The Kremlin yesterday said a deal to create a buffer zone in Syria's Idlib was going ahead, despite jihadists missing a deadline to leave the area the day before. The accord is a last-ditch effort to stave off a regime onslaught on Idlib, the largest rebel stronghold left in war-ravaged Syria.

Chinese authorities yesterday slapped penalties totalling a whopping $1.3 billion on a pharmaceutical company over a vaccine scandal that fuelled public fears of domestically-made medicine.

China yesterday issued an ardent defence of the alleged mass internment of minorities in its far west Xinjiang region, with a regional official insisting that authorities are preventing terrorism through "vocational education" centres.

North and South Korea yesterday agreed to begin reconnecting rail and road links, another step in an improving relationship that has raised US concern about the possible undermining of its bid to press the North to give up its nuclear programme.

Giant owaraji straw sandals have been newly made and will be dedicated to Sensoji temple in Taito Ward, Tokyo.

An ultra-nationalist monk -- dubbed the "Buddhist Bin Laden" -- condemns the international community for their calls to bring Myanmar's generals to justice over the Rohingya crisis.

China attracts the highest number of tourists in the region with a record number of inflow of 59.27 million people in the year 2016.

All nine members of a South Korean climbing expedition are confirmed dead after a violent snowstorm devastated their camp on Nepal's Mount Gurja, one of the deadliest mountaineering accidents to hit the Himalayan nation in recent years.

Indonesian state-owned train maker PT Industri Kereta Api (Inka) says Bangladesh orders 250 extra strong train cars from the company.

Shinzo Abe will pay the first visit to China by a Japanese prime minister since 2011 later this month, Beijing announced yesterday, in the

South Korean President Moon Jae-in yesterday called on the United States to move towards the nuclear-armed North's demands for a declaration the Korean War is over, as the allies pursue increasingly different approaches towards Pyongyang.

Critics say that, despite improvements at a national level in disaster management since a devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, local authorities often lack know-how and equipment, and so rescue efforts are delayed until the military can reach the area.

The chief priest at Japan's controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo will quit after "highly inappropriate language" criticising the emperor was leaked to a magazine, the shrine said yesterday. The shrine has frequently been at the centre of rows with Asian neighbours that suffered from Japan's wartime atrocities.

Sri Lanka rejected on Wednesday US claims that China might establish a "forward military base" at a strategic port leased to Beijing by the indebted Indian Ocean island nation. Sri Lanka last year granted a 99-year lease on the Hambantota deep-sea port to Beijing, after it was unable to repay Chinese loans for the $1.4-billion project.

Malaysia's cabinet agrees to abolish the death penalty, a senior minister says, with more than 1,200 people on death row set to win a reprieve following a groundswell of opposition to capital punishment.

Three people are killed and houses are damaged after a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck off East Java province and Bali at around 2:00.

Chinese authorities have launched a campaign against halal products in the name of fighting extremism in the capital of Xinjiang, the fractious northwest region where Muslims are facing a raft of religious restrictions.

The gentle whirring of the wind turbine speaks volumes of Bhutan's record as the world's only carbon negative country, but major challenges stand in the way of the Himalayan kingdom's decision to follow a green path over rampant economic expansion.

The landmark UN report on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius was released in South Korea yesterday after a week-long meeting of the 195-nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Here are key findings, grounded in some 6,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies:

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said yesterday North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was ready to allow international inspectors into the North's nuclear and missile testing sites, one of the main sticking points over an earlier denuclearisation pledge.