Indonesia’s Merapi volcano erupts, spews hot cloud

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JAKARTA: Indonesia’s Merapi volcano erupted on Saturday (Mar 11), spewing hot cloud up to 7km, the country’s disaster management agency said in a statement. The volcano located in Indonesia’s Yogyakarta special region erupted around noon local time (0500 GMT) and a lava flow of 1.5km was observed, the local authorityContinue Reading

Media war rages over who sabotaged Nord Stream pipeline

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News reports emerging from Germany and the United States claim that a pro-Ukrainian group was behind the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022. German daily newspaper Die Zeit, public broadcasters ARD and SWR, and the ARD political magazine Kontraste reported this month that investigators were able to […]Continue Reading

Hong Kong court jails 3 members of Tiananmen vigil group

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HONG KONG: Three former members of a Hong Kong group that organised annual vigils to mark China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, were jailed on Saturday (Mar 11) for four-and-a-half months for not complying with a national security police request for information. Chow Hang-tung, 38, a prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activistContinue Reading

US lacks the explosive firepower to truly deter China

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The US is at growing risk of a firepower gap with China as US explosives and propellants production declines and China’s rises. This month, Forbes reported that China had overtaken the US in developing new types of explosives, notably its version of CL-20, an explosive developed in the 1980s, which is 40% more potent than […]Continue Reading

‘Xi Jinping’s guy’: China’s new premier Li Qiang, loyalist who oversaw Shanghai COVID-19 lockdown

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PRO-BUSINESS STANCE People who have interacted with Li say they found him practical-minded, an effective bureaucratic operator and supportive of the private sector. Li was known for pushing greater economic integration of the Yangtze River Delta region as well as overseeing an expansion of Shanghai’s free trade zone that nowContinue Reading