TOKYO: Japan's cabinet on Friday (Mar 26) approved a Bill that will tighten oversight of land deals and land use near military facilities and border islands, reflecting Tokyo's concern about overseas security risks. The government plans to submit a ...

Nepal has eased quarantine rules for visitors in an effort to attract more climbers to Mount Everest, officials said Friday, after the pandemic wiped out last year's season and devastated the tourism industry.

Dozens of farmers squatted on railway tracks in northern India on Friday, disrupting traffic to mark four months of a campaign against the opening up of agriculture produce markets to private players.

BANGKOK: Thai health officials rushed to calm public fears on Friday after confirming a man had died 10 days after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine earlier this month. The cause of death was from an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and rupture, senior he...

At least six people died in a fire that engulfed a mall housing a hospital that treated coronavirus patients in Mumbai, authorities said on Friday.

Britain told Hong Kong on Friday (Mar 26) that it had "no right" to order other countries not to accept a United Kingdom travel document for a popular youth working scheme after the city confirmed it had made the request to several other nations.

A village watchman trains his binoculars on a suspicious fishing boat -- the first line of defence as Thailand braces for a fresh methamphetamine influx after a coup in neighbouring Myanmar.

More than 300 people have been killed in Myanmar's protests, with nearly 90 per cent of the victims shot dead, according to data from an advocacy group and local media.

From a converted storeroom on the roof of his mother's Seoul apartment, Kim Min-kyo plays video games for up to 15 hours a day -- and makes a fortune from the thousands of fans watching him.

A fire from a hurled Molotov cocktail broke out early on Friday (Mar 26) at the party headquarters of deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar's largest city, a party official said.

YANGON: Myanmar’s economy is expected to contract by 10 per cent this year, World Bank forecasts released on Friday (Mar 26) showed, as the country is convulsed by nationwide protests, strikes and sanctions following a military coup on Feb 1. T...

TAIPEI: Taiwan and the United States have signed their first agreement under the Biden administration, the establishment of a Coast Guard Working Group to coordinate policy at a time when China's maritime actions have caused growing regional concern....

SHANGHAI: China reported 11 new COVID-19 cases on Mar 25, same number of infections as the previous day, the country's national health authority said on Friday (Mar 26). The National Health Commission, in a statement, said all of the new cases were...

BEIJING: China sanctioned organisations and individuals in the United Kingdom on Friday (Mar 26) over what it called "lies and disinformation" about Xinjiang, days after Britain imposed sanctions for human rights abuses in the western Chinese region...

North Korea launched a "newly developed new-type tactical guided projectile" on Thursday (Mar 25), state news agency KCNA reported on Friday, as the United States condemned the launches and warned of a threat to international peace and security.

With COVID-19 cases rising, the Duterte administration keeps doing the same thing but somehow expects a different result, says a freelance journalist.

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Thursday (Mar 25) said he would prevent China from passing the United States to become the most powerful country in the world, vowing to invest heavily to ensure America prevails in the rivalry between the world...

WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden warned North Korea on Thursday (Mar 25) that the United States will "respond accordingly" if it escalates its weapons testing, after Pyongyang fired two suspected ballistic missiles into the sea in its first substantiv...

NEW DELHI: India's technology minister on Thursday (Mar 25) said video streaming services have to be "responsible and accountable" for their shows and movies, defending rules introduced last month that regulate such content. India tightened its grip...

Nearly 1,000 Uyghurs rallied in Istanbul on Thursday as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met his Turkish counterpart for talks expected to focus on coronavirus vaccines and the countries' extradition treaty.

WASHINGTON: The United States and Britain imposed sanctions on conglomerates controlled by Myanmar's military on Thursday (Mar 25), following the generals' Feb 1 coup and deadly crackdown, with Washington calling it a response to "abhorrent violence...

JAKARTA: The leaders of Singapore and Indonesia will meet in person during a retreat to be held later this year, said the foreign ministers of both countries on Thursday (Mar 25). In a joint press conference, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan said: "I think in...

MANILA: The Philippine military ordered the deployment of more navy ships to the South China Sea on Thursday (Mar 25) amid a growing diplomatic row over a fleet of Chinese boats parked near a disputed reef. China claims almost the entirety of the re...

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's new badminton star Lee Zii Jia has distanced himself from being labelled as a successor to legend shuttler Lee Chong Wei following his triumphant All England Open victory last Sunday.  Speaking to journalists in a group i...

Thailand has granted emergency authorisation to Janssen, the single-dose coronavirus vaccine of Johnson & Johnson, the country's health minister said on Thursday, the third vaccine to be cleared for local use.

NASA engineers plan to send a miniature helicopter whirring just above the surface of Mars next month in an interplanetary aviation experiment that, if successful, would mark the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another celestial bo...

Security forces opened fire Thursday on anti-coup protesters in Myanmar's eastern Karen state, as demonstrators took to the streets in nationwide dawn rallies to demand a return to democracy.

ISLAMABAD: A British-born militant sentenced to death for the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl was ordered to be let out of prison on Thursday (Mar 25) by Pakistan's Supreme Court in the latest twist to a legal saga spanning nearly two deca...

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh: Thousands of Rohingya refugees began rebuilding their makeshift homes on Thursday (Mar 25), after a fire ripped though a Bangladeshi refugee camp where they were living earlier this week, killing at least 11. Monday's blaze ...

Shoubhik Dolai was riddled with bullets in West Bengal, the killing fields of Indian politics where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pushing hard to win power for the first time in elections starting Saturday.

AIZAWL, India: Strung across remote mountain settlements, a secret network of activists and volunteers is helping spirit hundreds of defecting Myanmar policemen away from the military’s brutal crackdown on dissent and into relative safety in a smal...

HONG KONG: The Hong Kong government on Thursday (Mar 26) confirmed a Reuters report that it had told 14 countries to stop accepting a British travel document that many of its young people use to apply for working holiday visas in Europe, North Ameri...

HONG KONG: Hong Kong's sudden suspension of a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech is another blow to a vaccination programme already struggling against a wall of public distrust. Hong Kong on Wednesday suspended use of the Pfizer-BioNT...

Taiwan has begun the mass production of a long-range missile and is developing three other models, a senior official said on Thursday (Mar 25), in a rare admission of efforts to develop strike capacity amid growing Chinese pressure.

India added 53,476 COVID-19 infections overnight, the highest daily rise since Oct. 23, the health ministry data showed on Thursday.

YANGON: Thousands of anti-coup activists took to the streets in Myanmar on Thursday (Mar 25), a day after a nationwide silent strike saw businesses shut and people stay at home in protest against the military coup in the country. Street protests ...

BEIJING: Anger with Nike Inc erupted on Chinese social media late on Wednesday (Mar 24) after China's netizens spotted a statement from the sporting goods giant saying it was "concerned" about reports of forced labour in Xinjiang and that it does not...

NEW DELHI: India will likely delay deliveries of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses to the COVAX facility backed by GAVI and the World Health Organization (WHO) for March and April, the programme's procurement and distributing partner UNICEF told Reu...

SEOUL: North Korea fired two projectiles into the sea early on Thursday (Mar 25), South Korea's military said, in what could be its first ballistic missile test during the administration of US President Joe Biden. The nuclear-armed North has a long...

KUALA LUMPUR: As the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) holds its general assembly this weekend, political watchers are looking out for indications of the dynamics within the party, and how it would position itself ahead of the next general...

Pyongyang is sending a message in typically overbearing style. But the target is as much the US as it is Malaysia, says Asia expert, James Chin.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics torch relay set off from Fukushima on Thursday (Mar 25), beginning a four-month countdown to the Summer Games, delayed from 2020 and the first ever organised during a global pandemic.

At least one Chinese online retailer appeared to drop H&M's products amid social media attacks on the Swedish company for saying it was "deeply concerned" about reports of forced labour in the farwestern region of Xinjiang.

More than a thousand Thai protesters took over a major Bangkok intersection on Wednesday, defying authorities in the first major rally since police used rubber bullets against demonstrators over the weekend.

HANOI: Vietnam on Wednesday (Mar 24) called for urgent diversification of its sources for COVID-19 vaccines amid global supply problems, as the Southeast Asian country pushes forward with an inoculation program that began earlier this month. "COVID-...

China's embassy in the Philippines has blamed "some external countries" for stoking tensions in the region, in remarks aimed at Japan after its ambassador stressed the need for peace and stability and in the South China Sea.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia decided on Wednesday (Mar 24) to postpone planned deportations to Myanmar until after a proposed emergency regional summit to discuss the crisis there brought on by a military coup, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters...

TAIPEI: Taiwan will from next month ration water for more than 1 million households in the centre of the island because of a drought but the technology hub of Hsinchu will not be affected, Economy Minister Wang Mei-hua said on Wednesday (Mar 24). Su...

The Philippine immigration bureau said Wednesday it has launched an investigation into allegations that some of its officers were involved in the trafficking of 44 women to work in Syria.

HONG KONG: Hong Kong health authorities have ejected a private clinic from the city's COVID-19 vaccination programme after it reportedly recommended the German-made Pfizer/BioNTech shot to patients over the one from China's Sinovac. The move illustr...

India reported a new variant of the coronavirus on Wednesday (Mar 24) as it struggled with the highest single-day tally of new infections and deaths this year.

Shoppers in a district of Beijing are getting discount coupons if they have received COVID-19 vaccinations, as China tries to accelerate its COVID-19 vaccination rate.

TOKYO: An online advertisement featuring a woman saying the debate over gender equality is outdated has sparked furore in Japan for being sexist, a month after an outcry over sexist comments by the former Olympics organising chief saw him step down. ...

KUALA LUMPUR: Digital COVID-19 vaccination certificates in Malaysia and Singapore are secured by blockchain technology and come with a traceability feature that tells the exact batch of the vaccine vial used for inoculation. Malaysian Science, Te...

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh: Aid workers searched on Wednesday (Mar 24) to reunite Rohingya Muslim families separated when a huge fire swept through the world's biggest refugee settlement in Bangladesh, forcing about 45,000 people from their bamboo and p...

KUALA LUMPUR: Two people were injured after a helicopter crashed at Selangor's Subang Airport on Wednesday (Mar 24) morning. Malaysia's Civil Aviation Authority confirmed that the Airbus AS350 B3 helicopter crashed at 9.25am. There were five peopl...

YANGON: Myanmar freed more than 600 coup detainees from prison on Wednesday (Mar 24), amid fresh outrage at the junta's brutal crackdown on protesters. Several buses full of prisoners drove out of Yangon's Insein jail in the morning, said witnesses,...

HONG KONG: An award-winning Hong Kong journalist went on trial on Wednesday (Mar 24) for accessing car ownership details on official databases during an investigation into the perpetrators of an attack on protesters by government loyalists. The pro...

Taiwan will help its handful of remaining diplomatic allies buy COVID-19 vaccines but on the condition that Taiwanese money is not used to obtain Chinese vaccines, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said on Wednesday.

JOHOR BAHRU: Johor Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar has proposed that the state government should revive the Johor Volunteer Forces (JVF), an organisation to instill efficiency and discipline among civil servants.  In a Facebook post on Tuesday (Mar 23), he...

PINGTUNG: A Chinese ban on pineapple imports from Taiwan has sparked a flood of patriotic buying of the fruit and forced restaurants to come up with inventive new menu choices, but it has also left many questioning Taipei's overwhelming economic reli...

From a final resting place for the dead to a gnarly way to land a trick; a Thai coffin-maker is affixing Buddhist emblems to the dismantled walls of his caskets, and transforming them into skateboards.

HANOI: As a small girl, Trang Nguyen saw a bear stabbed through the chest with a giant needle at her neighbour's house in northern Vietnam. The bear, flat on its back, was being pumped for its bile, a fluid drawn from its gallbladder that has long b...

MUMBAI: In the green, undulating hills of eastern India that supply the world with Darjeeling tea, revolution is brewing as a new generation dreams of life beyond the confines and hardship of plantation work. Rahul Kumar Jha, 27, is an aspiring writ...

China's daily output of COVID-19 vaccines has reached about 5 million doses, more than tripling the 1.5 million-dose daily production rate on Feb. 1, official media said on Wednesday.

YANGON: Myanmar activists plan more anti-coup protests on Wednesday (Mar 24), including a silent strike with many businesses due to close and calls for people to stay home, a day after a 7-year-old girl was killed in her home when security forces ope...

HONG KONG: Hong Kong and Macau suspended the use of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday (Mar 24) after being informed of a packaging problem affecting one batch of vials, while stressing they did not believe there was a safety risk. The ...

Shanghai will offer COVID-19 vaccinations for foreign residents, local authorities announced late on Monday.

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un broke ground for 10,000 new apartments in the capital city of Pyongyang, state media reported on Wednesday (Mar 24), despite economic crises that have left other signature construction projects stalled. Kim att...

North Korea test fired several missiles just days after a visit to the region by the top US defence and diplomatic officials, a US official said on Tuesday (Mar 23), in Pyongyang's first overt challenge to the Biden administration.

The Chinese threat to invade Taiwan is serious and more imminent than many understand, the US admiral chosen to lead the Pentagon's Indo-Pacific region said Tuesday.

Sri Lanka on Tuesday rejected a UN move to preserve evidence of war crimes in the country and said the money allocated for the effort would be better spent on housing for the poor.

China on Tuesday (Mar 23) said it summoned foreign diplomats in protest after the United States, the European Union, Canada and Britain jointly imposed sanctions on senior Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses in China’s far western Xi...

TOKYO: An early spring in Japan is drawing cherry blossom fans to Tokyo's parks but the government has urged people to limit traditional festivities to prevent a resurgence of COVID-19 infections. The flowers known as "sakura" were in full bloom on ...

SURABAYA, Indonesia: The rollout of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine has started in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim majority nation, despite concern and some confusion over whether the Anglo-Swedish product is halal, or permissible under Islam. ...

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh: Fifteen people have died and 400 are missing after a huge fire destroyed the shanty homes of tens of thousands of Rohingya in the world's biggest refugee settlement in Bangladesh, the UN said Tuesday (Mar 23). Nearly one mi...

MUMBAI: A 52-year-old Indian lingerie model is pushing e-commerce firms to hire older women for their advertising campaigns, challenging what she says are the ageist norms practised by many companies. Geeta J, a former teacher who took to modelling ...

DHAKA: Fourteen extremists were sentenced to death in Bangladesh on Tuesday (Mar 23) for attempting to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina more than two decades ago, a prosecutor said. The 2000 bomb plot was one of several attempts on Hasina'...

DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates will invest US$10 billion in Indonesia's new sovereign wealth fund to be spent on projects inside Southeast Asia's biggest economy, the UAE state news agency reported on Tuesday (Mar 23). This marks the biggest foreig...

YANGON: Myanmar's military accused anti-junta protesters of arson and violence as Western countries imposed more sanctions on individuals and groups linked to last month's coup and an ensuing brutal crackdown on dissent. Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun ...

MOSCOW: Russia and China said on Tuesday (Mar 23) they wanted a summit of permanent members of the United Nations Security Council amid what they called heightened political turbulence, with Moscow saying they believed the United States was acting in...

MANILA: The United States said on Tuesday (Mar 23) it is backing the Philippines in a new stand-off with Beijing in the disputed South China Sea, where Manila has asked a Chinese fishing flotilla to leave a reef. China ignored the call, insisting i...

SEOUL: South Korean prosecutors have seized the house of former president Park Geun-hye and will auction it off after she failed to pay a US$19 million penalty for corruption, they said Tuesday (Mar 23). Park was impeached in 2017 after anti-corrupt...

SINGAPORE: In front of an open-air Jakarta restaurant, delivery drivers clad in the orange colours of Southeast Asia tech group Sea wait for orders next to the green-jacketed riders of market leaders Gojek and Grab, in what has become the latest batt...

BEIJING: Four people were killed when a man detonated a homemade bomb in a village government office in southern China, authorities said, in a rare act of violent social protest. A 59-year-old man suspected of being responsible for the explosive dev...

SINGAPORE: Singapore and Malaysia have reaffirmed their commitment to work towards recognising each other's COVID-19 vaccine certificates, with a view towards facilitating cross-border travel in the future. "The operational details of the Reciprocal...

When the Tokyo Olympics torch relay kicks off in Fukushima on Thursday (Mar 25), runners are hoping it will show the world the area is no "nuclear wasteland", a decade after the 2011 disaster.

SEOUL: Several South Korea provinces and cities continued to require COVID-19 testing for foreign workers, despite a request from the national government that prompted Seoul to end its mandate amid international outcry. Last week the headquarters of...

SHANGHAI: From a small office in Shanghai, marriage counsellor Zhu Shenyong livestreams advice over several phones simultaneously to an attentive audience keen to save their relationships. On his wall hangs the mantra: "Let there be no bad marriages...

SEOUL: The leaders of China and North Korea are reaffirming their traditional alliance following contentious talks between top diplomats from Washington and Beijing and diplomatic isolation and economic problems in the North that have left it ever mo...

HONG KONG: Dushanbe's Central Republican Stadium will be the unlikely focal point for Asian football on Thursday (Mar 25) as the region's qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup finals relaunch after almost 18 months of stasis caused by the COVID-19 pandem...

YANGON: Myanmar protesters held candle-lit vigils for the scores killed in demonstrations against military rule, as Western countries imposed more sanctions on individuals and groups linked to last month's coup and an ensuing brutal crackdown on diss...

SEOUL: South Korea's President Moon Jae-in received AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday (Mar 23) ahead of an overseas trip, as the country began inoculating more senior citizens and health workers in an effort to accelerate its vaccination d...

SINGAPORE: Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan will visit Malaysia from Tuesday (Mar 23) to Wednesday, said Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).   Dr Balakrishnan will call on Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin an...

SHANGHAI: China coach Li Tie is missing several key players, including forward Wu Lei, as he attempts to stamp his mark on the national squad ahead of must-win World Cup qualifiers in June. Injuries and other factors mean that the former Everton mid...

HO CHI MINH CITY: In a room crammed from ceiling to floor with boxes, cabinets and drawers of Lego bricks, Hoang Dang intently builds a bright blue, yellow and red fishing boat with a Vietnamese flag and eyes at its prow. The industrial designer has...

Five people are feared dead and at least 20,000 Rohingya have fled a huge blaze engulfing shanty homes at refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh, officials said Monday, in the third fire to hit the settlements in four days.

India is the world’s worst disruptor of the Internet. Children and ordinary folk are paying a high price, the programme Undercover Asia finds out.

As proceedings in Alaska showed, both the US and Chinese diplomats were signalling to domestic audiences that they would not back down on issues of interest, says Christian Le Miere.

Anwar Ibrahim’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat working with its arch-nemesis UMNO isn’t going to yield results, says an ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute researcher