Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

BEIJING, Jul 25 (APP): The China-funded New Gwadar International Airport, the flagship project under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), is likely to be inaugurated soon, Commercial Counselor, Pakistan Embassy Beijing, Ghulam Qadir said on Tuesday.

A high-powered Chinese delegation will fly to Pakistan to participate in the inauguration ceremony, he told APP.
Launched in 2019, the $230-million project fully funded by the Chinese government is located in the Gurandani, 26 km east of Balochistan’s Gwadar city.

KUALA LUMPUR, July 25 (NNN-Bernama) — The ringgit opened lower against the US dollar Tuesday ahead of Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) interest rate announcement. 

As the US Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates by another 25 basis points, investors are looking forward to the accompanying statement to gauge the future outlook for rates.

At 9 am, the local note fell to 4.5705/5740 against the greenback compared with 4.5640/5690 at Monday’s close.

JAKARTA, Jul 25 (NNN-ANTARA) – A 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the East Nusa Tenggara province in central Indonesia, this morning, but did not trigger a tsunami, the country’s meteorology, climatology and geophysics agency said.

The agency reported, the quake occurred at 7:25 a.m. Jakarta time (0025 GMT), with its epicentre located at 74 km north-west of North Central Timor Regency and a depth of 75 km under the seabed.

The tremors of the earthquake did not potentially trigger giant waves, according to the agency.

MANILA, Jul 25 (NNN-PNA) – Philippine President, Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos, left for Malaysia today, for a three-day visit, to identify new areas of economic cooperation between the two countries.

“I believe this is an opportune time to harness the potential of a revitalised relationship between the Philippines and Malaysia,” Marcos said in his departure speech, at an airbase in Manila.

The Philippines and Malaysia, two major economies in Southeast Asia, have long enjoyed close economic ties, supported by strong bilateral ties stretching back for decades.

MANILA, Jul 25 (NNN-PNA) – Five people were killed, after a steel bridge under construction collapsed, in Davao City, in the southern Philippines, police said today.

Police said, the victims were installing the bridge’s side panel using a boom truck when the structure collapsed at around 3:30 p.m. local time yesterday, burying seven workers.

Two were critically injured but survived. An investigation has been launched into the accident.

SEOUL, July 25 (Reuters) - North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast late on Monday, South Korea's military said, hours after a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine arrived in a naval base in the South.

Japan's defence ministry also reported the launch of what it said were two ballistic missiles by North Korea, both of which fell outside its exclusive economic zone.

BEIJING, July 25 (Reuters) - China named veteran diplomat Wang Yi as its new foreign minister on Tuesday, removing former rising star Qin Gang after a mysterious one-month absence from duties barely half a year into the job.

Qin, 57, a former aide to President Xi Jinping and envoy to the US, took over the ministry in December but has not been seen in public since June 25 when he met visiting diplomats in Beijing.

JAKARTA, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Search and rescue are underway for a boat with three crew members on board that went missing on Tuesday in the country's eastern province of Southeast Sulawesi.

Muhammad Arafah, search and rescue agency chief of the province's capital Kendari, told local media that the boat carrying sand reportedly departed from Port Malaoge in Buton Regency to Port Kapota in Wakatobi Regency.

"In the middle of the trip, the boat was reportedly hit by waves and then sunk," said Arafah.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s Constitutional Court on Tuesday overturned the impeachment of the public safety minister ousted over a Halloween crowd surge that killed nearly 160 people last October at a nightlife district in the capital, Seoul.

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese police said they arrested a woman and her parents in a beheading case in a popular night entertainment district in Japan’s northern city of Sapporo, where a headless man was found in a hotel room three weeks ago.

Hokkaido police on Japan’s northern main island said Tuesday they arrested Runa Tamura, 29, and her father Osamu Tamura, a 59-year-old psychiatrist, the day before on suspicion of conspiring in beheading the victim at a hotel room and relocating his severed head in the middle of the night between July 1 and July 2.