ASIA TODAY Pakistan, millions of people in the dark due to “a serious malfunction” in the electricity grid

Other news of the day: Chinese tourists flock to Thailand’s beaches again after three years of closures due to Covid; the Taliban arrested five people, including two Chinese, for trafficking lithium-containing rocks; Dubai is set to build the first 3D printed mosque; A meeting between the Armenian leader and the Azeri leader through the Lačin corridor is being considered.

PAKISTAN

Millions of people were left in the dark in Pakistan this morning due to a “serious damage” in the electrical power grid in much of the country. According to Energy Minister Khurrum Dastagir, the outage affected factories, hospitals and schools and lasted several hours due to a “voltage fluctuation” in the province’s electrical grid southern Sindh.

THAILAND

Following the lifting of the Beijing government’s draconian Covid-19 containment rules, the Chinese they traveled again for the Lunar New Year. And for the first time in three years large groups of tourists flock to the beaches of Thailand. In the days before the pandemic, the Chinese spent more than 255,000 million euros a year on tourism, feeding the coffers of many countries in the region, such as Japan.

CHINA – RUSSIA

A Russian warship equipped with hypersonic weapons The next-generation aircraft will participate in joint exercises with the Chinese and South African navies in February. The TASS agency confirmed for the first time the presence of the frigate equipped with Zircon missiles that can fly nine times faster than sound and have a range of more than a thousand kilometers.

AFGHANISTAN

Taliban authorities five men arrested, among them two of Chinese nationality, who were preparing to smuggle out of the country some 1,000 tons of rock containing lithium (30%). The operation took place in the border city of Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan. Chinese traffickers wanted to transport “the precious stones” to their country through Pakistan.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

The Emirates is aiming to build the world’s first 3D-printed mosque with the project expected to be completed by 2025 in the suburb of Bur Dubai. Work on the 2,000-square-meter place of worship with a capacity for 600 people will begin in October. The cost will be 30% higher than traditional techniques, but in the future it should be equivalent.

RUSSIA – SINGAPORE

Singapore is buying more and more Russian crude although local companies mix products from various countries, making it quite difficult to determine the actual origin and quantity of the imports contained in the cocktail. In this way limits and penalties are bypassed and circumvented and the scheme seems to work very efficiently.

ARMENIA – AZERBAIJAN

Various sources claim that a meeting between Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pašinyan could soon take place. The face-to-face meeting should take place in Tbilisi, with the mediation of Georgian Prime Minister Iraklij Garibašvili. The central theme of the talks will be the Lačin corridor.