There is a “very low” chance that the government will be able to retrieve the $81 million stolen from the Bangladesh central bank because the money is now likely outside the country, Philippine senator says.

Stocks, emerging market currencies and oil all rallied in Asia after Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen lowered her expectations for US interest rate hikes this year.

The US has called on North Korea to immediately release an American student sentenced to 15 years' hard labour for crimes against the state.

A small artificial earthquake has been detected in North Korea, according to South Korean officials who say it was probably due to "blasting work".

Businesses and industries, already reeling from a financially challenging environment, say they are being hit hard by the freeze on new foreign workers.

A South Korean Go grandmaster on Sunday scored his first win over a Google-developed supercomputer, in a surprise victory after three humiliating defeats in a high-profile showdown between man and machine.

As North Korea grappled with a massive famine in the 1990s, scientists were working at an elite institute to find ways to boost then leader Kim Jong-il's longevity - and his libido, a defector says.

The Malaysia government has decided to halt the recruitment of new foreign workers into the country, said Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.

Bangladesh is going to be the part of a joint initiative to establish a regional body in South Asia to enhance skills and capacity development of public sector officials and bankers.

In remote central Indonesia, Bone-Bone looks like any other rural hamlet in the archipelago, but it is an unlikely champion in the fight against smoking in one of the world's most tobacco-addicted countries, after it became the first village in Indonesia to impose a total ban on smoking.

Japan is marking the fifth anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that left more than 18,000 dead or missing.

Total solar eclipse sweeps across vast Indonesian archipelago, marked by ecstatic sky gazers cheering the spectacle, devout Muslims kneeling in prayer and tribespeople performing rituals.

North Korea warns of "indiscriminate" nuclear strikes on the US and South Korea as they begin their largest ever military drills.

China's National People's Congress has set the country's growth target for 2016 in a range of 6.5 percent -7 percent.

Kim Jong-un says North Korea's nuclear weapons should be ready for use "at any time", state media report.

Wildlife monitoring network Traffic finds hundreds of protected animals for sale on Facebook groups in Malaysia, including sun bears, gibbons, and binturongs, also known as bearcats.

South Korean defence ministry claims that North Korea fired several short-range projectiles into the sea.

New census figures in Japan show the population has shrunk by nearly one million in the past five years, in the first decline registered since 1920.

Beijing overtakes New York as the city with the highest number of billionaires for the first time, a new report by China-based firm Hurun says.

Beijing is installing radar facilities on its artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea, an American think tank has said, in a move analysts warned would "exponentially improve" the country's monitoring capacities.