Asia

The first group of transit visa holders have arrived in Saudi Arabia; the four-day visa allows holders to make Umrah and travel throughout the kingdom

Jafar Panahi, the film director imprisoned on charges of carrying out anti-government propaganda with his work and banned from making films for 20 years, has been freed; the release came 48 hours after he began a hunger strike in protest

Over 470.000 passengers travelled through Larnaca and Paphos airports in this January, +105,6% on 2022 and +12% on the passenger traffic of January 2019, a record year; the largest traffic was coming from Greece, the UK, Israel, Poland and Germany

Vehicles are piling up in garages as chips and spare parts shortage drags on; spiked by the pandemic, it has been fueled by a number of events that impacted on production areas ranging from draught to logistics crisis

Digital health group WhiteCoat has opened its regional headquarters in Singapore, which will "serve as a hub to facilitate patient engagement and promote health literacy in its markets"

Myanmar's junta has extended the country's state of emergency for another six months, the acting president said as citizens marked the anniversary of the 2021 military coup with a 'silent protest'

A thick haze covered the city as Bangkok's air pollution reached an unhealthy level, with an AQI value of 166; AQI values above 100 are considered unhealthy

Several Indonesian residents have filed a legal complaint in a Swiss court against the world's leading cement producer, Holcim, which they claim is doing 'too little' to reduce carbon dioxide emissions

Pfizer-BioNTech's bivalent Covid-19 vaccine is expected to arrive this week; Ministry of Health says 76,5% of Nepalis have been fully vaccinated

The General Tax Authority has announced that the ban on the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products without a valid and activated digital tax stamp came into effect yesterday 1 February 2023

Applying a 2021 law 'allowing information to be restricted in case of emergency', Ministry of Communications recently banned sharing of excerpts from documentary India: the Modi question, on his rise in power and role in the Gujarat riots in 2002

The Kuwait-based Rahma International Charity completed Idris 3 Model School, which will benefit some 500 children of displaced families in southern Yemen’s Lahj governorate, as part of the eight-year ‘Kuwait is Beside You’ campaign