CNN – Asia/Pacific

By Simone McCarthy and Kathleen Magramo, CNN A Hong Kong court on Saturday sentenced five speech therapists to 19 months in prison over children’s books deemed to be seditious, in a case that rights defenders say marks a major blow to free speech amid a tightening of civil liberties in the Chinese territory. On Wednesday,

By Jake Kwon, CNN A massive 7.6 earthquake struck Papua New Guinea on Sunday, causing landslides, cracking roads and damaging buildings. While the extent of the damage remains unclear, photos showed debris strewn across highways and cracks opening up in roads. The quake struck at a depth of 90 kilometers (roughly 56 miles) near Kainantu,

By Yoonjung Seo, Larry Register and Heather Chen, CNN North Korea has passed a new law declaring itself a nuclear weapons state in a move leader Kim Jong Un says is “irreversible.” Kim vowed the country would “never give up” its nuclear weapons and said there could be no negotiations on denuclearization as he hailed

By Nectar Gan, Yong Xiong, and CNN’s Beijing bureau China’s mega city of Chengdu has extended its Covid lockdown for a second time, with no end in sight as authorities struggle to eradicate an outbreak that is continuing despite stringent restrictions that have upended businesses and daily life. Home to 21 million people and the

By Simone McCarthy and Kathleen Magramo, CNN Five speech therapists in Hong Kong were found guilty of a conspiracy to publish seditious children’s books on Wednesday, in a case that rights defenders say marks a major blow to free speech amid a tightening of civil liberties in the Chinese territory. The charges center around a

By Kathleen Magramo, Mengchen Zhang, CNN A man who lost control of his hydrogen balloon while harvesting pine nuts in China has been found and rescued — after landing in a forest two days later and more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) away. The man, surnamed Hu, had been working alongside a colleague on Sunday

By Javed Iqbal, Sameer Mandhro and Kathleen Magramo, CNN “There is too much water. We are going to drown.” That was the warning from the villagers of Sehta Sehanj, where flooding caused by the overflow of Pakistan’s largest lake has left many residents trapped by rising water levels and fearing for their lives. Lake Manchar

By Simone McCarthy and Nectar Gan, CNN Chinese leader Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet on the sidelines of a summit in Uzbekistan next week, Russia’s envoy to Beijing Andrey Denisov told reporters on Wednesday, according to Russian state news agency Tass. The expected meeting at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

By Simone McCarthy, CNN Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia had not lost anything as a result of its ongoing military actions in Ukraine. Speaking at an economic forum in the far eastern city of Vladivostok, Putin attempted to defend the costs of what he termed his country’s “special military operation” in

By Javed Iqbal, Sameer Mandhro and Kathleen Magramo, CNN It was raining when Kainat Solangi’s daughter was born on August 14 and it’s barely stopped since, stranding her family in a makeshift tent on a thin strip of land surrounded by Pakistan’s worst-ever floods. The family of eight built their shelter from furniture and sheets

By Simone McCarthy and Brenda Goodman, CNN China has become the first country to green-light an inhaled Covid-19 vaccine, paving the way for potential use of the needle-free product in the country, where suppressing the spread of Covid-19 remains a top priority. The vaccine maker, CanSino Biologics, said in a statement Sunday that China’s medicines

By Masoud Popalzai, Anna Chernova, Eyad Kourdi and Ehsan Popalzai, CNN Two Russian embassy employees were among six people killed in a suicide blast near Russia’s embassy in Kabul on Monday. Russia‘s foreign ministry said in a statement that “an unknown militant set off an explosive device. As a result of the attack, two employees

By Nectar Gan, Shawn Deng and CNN’s Beijing bureau More than 70 Chinese cities have been placed under full or partial Covid lockdowns since late August, impacting more than 300 million people, as local authorities rush to stamp out infections at all cost in the final countdown to leader Xi Jinping’s expected third term. Since

By Sahar Akbarzai and Tara Subramaniam, CNN Rescuers have evacuated survivors of a climbing expedition on Eurasia’s highest volcano that claimed eight lives, local authorities say. The deceased were part of a group of 12 individuals, including two guides, who have been climbing Klyuchevskaya Sopka in the north eastern Kamchatka peninsula region of Russia since

By Alex Stambaugh, Kathleen Magramo, Philip Wang and CNN’s Beijing Bureau At least 65 people are confirmed dead after an earthquake hit China’s southwestern Sichuan province on Monday, according to Chinese broadcaster CCTV. Aftershocks were still being felt on Tuesday, state media said, a day after the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said a 6.6-magnitude

By Hannah Ritchie, Kathleen Magramo and Jan Camenzind Broomby, CNN Water levels at Pakistan’s largest freshwater lake remain dangerously high despite efforts to release water and spare nearby cities further flooding, according to officials. It’s the latest challenge facing officials as the country grapples with an escalating disaster as heavy monsoon rains combine with melting

By Idris Mukhtar, Hannah Ritchie and Tara Subramaniam, CNN Humanitarian agencies have warned Pakistan is in need of long-term aid as the death toll from its catastrophic flooding continues to climb. The cumulative number of deaths since June 14 rose to 1,282 on Saturday, the country’s National Disaster Management Authority reported, and almost a third

By Jessie Yeung and Yoonjung Seo, CNN Growing up in North Korea, Kang Na-ra had never used the internet. Even the privileged few of her compatriots who were allowed smartphones could access only the nation’s tightly restricted intranet. YouTube, Instagram, and Google were entirely alien concepts. Today, Kang is a YouTube star with more than