Asia

The Olympics host city Tokyo, as well as Thailand and Malaysia, announced record COVID-19 infections on Saturday, mostly driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant of the disease. Cases surged ...

The first person convicted under Hong Kong’s national security law was sentenced to nine years for terrorist activities and inciting secession, judges said on Friday, in a watershed ruling ...

Afghan villagers searched desperately for survivors after flash flood swept down a narrow valley in a Taliban-controlled area, killing at least 40 people and destroying dozens of houses in the early ...

Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other on Thursday of flouting a Russian-backed ceasefire that both sides had accepted the previous day to halt deadly border clashes. Armenia’s defence ministry ...

Armenia said that three of its soldiers had been killed in an exchange of gunfire with Azerbaijan and both sides later accepted a Russian ceasefire proposal to try to calm ...

Afghan authorities have arrested four journalists on propaganda charges after they tried to enter the contested area of Spin Boldak in southern Kandahar province, where security forces have been clashing ...

South and North Korea have restored hotlines that Pyongyang severed a year ago when ties deteriorated sharply, and the two countries’ leaders are renewing efforts to rebuild relations, Seoul’s ...

Antibodies triggered by Sinovac Biotech’s COVID-19 vaccine decline below a key threshold from around six months after a second dose for most recipients, although a third shot could have ...

China rejected on Thursday a World Health Organization (WHO) plan for a second phase of an investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, which includes the hypothesis it could have ...

On the eve of the Tokyo Games, organisers fired the director of the opening ceremony over a joke he made about the Holocaust, while media reported former Prime Minister Shinzo ...

Taliban insurgents control about half of Afghanistan’s district centres, the senior US general said on Wednesday, indicating a rapidly deteriorating security situation. Insecurity has been growing in Afghanistan in ...

An 11-year-old boy has died in India from a bird flu virus of the H5N1 strain, the first such fatality in the country, highlighting a potential new risk for ...

Two-thirds of India’s population have antibodies against the coronavirus, according to data released on Tuesday from a survey of 29,000 people across the nation conducted in June and July. The ...

South Korean President Moon Jae-in will not visit Tokyo for the upcoming Olympics, his office said on Monday, scrapping plans for what would have been his first summit with Prime ...

Tokyo Olympics organisers said on Saturday a person has tested positive for Covid-19 at the athletes’ village, the first case at a site where most competitors will be staying, raising ...

A Nigerian delegate to the Olympics became the first visitor to the Tokyo Games admitted to hospital with COVID-19, broadcaster TV Asahi said on Friday, as Japan battles to stem ...

A man has finally reunited with his abducted son after a 24-year hunt across China, handing out missing-person flyers, that burned through his savings and left him with massive debts. ...

A Philippines Air Force troop plane crashed and broke up in flames on a southern island on Sunday, killing at least 45 people after some jumped free, officials said, in the ...

The highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus is surging through Asia this week, with record numbers of infections in Australia and South Korea, prompting some countries to tighten curbs ...

Vietnam recorded a year-on-year GDP growth of 5.64 percent in the first half of this year, three times higher than the growth rate of 1.82 per cent posted in the same period ...

India said on Wednesday it has found around 40 cases of the Delta coronavirus variant carrying a mutation that appears to make it more transmissible, and advised states to increase testing. ...

Suspected Taliban fighters fired a rocket into a hospital in Afghanistan on Wednesday, sparking a blaze that caused extensive damage and destroyed COVID-19 vaccines though there were no reports of ...

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warned the United States on Tuesday it would be disappointed were it to seek comfort in comments by her brother, while ...

China is planning to keep its pandemic border restrictions in place for at least another year over worries of emergence of new variants and a calendar of sensitive events, the ...