World News
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Sponsored Do foreigners get free healthcare in Thailand?
Thailand’s healthcare system is well-regarded across Southeast Asia, with options ranging from public hospitals to world-class private facilities. But when it comes to foreign residents or tourists, healthcare access isn’t as straightforward. So, do foreigners get free healthcare in Thailand?...
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Facebook under fire — will lawmakers now get tough on Big Tech?
The world’s largest social media company is having a rough week. First, a cascade of technical errors brought down Facebook’s services and made it impossible for billions of users to communicate with each other. A day later, a former employee presented US lawmakers with tens of thousands of pages of internal researchthat she had copied while working at the company.…
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AirAsia Malaysia requiring all passengers to be vaccinated
AirAsia, the Southeast Asian budget airline carrier based in Malaysia, has announced that they will only allow passengers to travel on their flights if they have been fully vaccinated. It is unclear if this will apply to all regional AirAsia divisions, but it appears to be implemented first in Malaysia. The announcement made today said that the Malaysian unit will…
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Why Cuban baseball players fled their country
The Florida Marlins baseball stadium in Miami is located a mere 150 nautical miles (278 kilometers) from Cuba. Many young Cubans dream about playing for teams in the US top division, Major League Baseball (MLB). Baseball, after all, is Cuba’s number one national sport. A number of leading MLB players in the US today grew up playing the sport on…
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Extinction Rebellion protesters disrupt Paris Fashion Week show
Climate change activists from the Extinction Rebellion group have disrupted a Louis Vuitton catwalk show during Paris Fashion Week. According to an AFP report, a protester invaded a catwalk in the Louvre art gallery to slam the fashion industry for its negative impact on the environment. An activist carrying a banner that read, “”Overconsumption = extinction”, managed to climb onto…
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COVID: How is an emergency fund stirring controversy in India?
Major corporate houses, the Indian armed forces and even the Dalai Lama have contributed to India’s PM-CARES fund — a reserve set up to bolster India’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. The fund, which stands for Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations, has been the subject of controversy in India, largely due to a lack of transparency…
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WhatsApp and Facebook outage sparks confusion in Africa
What would our life be without social media? Many users worldwide got a glimpse of how that would play out when Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms crashed on Monday for about six hours. A massive global outage plunged many services, businesses and the people who rely on them into chaos. It also fueled lively debates on the reasons…
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Vietnam’s COVID woes trigger supply chain issues for EU firms
Optimism has been returning for European investors after Vietnam’s communist government began rolling back lockdown measures in mid-September, and the majority of restrictions in the southern business hub Ho Chi Minh City were lifted on October 1. Last year, Vietnam was heralded as one of the few global success stories amid the pandemic. The country of 96 million people recorded…
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Pandora Papers: How will the revelations impact Pakistan’s politics?
Several people surrounding Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, including ministers and family members, have been named in the Pandora Papers leaks. The papers, which were shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), reveal that many of the country’s powerful military generals, businessmen and media owners have transferred millions of dollars through offshore companies. More than 700 prominent Pakistanis…
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Bali to partially re-open to travellers from select countries next week
A government minister in Indonesia has confirmed the island of Bali will partially re-open to arrivals from certain countries. However, the list does not currently include Australia, a significant tourism market for Indonesia prior to the pandemic. According to an AFP report, Luhut Panjaitan says that from October 14, Ngurah Rai International Airport will open for arrivals from South Korea,…
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Pandora Papers find holes in EU’s fight against tax evasion
European Commission spokeswoman Dana Spinant appeared cautious in Brussels as she was questioned about the Pandora Papers. “We have seen that in the media as you have,” she said in response to questions from reporters. “We are not in a position to make any comments on individual names or individual entities mentioned in those papers.” It is likely that the…
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Iran clamps down on teachers demanding fair pay
Aziz Ghasemzadeh is a spokesman for the teachers’ union in Iran’s northern province of Gilan. Last week, he was arrested while he was doing an interview on his phone with a Persian-language broadcaster. The phone’s camera was still on and captured footage of the arrest at his parents’ home; you can hear his mother’s voice pleading with the officers not…
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Bangladesh: Who killed Rohingya leader Mohibullah?
Mohibullah, a high-profile figurehead for the Rohingya who have fled Myanmar, was killed by unidentified gunmen last week, in an event which has left investigators looking for a culprit. Mohibullah was shot last Wednesday, Sept. 29, in one of the sprawling camps in the coastal Bangladeshi city of Cox’s Bazar. The leader left for Bangladesh when over 730,000 Rohingya Muslims…
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COVID: Will India see a third wave in winter?
India has seen a significant dip in its coronavirus caseload over the past few weeks. However, health care workers and policymakers are warning of a possible third wave during the winter months. As of Monday, the country’s active case count stood at 271,550, marking the lowest figure in 199 days. The R-value, the number which measures the rate of transmission,…
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Graft, drug trafficking threaten Albania’s chances of joining EU
Prosecutor Altin Dumani knows there is a lot to do. A lot. His office, in Albania’s capital, Tirana, is crammed with stacks of documents. All of the cases deal with organized crime, especially drug trafficking and corruption, problems that have hindered the small southeastern European country for decades, Dumani told DW. The 46-year-old is the deputy head of Albania’s relatively…
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Pandora Papers: Secret tax havens of world leaders, celebrities revealed
The Pandora Papers investigation has revealed that 35 current and former world leaders — including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the king of Jordan and Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta — as well as powerful billionaires were affiliated with companies that use offshore tax havens. Offshore accounts are often used to secretly manage and move large sums of money to…
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South Korea looks to Germany for reunification pointers
With just seven months left before he steps down as president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in and his government remain committed to their long-held dream of reuniting the two halves of the Korean Peninsula into a single nation. And, with Germany as one of the very few countries with recent experience of a similar amalgamation of two states, Unification Minister…
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Activists call on Facebook and Twitter to follow YouTube’s lead in blocking anti-vax content
Following YouTube’s blocking of all anti-vaccine content, and anti-vax-themed conspiracy channels, social media activists are now turning their attention to some of the other big platforms to follow YouTube’s lead. Twitter and Facebook are now targets to do more in stopping misinformation from spreading online. YouTube already had “misinformation” policies in place to prevent some of the more outrageous anti-vax…
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The Gambia: The story of a Jammeh-era survivor
When Awa Njie married her late husband, Don Faal, in February 1994, she could hardly imagine the cruel fate that would befall her young family at the hands of her country’s regime. The couple met in her hometown of Farafefeeni, about 120 kilometers (70 miles) north of the Gambia’s capital, Banjul. At the time, Faal was stationed at an army…
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EU to launch ALMA work placement scheme for jobless youth
Carmen Quintana Gomez follows the same routine each day: wake up, breakfast, job search. “Everybody knows that they’re not going to have a job,” she said. “That’s how people think here.” For months now, the 25-year-old graduate from Spain’s capital, Madrid, has been out of formal education, training or employment — like around a quarter of Spaniards her age. She…
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Drought devastates northern Kenya
Kenya’s arid northern counties of Garissa and Wajir face severe drought, with nomadic pastoralists already losing many domestic stock. Climate change and poor rainfall has been blamed. SOURCE: DW News
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Burkinabe chef overcomes disability
Edith broke her arm after a fall, aged 7. Doctors chose to amputate her arm to avoid infection. Now she runs her own restaurant in a bustling subrub of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. SOURCE: DW News
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From peaceful protests to war: The evolution of Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict
Over the past five years, the English-speaking regions of Cameroon have rapidly morphed into a war zone. Lives have been lost, properties have been destroyed, and the humanitarian crisis continues to intensify. In its latest report, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) highlighted the impact on education: “Since the beginning of the crisis in 2016,…
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Tourism said to fuel Southeast Asia’s illegal wildlife trade
This article is written by Soraya Kishtwari and was originally published on China Dialogue under a Creative Commons licence. Tourist guides and information centres in Southeast Asia have been fuelling the illegal wildlife trade by facilitating consumption by tourists, several investigations show. Prior to Covid-19, shops trading wildlife items, from ivory bangles to tortoise shells, relied heavily on tourists, forming partnerships with travel…
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Australian travel abroad coming soon with 7-day home quarantine
A news release issued today says Australian citizens will soon be able to travel and return home with just a 7-day quarantine period. The Australian Consul-General for Phuket says this is great news for Australia and for Thailand. He notes that Australians can now travel abroad knowing that they will be able to return home again and vows to Phuket…
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Afghanistan: Why has ICC excluded US from war crimes probe?
The call by prosecutor Karim Khan to resume an International Criminal Court (ICC) probe into potential war crimes committed in Afghanistan is a development many human rights defenders are applauding after the Taliban takeover of the war-torn country. Until now the investigation covered crimes alleged to have been committed on the territory of Afghanistan since May 1, 2003, as well…
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Myanmar: What can we expect from Aung San Suu Kyi trial?
On February 1, 2021, the day the Myanmar military toppled the nation’s democratically elected government in a coup, Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested. Since then, the country’s most prominent politician and pro-democracy advocate has once again been under house arrest. She had already been under house arrest, with interruptions, for a total of 15 years between 1989 and 2012.…
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Life of Myanmar refugees in an Indian border village
Hundreds of people opposed to military rule in Myanmar were forced to flee to the neighboring Indian state of Mizoram in the middle of September. Heavy fighting between the junta and opposition forces this month wiped out an entire town on the India-Myanmar border. DW spoke to people from one of the Indian villages in Hnahthial district in Mizoram state…
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Mombasa’s no-nonsense female rickshaw driver
In Mombasa’s Old Town Farida Shenga starts her day tidying up her rickshaw. Shenga became a rickshaw driver in 2005 after her husband died, leaving her as the family’s sole breadwinner. After buying a new rickshaw with a friend, she then had to learn how to use it. On the road, she is an iron lady: careful, but tough. Men…
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Rumour dispelled: The UN did not dedicate December 5 as ‘King’s Day’
Despite a rumour and video going viral on Thai Facebook and Twitter, the UN has NOT declared December 5 “international king’s day” in honour of Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Rama 9, the former King who died in 2016 after over 70 years reigning over Thailand. The information came to light following a ‘fact checking’ article published by AFP. The post began…
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Beijing Winter Olympics to take place without overseas spectators
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will take place without any overseas fans present, according to a decision made by the Chinese organisers. The decision was announced by the International Olympic Committee yesterday. Attendance at the games will be limited to people living in China, in a bid to mitigate the risks posed by Covid-19. The games are scheduled to take…
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