Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered officials to wage a tougher epidemic prevention campaign in “our style” after he turned down some foreign COVID-19 vaccines offered via the U.N.-backed immunization program.

During a Politburo meeting Thursday, Kim said officials must “bear in mind that tightening epidemic prevention is the task of paramount importance which must not be loosened even a moment,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported Friday.

BEIJING (AP) — E-commerce giant Alibaba Group said Friday it will spend $15.5 billion to support President Xi Jinping’s campaign to spread China’s prosperity more evenly, adding to pledges by tech companies that are under pressure to pay for the ruling Communist Party’s political initiatives.

BEIJING (AP) — Global stock markets were mixed Friday as investors waited to see whether U.S. hiring in August was weak enough to persuade the Federal Reserve to postpone the winding down of economic stimulus.

Tokyo advanced after Wall Street hit its second record this week. Shanghai and Hong Kong declined.

TOKYO (AP) — Amid growing criticism of his handling of the pandemic, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Friday he won’t run for the leadership of the governing party later this month, paving the way for a new Japanese leader after just a year in office.

TOKYO, Sept 2 (NNN-NHK) – Moderna Inc. and Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd said, they are working with the Japanese government to recall three batches of COVID-19 vaccine, after an investigation confirmed stainless steel contaminants in some vials, local media reported today.

The health ministry said yesterday, foreign substances found in some vials of Moderna Inc.’s vaccine, distributed in Japan were confirmed to be stainless steel, which seemed probably mixed during the manufacturing process.

TOKYO, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Japan's former foreign minister Fumio Kishida, who is challenging Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga as ruling party chief, said on Thursday an economic stimulus package worth "tens of trillions of yen" was needed to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

Kishida also said Japan must maintain ultra-low interest rates to support the pandemic-hit economy, offering the clearest sign to date that expansionary fiscal and monetary policies would remain in place if he replaced Suga.

DUSHANBE, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Tajikistan cannot afford to take in large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers from neighbouring Afghanistan as it promised to do in the summer, the police chief of Central Asia's poorest country said on Thursday.

The government of Tajikistan, an ex-Soviet state allied to Moscow and part of the Russian-led CSTO military alliance, said in July that it could take in 100,000 refugees from Afghanistan but that it needed to create infrastructure for them.

BEIJING (AP) — China needs to expand its efforts to reduce carbon emissions to help hold back the rise in global temperatures, U.S. envoy John Kerry said Thursday.

The State Department said Kerry told Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng in a virtual meeting that there is “no way” for the world to solve the climate crisis without China’s “full engagement and commitment.”

China is the world’s largest carbon emitter, producing an estimated 27% of global greenhouse gases, followed by the United States.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s navy has seized a massive tanker believed to be loaded with thousands of tons of wasted black oil and has brought the ship to shore for further investigation, officials said Thursday.

The Panamanian-flagged MT Zodiac Star was located Wednesday after the navy received an intelligence tip about a suspicious tanker near Tolop island and escorted it about 22 kilometers (13 miles) to a naval base in Batam on the Indonesian archipelago’s southwestern tip near Singapore, said Rear Admiral Arsyad Abdullah, the country’s western fleet commander.

BEIJING (AP) — Global stock markets mostly rose Wednesday as investors weighed the economic impact of the spread of the coronavirus’s delta variant.

Markets in London and Frankfurt opened higher. Shanghai, Tokyo and Hong Kong advanced.

Wall Street futures were higher after the S&P 500 ended August with a 2.9% gain.