When Mary Ann San Jose moved to Sitio Pariahan more than two decades ago, she could walk to the local chapel. Today, reaching it requires a swim. 

The main culprit is catastrophic subsidence caused by groundwater being pumped out from below, often via unregulated wells for homes, factories, and farms catering to a booming population and growing economy.

As megacities emerge across the globe, the ones in Asia remain among the fastest growing and cheapest places to build. These cities will continue to grow in size and affluence, due to ever-increasing urban populations. The United Nations (UN) describe megacities as urban areas with a population of 10 million or more.

In the last three years, the absolute number of people affected by undernourishment or chronic food deprivation globally has been on an increasing trajectory.

It is a brutal 600-kilometre gauntlet during which competitors face searing heat, wild seas, vicious predators, and the threat of kidnapping. 

Only one in 10 will finish.  

This is the MacArthur competition – the Philippines' longest homing pigeon race. It's a tough challenge for the birds and a tense affair for the owners.

For the more or less 10 million people living in Thailand’s capital city of Bangkok, flooding is a common and recurring phenomenon. This is partly due to the city’s geographic location at the southern end of the Chao Phraya River Basin, as well as its low-lying terrain of around 1.5 metres average elevation above mean sea level.

11 women allegedly paid to be surrogate mothers have been released on bail after agreeing to keep their babies, Cambodia's trafficking czar said Wednesday, as the poor Southeast Asian nation seeks to regulate the womb-for-hire trade.

The elephant is a cultural symbol in Lao. This is probably due to the fact that at one period in time, the country was known to have a large number of these mighty mammals roaming its lands free, so much so that before it was ever known as Lao, people used to call parts of the country Lan Xang (Land of a Million Elephants).

The world has 11 years left, as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to beef up its efforts to reduce global temperatures before it crosses the threshold leading to climate catastrophe.

Five moon bears were rescued in August last year from a bile farm near the city of My Tho, located 70 kilometres from Ho Chi Minh City in South Vietnam. The bears, likely captured from the wild, were rescued by the Animals Asia Foundation. They were found confined in barren concrete cells, displaying signs of severe stress after having been in captivity for more than 20 years.

Cambodia’s Beng Per Wildlife Sanctuary is symbolic of the country’s poor forestry management. Around 2,000 square kilometres (sq km) – around three times the size of Singapore – is lost to illegal logging in Cambodia every year where wildlife sanctuaries – despite their name – are not spared.