far side of the moon, demonstrating its growing ambitions as a space power to rival Russia, the European Union and U.S.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan is set to approve legislation that would officially open the door to foreign workers to do unskilled jobs and possibly eventually become citizens.

Lawmakers were due to vote late Friday on a government proposal to allow hundreds of thousands of foreign laborers to live and work in a country that has long resisted accepting outsiders.

It’s seen as an unavoidable step as the country’s population rapidly ages and shrinks.

BEIJING, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- Cai Mingzhao, president of China's Xinhua News Agency, met with Acting Director General of Al-Jazeera Media Network Mostefa Souag on Thursday, to discuss cooperation.

Xinhua highly values its cooperation with Al-Jazeera, and the two media outlets have much to learn from each other, Cai said.

The agreement of strategic cooperation signed between the two sides in 2016 put in place the basic principles on personnel exchanges and news cooperation in text, video, photo and other areas, Cai added.

TOKYO (AP) — A Marine refueling plane and a fighter jet crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Japan’s southwestern coast after a midair collision early Thursday, and rescuers found one of the seven crew members in stable condition while searching for the others, officials said.

The U.S. Marine Corps said that the 2 a.m. crash involved an F/A-18 fighter jet and a KC-130 refueling aircraft during regular training after the planes took off from their base in Iwakuni, near Hiroshima in western Japan.

The crash took place 320 kilometers (200 miles) off the coast.

TOKYO (AP) — IOC President Thomas Bach and other International Olympic Committee members are calling Tokyo the best prepared host city in memory.

Still, there are obstacles ahead for the 2020 Games, though small by the standards of the corruption-plagued Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016.

John Coates, the head of an IOC inspection team, wrapped up three days of meetings in Tokyo on Wednesday and said the city’s summer heat is a growing worry.

BEIJING (AP) — China issued an upbeat but vague promise Wednesday to carry out a tariff cease-fire with Washington but gave no details that might dispel confusion about what Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump agreed to in Argentina.

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (AP) — Three astronauts successfully blasted off Monday to the International Space Station from Kazakhstan, a perfect launch that follows October’s aborted mission.

NASA astronaut Anne McClain, David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency and Oleg Kononenko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos lifted off as scheduled at 5:31 p.m. (1131 GMT; 6:31 a.m. EST) Monday from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Beijing, Dec 2 (PTI) Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump's decision to suspend imposing of any new tariffs for 90 days for talks to address the trade dispute has put brakes on the escalating trade war between the world two largest economies, a relived China said on Sunday.

2 Dec 2018; DW: Thousands of people marched in Indonesia's capital Jakarta on Sunday as the country's Islamists seek to topple President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) in next year's presidential election.

The rally also marked two years since the toppling of Jakarta's Christian ex-governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama. The 2016 Islamist demonstrations against Purnama's alleged blasphemy forced him to resign from his post. The former governor was later jailed for two years.