South Korean president Moon Jae-in said yesterday he is confident a diplomatic thaw between Washington and Pyongyang will continue, despite "bumps and bruises" on the path to denuclearising the Korean peninsula.

An explosion at a chemical plant in southwest China left 19 dead and injured another 12, authorities said yesterday, the latest industrial accident in a country where lax regulations often lead to tragedy.

Officials of the Thai Royal Navy SEAL narrate how they planned and conducted the rescue operation for 12 boys and their soccer coach inside a cave complex in Thailand's mountainous north meticulously - but quickly, as more rains threatened.

After their traumatic ordeal deep inside a dark and flooded mountain cave, Thailand’s 12 rescued boys and their young soccer coach will now have to navigate a fresh challenge: Fame.

Japan risks more severe weather and must find ways to alleviate disasters, a government spokesman says, as intense heat and water shortages raised fear of disease among survivors of last week’s floods and landslides.

The water pumps fail, and Commander Chaiyananta Peeranarong heard shouts of alarm as the final stage of an unprecedented operation to rescue 12 Thai boys and their coach from a flooded cave almost tips into disaster.

A cave complex in Thailand where 12 schoolboys and their soccer coach were trapped for more than two weeks before they were safely brought out will be turned into a museum to showcase the rescue, the head of the operation says.

The Canadian High Commission has presented birthday boy Dr Mahathir Mohamad a photograph of his meeting with the young Justin Trudeau in 1982.

The Thai Navy SEAL Facebook page releases a video clip that shows for the first time how the 13 Mu Pa Academy football team members were evacuated from the Tham Luang cave.

The United Nations' humanitarian chief said yesterday he had seen "clear evidence" of need in North Korea -- where one fifth of children are malnourished -- during a rare trip.

The first video of the Thai boys rescued from a flooded cave after 17 days is released, showing them smiling and waving from their hospital beds, looking thin but fine after an ordeal that has gripped the world.

English Premier League side Manchester United invites the Wild Boars football team, like the Chilean miners rescued in 2010, to visit Old Trafford following their dramatic rescue.

A video clip shows the moment last night when Thai Navy Seal divers, who had accompanied the last members to be rescued from deep in the Chiang Rai's flooded cave complex, leave the cave, with army medic Dr Pak Loharnshoon being the last person to get out.

The United States says it is tightening the distribution of visas to Myanmar and Laos after both countries refused to accept their citizens deported from the country.

The death toll in a suicide bombing at an election rally in northwestern Pakistan rises to 20 as Taliban militants claimed responsibility, officials say, in the first major attack ahead of July 25 polls.

Liu Xia, the widow of Chinese Nobel dissident Liu Xiaobo who had been under de facto house arrest in China, left the country yesterday en route to Germany, according to friends.

Rescue workers carried out house-to-house searches yesterday in the increasingly unlikely hope of finding survivors after days of deadly floods and landslides that have claimed 156 lives in Japan's worst weather-related disaster for decades.

The boys who were rescued from a flooded cave in northern Thailand have been given a clean bill of health by doctors.

World leaders and football stars joined the global outpouring of relief and congratulations at the astounding rescue of a young football team and their coach from a flooded Thai cave. Here are some of the reactions.

Rescuers free the last four of 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach from deep inside a flooded cave, a successful end to a perilous mission that gripped the world for more than two weeks.