SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Thursday said it found four new fever cases in its border region with China that may have been caused by coronavirus infections, two weeks after leader Kim Jong Un declared a widely disputed victory over COVID-19.
BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand's government convened its first Cabinet meeting Thursday under an acting prime minister, after its leader was suspended from his duties while a court decides if the 2014 coup leader violated the country's term limits.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Jailed Malaysian ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak returned to court Thursday for a second corruption trial over the pilfering of the 1MDB state fund, two days after he began a 12-year prison term for graft.
HONG KONG (AP) — Tropical Storm Ma-on made landfall in southern China’s Guangdong province on Thursday after bringing rain and stiff winds to Hong Kong, where the stock market was closed for the morning session due to the storm.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has found the country’s past military governments responsible for atrocities committed at Brothers Home, a state-funded “vagrants’ facility” where thousands were enslaved and abused from the 1960s to 1980s.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Najib Razak is Malaysia’s first former prime minister to go to prison -- a mighty fall for a British-educated politician whose father and uncle were the country’s second and third prime ministers, respectively.
BEIJING (AP) — China is easing its tight restrictions on visas after it largely suspended issuing them to foreign students and others more than two years ago at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Wednesday announced plans to ease border controls from early September by eliminating requirements for pre-departure COVID-19 tests for travelers who have received at least three vaccine doses, and he will also consider increasing daily entry caps as soon as next month.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Wednesday instructed his government to consider developing safer, smaller nuclear reactors, signaling a renewed emphasis on nuclear energy years after many of the country's plants were shut down.
An illegal dirt road ripping through protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon is now just a few miles shy of connecting two of the worst areas of deforestation in the region, according to satellite images and accounts from people familiar with the area.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Heavy rains have triggered flash floods and wreaked havoc across much of Pakistan since mid-June, leaving 903 dead and about 50,000 people homeless, the country's disaster agency said Wednesday.
BEIJING (AP) — Tropical Storm Ma-on was gaining strength as it headed for Hong Kong and other parts of southeastern China on Wednesday after displacing thousands in the Philippines.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Supporters of Malaysian ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak rallied Wednesday outside the national palace to seek royal pardon just a day after he began a 12-year jail term, while opponents launched an online petition urging the monarch not to.
SYDNEY (AP) — Fox Corp. chief executive Lachlan Murdoch is suing Australian news website Crikey in a Sydney court for defamation over an opinion piece about last year’s storming of the U.S. Capitol.
BEIJING (AP) — Hainan island in the South China Sea says it will become China's first region to ban sales of gasoline- and diesel-powered cars to curb climate-changing carbon emissions.
Sales of fossil fuel-powered cars will be banned by 2030 and electric vehicles promoted with tax breaks and by expanding a charging network, the Hainan provincial government said in a “Carbon Peak Implementation Plan.”
BANGKOK (AP) — Groups of protesters gathered in Thailand's capital on Tuesday to call for the country’s prime minister to step down, saying he has exceeded his constitutional term limit.
A demonstration at Bangkok's Democracy Monument, a traditional protest venue, appeared to draw fewer than 200 protesters, mixed in with bystanders and journalists.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A tropical storm blew out of the northern Philippines on Wednesday, leaving at least three people injured and thousands displaced and prompting authorities to shut down schools and government offices in the capital and several provinces prone to flooding and landslides.
BANGKOK (AP) — Singapore’s decision to decriminalize sex between men is being hailed as a step in the right direction for LGBTQ rights in the Asia-Pacific region, a vast area of nearly 5 billion people with different laws and attitudes.
NEW DELHI (AP) — India's air force said Tuesday that three military officers have been dismissed for accidentally firing an unarmed missile into rival Pakistan in March.
A formal inquiry found that “deviation from the Standard Operating Procedures by three officers" led to the BrahMos cruise missile being fired into Pakistan, the air force said in a statement.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — An Islamabad court Tuesday summoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan to appear next week to answer contempt charges over his verbal threats to a judge at a weekend rally. Police meanwhile registered another case against him on charges of defying a ban on rallies in Islamabad.
Parts of northern Texas, mired in a drought labeled as extreme and exceptional, are flooding under torrential rain. In a drought.
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Schools in Bangladesh will close an additional day each week and government offices and banks will shorten their work days by an hour to reduce electricity usage amid concerns over rising fuel prices and the impact of the Ukraine war.
PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysian ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak began his 12-year prison sentence Tuesday after losing his final appeal in a graft case linked to the looting of the 1MDB state fund, with the top court unanimously upholding his conviction and sentence.
BEIJING (AP) — With China's biggest freshwater lake reduced to just 25% of its usual size by a severe drought, work crews are digging trenches to keep water flowing to one of the country's key rice-growing regions.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A tropical storm lashed the northern Philippines with strong winds and rain Tuesday, injuring at least two people and prompting the president to close schools and government offices in the capital and outlying provinces.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan's president invoked an armed conflict in 1958 as an example of the island's resolve to defend itself as she met Tuesday with more foreign visitors amid the highest tensions with China in decades.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s top justice official said Tuesday authorities were considering an early release for the bombmaker in the 2002 Bali attack that killed 202 people, despite upsetting Australia's leader who described him as “abhorrent.”
BEIJING (AP) — One of the world’s few rare earths processors outside China has bought exploration rights to mine in Greenland, opening an avenue for diversifying supplies of the minerals critical for advanced and green technologies.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Dozens of South Koreans adopted by Danish parents decades ago have formally demanded the South Korean government investigate their adoptions, which they say were marred by widespread practices that falsified or obscured children’s origins.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The Australian government will launch an inquiry aimed at preventing a prime minister from ever again secretly amassing new ministerial powers, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — About 2,000 protesters upset with the government's pandemic response converged Tuesday on New Zealand's Parliament — but there was no repeat of the occupation six months ago in which protesters camped on Parliament grounds for more than three weeks.
BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s Constitutional Court on Monday received a petition from opposition lawmakers seeking a ruling on whether Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has reached the legal limit on how long he can remain in office.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean police say they believe a possible relative of two children whose bodies were found in suitcases in New Zealand last week is likely in South Korea.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani police have filed terrorism charges against former Prime Minister Imran Khan, authorities said Monday, escalating political tensions in the country as the ousted premier holds mass rallies seeking to return to office.
QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Flash floods caused by abnormally heavy monsoon rains have killed 777 people across Pakistan over the last two months, officials said Monday, as rescuers backed by troops raced against time to evacuate thousands of marooned people.
TOKYO (AP) — A bus crashed into a dividing strip, overturned and caught fire on an expressway in central Japan on Monday, killing two people and injuring seven others, police said.
The bus, traveling between downtown Nagoya and a nearby prefectural airport, apparently hit the divider just before leaving the expressway, according to Aichi police.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Indiana's Republican governor met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on Monday, following two recent high-profile visits by U.S. politicians that drew Beijing's ire and Chinese military drills that included firing missiles over the island.
LONDON (AP) — Former Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone on Monday denied a fraud charge over his alleged failure to declare millions of pounds (dollars) in overseas assets.
Ecclestone, 91, entered a not guilty plea as he appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London for a brief hearing.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Millions of students wearing face masks streamed back to primary and secondary schools across the Philippines on Monday for their first in-person classes after two years of coronavirus lockdowns that are feared to have worsened alarming illiteracy rates among children.
BEIJING (AP) — Brush fires have forced the evacuation of more than 1,500 people in southwest China and power rationing for factories has reportedly been extended as weeks of record heat and drought batter the region.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The United States and South Korea began their biggest combined military training in years Monday as they heighten their defense posture against the growing North Korean nuclear threat.
SINGAPORE (AP) — Singapore's gay community Monday hailed a plan to decriminalize sex between men as “a triumph of love over fear" but warned there is still a long way to equality and new bans on same-sex unions could entrench discrimination against them.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Singapore will decriminalize sex between men by repealing a colonial-era law but will amend the constitution to ensure same-sex marriage is not allowed, the city-state's leader said Sunday.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been diagnosed with COVID-19 and canceled his planned travels while he isolates and recuperates.
Kishida developed a slight fever and cough late Saturday and a PCR test for the coronavirus was positive, said Noriyuki Shikata, the cabinet secretary for public affairs at the prime minister's office.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Heavy flooding from seasonal rains in eastern Afghanistan and neighboring parts of Pakistan left dozens of people dead overnight, according to local officials on Sunday.
Associated Press video showed villagers in the Khushi district of Logar province south of the Afghan capital of Kabul cleaning up after the flooding, their damaged homes in disarray.