China

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BANGKOK — Thailand on Monday officially began the selection of new senators, a process that has become part of an ongoing war between progressive forces hoping for democratic political reforms and conservatives seeking to keep the status quo. Hopeful candidates headed to district offices across the country on the first day of registration to compete for one of the 200 seats in Parliament’s upper house. The …

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SYDNEY — Researchers in Australia and the United States say that a new artificial intelligence tool has allowed them to classify brain tumors more quickly and accurately.   The current method for identifying different kinds of brain tumors, while accurate, can take several weeks to produce results.  The method, called DNA methylation-based profiling, is not available at many hospitals around the world. To address these challenges, …

Washington — Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and other officials were found dead Monday at the site of a helicopter crash in northwestern Iran, state media said. Search crews found the wreckage Monday, a day after the helicopter crashed in bad weather near Varzaqan in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. State media said the passengers were traveling back to Iran from an event just …

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Washington — Iran says a search for a helicopter that crashed while carrying its president and other senior officials in the country’s northwest extended into the pre-dawn hours Monday, as the fate of Ebrahim Raisi remains unclear. Iranian state media said the helicopter crashed Sunday in bad weather near Varzaqan in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. They said it was flying President Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian …

Tehran. Iran — Fear and worry weighed on Iran Sunday as the Islamic Republic waited for news on the fate of President Ebrahim Raisi after his helicopter went missing in a foggy mountain area. Thousands of Muslim faithful prayed for his safe return in mosques nationwide — including amid the minarets of 63-year-old Raisi’s hometown, the shrine city of Mashhad. Tearful Iranians fearing the worst were …

SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia — Two Chinese warships docked Sunday at a commercial port in Cambodia, in preparation for joint naval exercises between the two countries. The Jingangshan amphibious warfare ship and the Qi Jiguang training ship sailed into the Sihanoukville Port as onlookers waved Cambodian and Chinese flags from the piers. The port is north of the Ream Naval Base, where China has funded a broad expansion …

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi has long been seen as a protégé to Iran’s supreme leader and a potential successor for his position within the country’s Shiite theocracy. News of his helicopter making what state media described as a “hard landing” on Sunday immediately brought new attention to the leader, who already faces sanctions from the U.S. and other nations over …

ATLANTA — U.S. President Joe Biden speaks Sunday at the former university of civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr, in a bid to woo Black voters that risks being overshadowed by protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. Biden’s graduation speech at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, will be his most direct engagement with students since demonstrations over the conflict roiled campuses across the United States. …

Gaza Strip — A Gaza hospital said Sunday that an Israeli air strike targeting a house at a refugee camp in the center of the Palestinian territory killed at least 20 people. “We received 20 fatalities and several wounded after an Israeli air strike targeted a house belonging to the Hassan family in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza,” the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said in a …

NEW YORK — Some social media users are calling out celebrities for what they say is inaction in the face of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza — and they’ve taken to a “blockout” to pressure the stars to take a stand. For the blockout, users put a block on seeing any and all content from the accounts of certain celebrities on social media platforms including X, …

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s minister for planning and development, Ahsan Iqbal, says his country is not opposed to Afghanistan’s inclusion in a Chinese-funded mega-development project, but would like Beijing to persuade Kabul to crack down on terrorist groups operating on its soil against Islamabad. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s new government, which took office in March, is anxious to revive the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC – …

Pakistan’s new government is trying to ramp up work on the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. VOA Pakistan bureau chief Sarah Zaman speaks with Pakistan’s Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal about why Chinese companies should invest in Pakistan given the country’s poor economic and security conditions. Camera: Wajid Asad, Malik Waqar Ahmed …

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Atef Al-Buhaisi, 6, once dreamed of a career building houses. Now, all he craves is to return to school. In Israel’s war with Hamas, Atef’s home has been bombed, his teacher killed and his school in Nuseirat turned into a refuge for displaced people. He lives in a cramped tent with his family in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where he …

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of protesters rallied within sight of the U.S. Capitol, chanting pro-Palestinian slogans and voicing criticism of the Israeli and American governments as they marked a painful present — the war in Gaza — and past — the exodus of about 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from what is now Israel when the state was created in 1948.  About 400 demonstrators braved …

BANGKOK — A powerful ethnic armed group fighting Myanmar’s military government in the country’s western state of Rakhine claimed Saturday to have seized a town near the border with Bangladesh, marking the latest in a series of victories for foes of the country’s military government. Members of the state’s Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority, targets of deadly army-directed violence in 2017, appear to have been the main …

Baghdad, Iraq — Iraq’s lawmakers failed to elect a speaker Saturday as neither of the two main candidates secured a majority during a tense session of parliament.  It is the latest in a series of failed attempts to replace the former head of parliament who was dismissed in November, with political bickering and divisions between key Sunni parties derailing every effort so far.  Saturday’s vote was …

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Taipei, Taiwan — China’s Taiwan Affairs Office this week vowed to punish five well-known Taiwanese media commentators and their families for “fabricating false, negative information” about China and “provoking [a] hostile cross-strait confrontation.” The sharp rebuke was made at a news briefing Wednesday by TAO spokesperson Chen Binhua in response to a reporter’s question that China was looking at punitive measures for what it called “famous …

HANOI, VIETNAM — Vietnam’s Communist Party has named police minister To Lam  president, the government said Saturday, and nominated a new head of the parliament in a major leadership reshuffle.  Unprecedentedly for a one-party nation once known for its stable politics, two state presidents and a parliament speaker have stepped down in less than 18 months, all for unspecified “wrongdoing” amid a major antigraft campaign that …

PARIS — Jailed Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi faces a new trial over accusations she made against security forces of sexually assaulting female prisoners, her family said Saturday.  The trial, due to begin Sunday, relates to an audio message she shared from prison in April with supporters in which she decried a “full-scale war against women” in the Islamic Republic.  She is charged in …