CNN – Asia/Pacific

By Sandi Sidhu, Julia Hollingsworth, Anna Coren, Abdul Basir Bina and Ahmet Mengli, CNN To the United States military, he was an ISIS-K facilitator they feared was involved in a plot to attack Kabul’s international airport. To his family and colleagues at a US nonprofit, 43-year-old Zamarai Ahmadi was an aid worker applying for a

By Tim Lister, CNN The Taliban’s leaders are rarely seen at public events and do not readily grant interviews or hold news conferences. Many of them move in the shadows, their whereabouts unknown, inevitably generating rumors about their health and about possible internal disagreements. Those rumors gained so much traction in recent days that the

By Nectar Gan, CNN Chinese authorities are rushing to contain a widening Delta variant outbreak in the southern province of Fujian ahead of a major upcoming national holiday, when hundreds of millions of people are expected to travel across the country — creating a window for the highly infectious variant to spread far and wide.

By Jessie Yeung and Gawon Bae, CNN David Cho Yong-gi, a South Korean pastor who founded one of South Korea’s largest and most popular megachurches died on Tuesday morning, his church said in a news release. Cho had been hospitalized since a collapse in June 2020, and died in Seoul after suffering a brain hemorrhage.

By Helen Regan, CNN More than $1 billion in aid has been pledged for Afghanistan to help ease one of the world’s “worst humanitarian crises,” as millions of people in the country could soon run out of food and the economy is on the verge of collapse, the United Nations said on Monday. Speaking at

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at the life of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Personal Birth date: September 21, 1954 Death date: July 8, 2022 Birth place: Nagato, Japan (some sources say Tokyo) Father: Shintaro Abe, former Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Mother: Yoko Kishi Marriage: Akie (Matsuzaki) Abe (1987-2022,

By Masoud Popalzai and Celine Alkhaldi, CNN Afghan women around the world are protesting the Taliban‘s new hijab requirement in schools by posting photos of themselves wearing colorful traditional dresses on social media. In recent days the Taliban has mandated the segregation of genders in classrooms and said female students, lecturers and employees must wear

By Sophia Saifi and Ivana Kottasová, CNN A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) passenger plane from Islamabad touched down in Kabul on Monday morning, according to an airline spokesman. This marks the first flight to land in Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan since the chaotic final withdrawal of US troops last month. PIA spokesman Abdullah Khan said

By Nectar Gan and Steve George, CNN A man who completed 21 days of mandatory quarantine upon returning to China from overseas has been identified as the likely source of a new outbreak, raising questions over the sustainability of the country’s stringent zero-Covid strategy. The fresh outbreak in Fujian province on China’s southeastern coast has

By Jessie Yeung, CNN China has a new sweetheart: 18-year-old US Open winner Emma Raducanu. The British tennis player defeated Canadian Leylah Fernandez in a straight-sets victory on Saturday, becoming the youngest grand slam winner since Maria Sharapova won Wimbledon in 2004. Raducanu, who was born in Canada to a Chinese mother and a Romanian

CNN Editorial Research Here is a look at North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and the history of its weapons program. 1985 North Korea signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). 1993 The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) demands that inspectors be given access to two nuclear waste storage sites. In response, North Korea threatens to quit the

By Samantha Beech, Jake Kwon and Oren Liebermann, CNN North Korea claims it successfully test-fired new long-range cruise missiles over the weekend, according to the country’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The report, dated Monday, says the country’s Academy of Defense Science successfully test-fired the missiles on September 11 and 12, and that the

By Anna Coren, Radina Gigova and Tim Lister, CNN Harrowing accounts have emerged of the Taliban detaining and brutally assaulting reporters covering a protest in Kabul earlier this week, with one Afghan journalist telling CNN he thought he was going to die. Video journalist Nemat Naqdi and video editor Taqi Daryabi from the Afghan online

By Helen Regan and Angus Watson, CNN Super Typhoon Chanthu made landfall in the far northern Philippines on Saturday, bringing destructive winds and heavy rain to the archipelago. Chanthu, known as Kiko in the Philippines, was one of the strongest storms this year, with sustained winds of 260 kph (160 mph) before landfall — equivalent

By Ishtiaq Mahsud and Rob Picheta, CNN In rural Paktika province — at a border crossing with Pakistan, nearly 200 miles south of Kabul — a Taliban commander surveys the crowds. “I have been assigned as the caretaker of the border crossing here,” he says. “The puppet government is now gone, without any resistance —