Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

TAIPEI, June 22 (Reuters) - A U.S. Coast Guard ship sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday in a transit that China described as "public hype", after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken having wrapped up a high-profile, widely watched visit to Beijing a day earlier.

The national security cutter Stratton made a "routine" Taiwan Strait transit on Tuesday "through waters where high-seas freedoms of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law", the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet said on Thursday.

TOKYO, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The Japanese fisheries federation voiced its opposition again on Thursday to the planned release of radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the sea, local media reported.

Masanobu Sakamoto, president of the national federation of fisheries cooperatives known as JF Zengyoren, handed over a request opposing the release plan to Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura, public broadcaster NHK said.

JAKARTA, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The comprehensive inspection train (CIT) of Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway (HSR) reached 350 km per hour, the design speed, for the first time on Thursday during the joint commissioning and testing phase.

BEIJING (AP) — At least 31 people were killed and seven injured when cooking gas exploded at a restaurant in Yinchuan in northwestern China. It was the latest in China’s long history of deadly industrial accidents, which occur regularly despite government pledges to clamp down on lax standards, poor oversight and corruption frequently blamed for the collapse of buildings, mine cave-ins, explosions and other disasters. Here is a look at some of the worst in recent years.

2023:

BEIJING, Jun 21 (APP):China and Pakistan have joined hands to introduce more high-yielding crop varieties crops including chili, sorghum, cotton and soybeans on trial basis in Pakistan.

“For the first time in our testing field, we grow jalapeno, or Mexican chili pepper. From each acre, we yield over 2.5 tons of dried jalapeno, far exceeding the local average of less than 1.5 tons, Xi Jianlong, Manager of China-Pakistan agricultural cooperation project from China Machinery Engineering Corporation, the sponsor of the testing field in Multan area, told China Economic Net.

BANGKOK, June 21 (NNN-Bernama) — Thailand’s Election Commission (EC) will call more witnesses to provide testimony on the inquiry into Pita Limjaroenrat, the front-runner for prime minister’s eligibility to compete in the general election last month.

The 42-year-old progressive Move Forward Party leader was under investigation for holding 42,000 shares in the shuttered television company ITV Public Company. 

EC member Thitichet Nuchanart said the poll agency will call Pita and iTV executives for questioning. 

TAIPEI, June 21 (Reuters) - A Chinese aircraft carrier group led by the vessel Shandong sailed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, Taiwan's defence ministry said, amid heightened military tension over the island Beijing claims as its own territory.

The ministry said the Shandong, commissioned in 2019, had sailed in a southerly direction through the western part of the strait, and it had dispatched "appropriate forces" to monitor the Chinese activities.

TOKYO, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Heavy rain hit southwestern Japan's Amami Oshima Island on Wednesday, with hundreds of residents being isolated and thousands of households facing water supply cuts, local media reported.

As of 2 p.m. local time, an evacuation order was in place for 1,193 people from 735 households in Amami City and the villages of Yamato and Uken on the island in Kagoshima Prefecture, public broadcaster NHK reported.

BANGKOK (AP) — Shares were mostly lower Wednesday in Asia after Wall Street benchmarks retreated following the S&P 500’s rise to its highest level since the spring of last year.

U.S. futures were little changed and oil prices rose.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 edged 0.1% higher to 33,427.14, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong sank 1.5% to 19,607.08. The Shanghai Composite index gave up 0.5% to 3,240.36 and the Kospi in Seoul slipped 0.4% to 2,594.19.

In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.2% to 7,345.30.

This week has few potentially market-moving events.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — An independent expert working with the United Nations on the issue of human rights in Myanmar urged the international community on Wednesday to find a different approach to resolve the crisis in the Southeast Asian country, saying the current course of action is not working.

Tom Andrews, a special rapporteur working with the U.N. human rights office, told a news conference in Jakarta the world is looking to Indonesia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for leadership on the situation in Myanmar.