Dialogue between Myanmar’s junta and ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to end the bloody crisis unleashed by the toppling of her government last year is “not impossible”, a junta spokesman told AFP yesterday.

President Xi Jinping hailed China’s rule over Hong Kong on Friday as he led 25th anniversary celebrations of the city’s handover from Britain, insisting that democracy was flourishing despite a years-long political crackdown that has silenced dissent. 

Plunging casino revenues in Macau, the world's largest gambling hub, are taking a heavy toll on the wider economy, forcing hundreds of businesses to close down and pushing unemployment to its highest level since 2009.

More than 100 Hindu families have fled Kashmir as panic spread after the killing of a Hindu school teacher in India's only Muslim-majority region, a community leader said on Wednesday.

A 22-year-old Bangladeshi woman swam through the Sundarbans forest for an hour to cross into India and marry her lover in Kolkata. She ended up in jail after the wedding, Indian media reports today said.

India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) today summoned opposition Congress party president Sonia Gandhi and her son, lawmaker Rahul Gandhi, for questioning in a money laundering case linked to the National Herald newspaper, officials said.

Shanghai sprung back to life on Wednesday after two months of bitter isolation under a ruthless COVID-19 lockdown, with people driving cars again or cramming into trains and buses to go back to work, hoping to never go through a similar ordeal again.

A bomb blast killed one person and injured nine others in a busy district of central Yangon yesterday, a Myanmar police source told AFP.

China has made the second largest incursion into Taiwan’s air defence zone this year with Taipei reporting 30 jets entering the area, including more than 20 fighters.

As China's yuan climbs rapidly to its strongest levels in six years against the currencies of the country's trading partners, a notable absence of concern and intervention by the authorities is unnerving investors.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday questioned how a local TMC leader and chairman of Jhalda municipality in Purulia district develop a “huge, bulging belly” and advised him to “shed the fat”.

China has made the second largest incursion into Taiwan’s air defense zone this year with Taipei reporting 30 jets entering the area, including more than 20 fighters.

Five Indian nationals, who had entered Bangladesh illegally and had been imprisoned, were released this morning from Kurigram district jail.

The bodies of all 22 people, including 19 passengers and three crew members, who were on board a plane that crashed into a Himalayan mountainside in Nepal two days ago have been recovered, an official said on Tuesday.

Nepal authorities yesterday recovered or located the bodies of all but one of 22 people who were on board a plane that crashed into a Himalayan mountainside on Sunday, officials said, and the government has formed a panel to investigate the incident.

A record one billion methamphetamine pills were seized in East and Southeast Asia last year, the UN said yesterday, as crime gangs exploited the Covid-19 pandemic and instability in coup-hit Myanmar to boost their activities.

Ten Pacific island nations yesterday rebuffed China’s push for a wide-ranging regional security pact, amid worries the proposal was designed to pull them into Beijing’s orbit.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Hong Kong’s next leader John Lee in Beijing, state media said yesterday, telling the former security chief that he has the full trust of the central government.

A Beijing man has landed thousands of his neighbours in quarantine after he ignored an order to stay at home and later tested positive for Covid, prompting a police investigation.

Rescuers searching a mountainside in Nepal on Monday recovered the bodies of 17 of the 22 people who were on board a plane that crashed a day earlier, officials said.