Cruises are enjoying a boom fuelled in part by hordes of Chinese tourists taking to the high seas, but green groups warn a wave of hulking new liners may cause environmental devastation.Gone are the days when cruising was the preserve of retirees, who would while away the hours lounging in deckchairs, playing bingo or taking part in formal dinner-dances.Modern liners resemble floating, futuristic cities capable of carrying thousands of passengers, where robot bartenders serve drinks and passe

China demanded Tuesday that the United States (US) "immediately cancel" a potential sale of US$2.2 billion in arms to self-ruled Taiwan, including battle tanks and anti-aircraft missiles, adding fuel to tensions between the two powers.The US later shrugged off China's complaints, responding that the equipment would contribute to "peace and stability" in Asia.The sale would be the first transfer of big-ticket US military gear to the democratically-governed island in de

United States (US) President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping may have agreed at the Group of Twenty (G20) summit in Osaka to resume trade negotiations, but the path to ending the trade war remains far from clear.

The United States (US) Department of Homeland Security has fined several companies for evading President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imports from China by rerouting them through Cambodia’s Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SSEZ).

Malaysia's religious affairs minister came under fire Monday for describing a camp in China where ethnic Uighurs are held as a "vocational and training institution" during a visit.Chinese authorities have placed an estimated one million mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in internment camps that Beijing claims are needed to steer people away from extremism.On the seven-day trip to China last week, a picture was posted on Mujahid Yusof Rawa's Facebook page of people sitting at

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to jail critics if they try to impeach him, as he faces accusations of defending Beijing after a boat crash in the disputed South China Sea.Duterte enjoys firm popular backing but his setting aside of the standoff with China over the resource-rich waterway is criticised as weakness by some in the Philippines.The issue has flared up since a Chinese fishing trawler hit and sank a Filipino boat on 9 June near Reed Bank, an area that is within M

World leaders gathered in Japan Friday for one of the most high-stakes and fractious Group of Twenty (G20) meetings in years, with a bruising United States (US)-China trade war, geopolitical tensions, and climate change on the agenda.The two-day summit in the city of Osaka will be dominated by trade issues, with all eyes on whether US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping can reach a truce in a dispute that has been hugely damaging for the world economy.But world leaders wil

When Sam Sok took a $6-a-day job as a construction labourer in Sihanoukville she knew it could be dangerous, but the deaths of 28 workers in a building collapse – with her nephew among the missing – has laid bare the risks many like her face to earn a living. She left her eight-year-old son with neighbours more than 100 kilometres (62 miles away), one of thousands pushed by poverty seeking to cash in on the once sleepy seaside town's Chinese-funded construction boom. Th

Seven people, including five Chinese nationals, have been charged with manslaughter or as accomplices to manslaughter in connection with a building collapse in Cambodia that killed 28 people and sparked anger over shoddy construction regulations.The collapse of a seven-storey, under-construction Chinese building in the resort town of Sihanoukville on Saturday is the deadliest industrial accident in recent memory in Cambodia. A close Beijing ally, Cambodia has seen an influx of invest

Two men were pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed Cambodian building on Monday, more than two days after a construction site accident that left at least 28 dead.Hopes that more survivors would be found under the debris had all but faded, but against the odds two people were cut free from the tangled wreckage and carried out alive."I heard the sound of rescuers, I called for help but they didn't hear me," Ros Sitha, one of the two found alive on Monday, said. &qu