An anti-money laundering body in the Maldives has informed police that President Abdulla Yameen received 22.5 million Maldivian rufiyaa ($1.5m) in hard currency days in advance of a contentious presidential election in the Indian Ocean island nation.

A suicide attack on a political rally in eastern Afghanistan killed at least 13 people yesterday, officials said, as the country braces for an escalation in violence ahead of this month's parliamentary election.

China expressed anger yesterday after a US Navy destroyer sailed near islands claimed by China in the disputed South China Sea, saying it resolutely opposed an operation that it called a threat to its sovereignty.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad yesterday described Jews as "hook-nosed" and blamed them for creating the troubles in the Middle East.

Indonesia is in a race against time to save victims of a devastating earthquake and tsunami on Sulawesi island, the government said yesterday, as the official death toll rose to more than 1,300 and looting fuelled fears of lawlessness.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday replaced his defence minister in a cabinet reshuffle that otherwise left key government positions largely unchanged.

South Korea’s Incheon Airport aims to expand the biometrics iris scanning technology to identify all general airport users by as early as 2020.

Indonesian rescue workers have discovered the bodies of 34 students killed when a mudslide caused by Friday's quake on Sulawesi island engulfed their church, a local rescue official says.

The two Koreas yesterday started to remove landmines along a section of their heavily fortified border as part of a summit deal to ease

Four people have been killed in a powerful typhoon that battered Japan over the weekend, local media reported yesterday, as the storm's aftermath brought travel chaos to Tokyo.

Japan's largest warship, the Kaga helicopter carrier, sailed into Sri Lanka's Colombo harbour this weekend, marking Tokyo's highest profile salvo in a diplomatic battle with China for influence along the region's vital commercial sea lanes.

China wants to deepen mutually beneficial cooperation with the Maldives, President Xi Jinping said in a congratulatory message to the newly elected Maldivian president, the leader of an opposition that has vowed to review Chinese projects.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in received a pair of North Korean indigenous hunting dogs from Pyongyang, his office said yesterday,

A maldivian court Sunday granted bail to jailed former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the country's longest-serving leader, a week

Singapore's Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said Myanmar should start repatriating the Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh, and

An Indonesian air traffic controller is being posthumously hailed as a hero for refusing to leave his post despite devastating earthquakes

A powerful typhoon pummelled Japan's southern island of Okinawa yesterday, injuring at least 17, as weather officials warned the storm would rip through the Japanese archipelago over the weekend.

China and Russia denounced the use of "blackmail" Friday in thinly-veiled rebukes of President Donald Trump, highlighting the chasm between the US and its rivals on issues ranging from trade to the war in Syria.

The Rohingya issue should not be complicated, expanded or "internationalised", China's top diplomat said, as the United Nations prepares to set up a body to prepare evidence of human rights abuses in Myanmar.

The North Korean underground nuclear bomb test last year set off a series of aftershocks over a period of eight months, a study has found.