AJA Newsbites is a curated roundup of major news and developments from across Asia, brought to you by members of Asia Journalist Association (AJA)
Lee Sang-ki, THE AsiaN, Korea
Access to 42 major North Korean government and state media websites appears to have been restored after approximately 32 hours of disruption. Websites using North Korea’s “.kp” domain, including the Foreign Ministry, Korean Central News Agency, Minju Choson and Naenara, experienced repeated outages beginning at 11 a.m. on October 20. Services briefly resumed before becoming inaccessible again, with stable connections restored around 7 p.m. on October 21. Access remained stable through October 22. The cause remains unclear. Experts suggested telecommunications failures or unstable electricity supplies, citing North Korea’s reliance on limited internet connections through China. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack was also considered possible but remains unconfirmed. South Korea’s Unification Ministry said similar outages occasionally occur and offered no specific explanation.
Norila Daud, Malaysia World News, Malaysia
Her Majesty Raja Zarith Sofiah, Queen of Malaysia, has donated 376,000 face masks to schoolchildren in Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya to help protect them from the haze.
According to a post on Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar’s official Facebook page, the masks will be distributed to students in 289 schools in Kuala Lumpur and 28 schools in Putrajaya, with priority given to those from low-income families.
The masks were handed over by Comptroller of the Royal Household Tan Sri Dr Azmi Rohani to the principals and headmasters of the respective schools at the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur Education Department. The donation was made through Yayasan Raja Zarith Sofiah Negeri Johor, in collaboration with the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation and Wangsa Ultima Sdn Bhd.
Previously, the Queen donated 500,000 face masks to students in Johor and nearly 300,000 masks to frontline personnel in the state, including members of the Malaysia Border Control and Protection Agency and the police. She also donated 200,000 face masks to Malaysian motorcyclists commuting to work in Singapore amid the haze affecting Johor.
Kuban Abdymen, Centralasianlight, Kyrgyzstan
An international arbitration tribunal in The Hague has rejected approximately $12 billion of Kazakhstan’s $20 billion in financial claims against members of the North Caspian Operating Company (NCOC) consortium, according to Bloomberg.
The arbitrators based their decision on the expiration of the statute of limitations for disputes covering the period from 2011 to 2015. Kazakhstan’s remaining claims, valued at approximately $8 billion, remain valid and may proceed.
Meanwhile, disagreements continue within the consortium over a possible settlement of a $5.2 billion environmental fine. ExxonMobil has opposed the proposed resolution, complicating efforts to reach an agreement.
The ruling represents a setback for Kazakhstan’s efforts to recover substantial sums from the international partners developing the Kashagan oil field. It may also affect Astana’s strategy for renegotiating production-sharing agreements with foreign energy companies. The remaining claims and environmental dispute could further strain relations between the government and consortium members.
ⓒ THE AsiaN | All rights reserved
This content is copyrighted by THE AsiaN. If you wish to share it, please do so without modifying the original text and always include the source link. Unauthorized editing or sharing without proper attribution may result in legal consequences.
THE AsiaN Korean : 아자뉴스바이트 20261023 – 아시아엔 THE AsiaN
