World

Bali began a tentative re-opening to foreign tourists on Wednesday (Feb 16) with the first international passenger flight to the Indonesian holiday island in nearly two years. The resumption of flights comes as the Southeast Asian archipelago loosens quarantine rules even as it battles a surge in Covid-19 cases fueled …

Japan is set to announce on Thursday that it will ease border controls put in place to counter the spread of the coronavirus, measures that are the strictest among wealthy nations and have been slammed by business leaders and educators. About 150,000 foreign students have been kept out of the …

Police in the Canadian capital Ottawa on Wednesday warned truck drivers blockading the downtown core to depart or face arrest in crackdown seeking to end a three-week-old protest over Covid restrictions. Interim Police Chief Steve Bell vowed “to take back the entirety of the downtown core and every occupied space” …

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam called on residents to “remain confident” and support her administration’s measures to contain a worsening Covid-19 outbreak, as daily infections surged by more than 40 times since the start of February. Lam’s comments, in a statement released late on Wednesday, came after Chinese President Xi …

HCMC’s Ton Duc Thang University has become the first tertiary institution in Vietnam to be listed among the world’s 100 best under-50 universities. According to the Young University Rankings 2022 released by the U.K. magazine Times Higher Education (THE) on Feb. 15, Ton Duc Thang University in Ho Chi Minh …

The Health Ministry announced 34,723 new domestic Covid-19 patients Wednesday in 63 cities and provinces. Most of the new cases were detected in Hanoi at 3,888. It was followed by the northern provinces of Thai Nguyen (2,497 cases) and Hai Duong (1,598 cases). In the past 24 hours, 66 Covid-19 …

Unionised workers of Samsung Electronics have threatened what would be an unprecedented strike at the tech giant if their demands for higher pay and better working conditions are not met. Union representatives held a rally on Wednesday near Samsung’s headquarters in midtown Seoul after government arbitration broke down earlier this …

A shark killed a swimmer off a Sydney beach on Wednesday in the city’s first fatal attack in nearly 60 years, causing “catastrophic injuries”, police and ambulance services said. Witnesses told local television they had seen the attack on a swimmer wearing a wetsuit. “Some guy was swimming and a …

South Korea’s daily count of new coronavirus cases topped 90,000 for the first time, driven to a record by the fast-spreading Omicron variant that has seen daily tallies nearly double in just a week. The 90,443 cases reported for Tuesday represent a drastic surge from the 57,177 recorded by the …

Around 1,000 tech and textile workers in Nghe An and Ha Tinh Provinces in central Vietnam went on strike Tuesday over pay and benefit demands. Since 1 p.m., over 500 workers of South Korean EM-Tech Vietnam, which manufactures electrical components, in Nghe An’s capital Vinh have been on strike. In …