Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

BEIJING (AP) — China’s cyber-watchdog on Friday announced an on-site cybersecurity investigation of ride-hailing service Didi, stepping up scrutiny after earlier criticism of its handling of customer information caused the company’s New York-traded shares to tumble.

The on-site inspection comes two weeks after the regulator said it would probe the ride-hailing company over concerns about national security and data security. That came days after Didi raised $4.4 billion and went public on the New York Stock Exchange.

HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) — IOC President Thomas Bach got a mixed reception in his visit on Friday to Hiroshima to mark the first day of the so-called Olympic Truce.

Such a one-day visit by a dignitary would ordinarily be routine, but the Olympics are set to open next week with Tokyo under a state of emergency and with a substantial part of the population opposed to the Games being held during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bach’s vice president John Coates also appeared Friday in Nagasaki, the second city that was hit by an American atomic bomb in 1945.

SEOUL, Jul 15 (NNN-YONHAP) – Smuggled drugs caught by the South Korean authorities nearly tripled in the first half of the year, as contactless smuggling through international mail and express cargo jumped, amid the protracted COVID-19 pandemic, customs office data showed today.

Smuggled drugs, confiscated by the customs agency, reached 214.2 kg in the Jan-Jun period, up 153 percent from the same period last year, according to Korean Customs.

KUALA LUMPUR, July 15 (NNN-Bernama) — 263 Malaysians in Saudi Arabia are eligible to perform the haj this year, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Religious Affairs) Dr Zulkifli Mohamad Al-Bakri.

Last year, only eight Malaysians in the country were able to perform the haj.

He said Tabung Haji (TH or the Malaysian hajj pilgrims fund board) would provide online haj courses to all the pilgrims.

BEIJING, July 15 (Reuters) - China said on Thursday it will send a team to Pakistan to help investigate a blast on a bus that killed 13 people, including nine Chinese workers, after it backed away from an earlier assertion that the explosion was a bomb attack.

Zhao Lijian, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, told a regular briefing that China would cooperate closely with Pakistan in the investigation.

TOKYO, July 14 (Xinhua) -- A panel of the Japanese government on Wednesday proposed a plan to raise the average minimum hourly wage by a record of 28 yen (0.25 U.S. dollars) to 930 yen (8.4 dollars) in fiscal 2021, local media reported.

The labor ministry's advisory panel proposed the 3.1-percent increase of the minimum wage in its guidelines.

If the proposal is realized, it will log the biggest increase since fiscal 2002, and will likely strike a further blow to businesses that are already struggling amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to local media reports.

BEIJING, July 15 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese mainland spokesperson on Thursday expressed strong opposition against military contacts of any form between Taiwan and the United States.

Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, made the statement when commenting on the media report of a U.S. military transport plane landing in Taiwan Thursday.

"We urged the United States to abide by the provisions of the three China-U.S. joint communiques when handling issues related to Taiwan and stop provocation," she said.

New Delhi, Jul 14 (PTI) External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi held a one-hour meeting on Wednesday in Dushanbe with a focus on resolving the outstanding issues along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.

After the talks, Jaishankar said he highlighted that unilateral change of status quo was not acceptable to India and that both sides agreed on convening an early meeting of the senior military commanders.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — As many Asian countries battle their worst surge of COVID-19 infections, the slow flow of vaccine doses from around the world is finally picking up speed, giving hope that low inoculation rates can increase and help blunt the effect of the rapidly spreading delta variant.

With many vaccine pledges still unfulfilled and rates of infection spiking across multiple countries, however, experts say more needs to be done to help nations struggling with the overflow of patients and shortages of oxygen and other critical supplies.

TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares were mixed Thursday, taking their cue from a wobbly day of trading on Wall Street.

China reported its economy expanded at a 7.9% annual rate in the last quarter, down from 18.3% in January-March. But that reflected a leveling off of its relatively early recovery from the pandemic.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 slipped 0.9% to 28,343.83. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped less than 0.1% to 7,352.60. South Korea’s Kospi added 0.3% to 3,274.39. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 1.2% to 28,115.98, while the Shanghai Composite inched up 0.2% to 3,534.17.