Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

TOKYO, June 30 (Xinhua) -- An elementary school in Japan's southernmost prefecture of Okinawa on Thursday held a memorial service to remember the lives lost when a U.S. military jet crashed into the school 63 years ago killing 18 people.

The accident-prone F-100 warplane took off from Kadena Air Base before crashing into the residential neighborhood of Ishikawa and careening into Miyamori Elementary School in what is now Uruma City, on June 30, 1959.

MANILA, June 30 (Xinhua) -- Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos was sworn in as the 17th president of the Philippines on Thursday at the National Museum in Manila in front of thousands of people who witnessed the inauguration.

The 64-years-old son of former President Ferdinand Marcos, wearing a native Barong Tagalog formal shirt, took his oath of office as his 92-year-old mother Imelda and family members look on.

After taking the oath of office, Marcos delivered a brief speech and called on the nation to unite.

BEIJING (AP) — Global stock markets declined Thursday after the U.S. economy contracted, fueling fears of a worldwide downturn.

London and Frankfurt opened lower. Tokyo and Hong Kong declined while Shanghai gained.

The future for Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index was down 1.1% after data Wednesday showed the U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter amid high inflation and weakening consumer confidence.

Investors are uneasy about signs the biggest global economy might be in a recession due to interest rate hikes imposed to cool surging inflation.

BEIJING, June 29 (Reuters) - An uncrewed Chinese spacecraft has acquired imagery data covering all of Mars, including visuals of its south pole, after circling the planet more than 1,300 times since early last year, state media reported on Wednesday.

China's Tianwen-1 successfully reached the Red Planet in February 2021 on the country's inaugural mission there. A robotic rover has since been deployed on the surface as an orbiter surveyed the planet from space.

SEOUL, June 29 (Reuters) - The nosedive in cryptocurrency markets has wiped out millions of dollars in funds stolen by North Korean hackers, four digital investigators say, threatening a key source of funding for the sanctions-stricken country and its weapons programmes.

North Korea has poured resources into stealing cryptocurrencies in recent years, making it a potent hacking threat and leading to one of the largest cryptocurrency heists on record in March, in which almost $615 million was stolen, according to the U.S. Treasury.

HONG KONG (AP) — When the British handed Hong Kong to Beijing in 1997, it was promised 50 years of self-government and freedoms of assembly, speech and press that are not allowed on the Communist-ruled Chinese mainland.

As the city of 7.4 million people marks 25 years under Beijing’s rule on Friday, those promises are wearing thin. Hong Kong’s honeymoon period, when it carried on much as it always had, has passed, and its future remains uncertain, determined by forces beyond its control.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Health officials in South Korea on Wednesday approved the country’s first domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine for people 18 years or older, adding another public health tool in the fight against a prolonged pandemic.

In clinical trials involving some 4,000 participants in South Korea and five other countries, SK Bioscience’s two-dose SKYCovione vaccine appeared to be more effective than the broadly used AstraZeneca shots in building immunity against infections, officials at South Korea’s Food and Drug Safety Ministry said.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — When Emily Soriano recounts how her 15-year-old son was gunned down with four friends and two other residents while partying in a Philippine slum six years ago, she weeps in grief and anger like the massacre happened yesterday.

Police concluded at the time that the bloodbath in a riverside shantytown in Caloocan city in the Manila metropolis was set off by a drug gang war. But Soriano angrily blamed four plainclothes police officers and the brutal anti-drug crackdown of outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte for the 2016 killings.

DUSHANBE, June 28. /TASS/: Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Tajikistan’s capital of Dushanbe for a working visit on Tuesday for the first time in the past three years.

Putin is scheduled to meet with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon. The beginning of their meeting will be open to the media and then the two leaders will continue their conversation at a work lunch that will take place in an informal atmosphere.

BEIJING, June 28 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Tuesday urged the United States to strictly abide by the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiques, and cease any form of official exchanges with Taiwan.

Spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks at a regular news briefing in response to a query on the so-called U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade.