US President Donald Trump asked Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takiachi not to further escalate a dispute with China during talks this week, sources with knowledge of the matter said, as he tries to preserve a fragile trade war truce with Beijing.

Hong Kong firefighters yesterday brought under control a huge blaze in an apartment complex that killed at least 75 and left nearly 300 missing, while police said its cause could have been a “grossly negligent” construction firm using unsafe materials.

Flames were still visible in some of the eight-building apartment complex's almost 2,000 units well over 24 hours after the fire broke out

Jail official says Khan is in good health, denies transfer plans

Most of the deaths occurred in the central tea-growing district of Badulla

HK leader says he is considering mandate for metal scaffolding

Another four were killed in a similar manner in the adjoining Nuwara Eliya district.

The death toll from a fire that tore through a Hong Kong apartment complex has risen to 75, the city's government said late on Thursday

The cause of the crash was under investigation

Police arrested three men in connection with the fire

Thailand airlifted patients and flew critical supplies, including oxygen tanks, into a submerged southern city yesterday, as the death toll from some of the region’s worst floods in years climbed to 33.

At least 36 people were killed and 279 were missing yesterday after Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in three decades ripped through high-rise residential towers sheathed in flammable bamboo scaffolding, authorities said.

Massive flames first took hold on bamboo scaffolding on several apartment blocks

The death toll from days of widespread flooding in southern Thailand rose to 33 on Wednesday

China conducted an urgent unmanned spacecraft launch yesterday, after damage to a previous mission’s return capsule left the crew on its space station without a means of getting back to Earth.

Under glaring laboratory lights, a research assistant extends his forearm and carefully inverts a mesh-topped container onto his skin to allow a wriggling mass of bed bugs to feed on his blood, all in the name of science.

The Southeast Asian regional bloc will find it difficult to re-engage with Myanmar even after its upcoming election, the Thai foreign minister said yesterday, calling for the release of the country’s detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Afghanistan’s Taliban administration said yesterday that nine children and a woman were killed in Pakistani air strikes and vowed to respond, ratcheting up tensions between the South Asian neighbours.

Ash clouds from the recent eruption of the Hayli Gubbi volcano in Ethiopia flying at high altitudes are impacting flight operations

Raids follow twin suicide bombings in Peshawar that killed three paramilitary personnel