Tens of millions of Filipinos go to the polls on 9 May to pick a successor to President Rodrigo Duterte and separately elect a vice president.Voter surveys show the son and namesake of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos is on the verge of victory in the crowded presidential race of 10 contenders.His running-mate and first daughter Sara Duterte leads the pack of nine vice presidential hopefuls.The following are the top contenders:Ferdinand Marcos Jr Ferdinand Marcos Junior, nicknamed &q

Myanmar has condemned as “irresponsible and reckless” a Malaysian proposal for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to engage with the National Unity Government (NUG) established by those the military removed from power in the February 2021 coup in an effort to resolve the country’s protracted political crisis.Foreign ministers from ASEAN are due to meet later this week with little progress on Myanmar where more than 1,800 people have been killed and thousands arrested in a mili

Pfizer executives said Tuesday they are confident of strong demand for the company's COVID-19 antiviral treatment amid easing pandemic rules as the big drugmaker reported another round of strong earnings.The United States (US) pharmaceutical giant, reporting surging first-quarter profits based on a big jump in revenues from its COVID-19 vaccine, said its Paxlovid treatment for the virus would be a valuable means for governments to limit the severity of outbreaks as they ease social dista

Nearly 40 years after the Philippines began hunting for the billions of dollars plundered during former dictator Ferdinand Marcos's regime, much of the loot is still missing and no one in the family has been jailed.There are fears the rest may never be found if his son and namesake wins next week's presidential poll, which would put him in charge of the government agency leading the global search.The elder Marcos, his flamboyant wife Imelda, and their cronies are estimated to have s

In the middle of the night, Shanghai resident Lucy said she and her neighbours were forced into buses and taken hundreds of kilometres away from the locked-down Chinese metropolis to a makeshift quarantine centre.Most of Shanghai's 25 million residents have been confined to their homes for weeks as the city battles a major COVID outbreak.

Police and protesters clashed in Turkey and France during May Day rallies on Sunday, as tens of thousands marched across the world in support of workers' rights.Turkish riot police detained scores of demonstrators in Istanbul, pinning some of them to the ground and dragging them away from the rally, which the governor's office said was unauthorised.And rallies in Paris quickly turned violent as youths clashed with police on the side-lines and buildings were vandalised, though unions

Restaurants across Beijing will temporarily ban dining-in and residents will need clear COVID tests to visit public spaces, officials said Saturday, in a major ramp up of virus controls at the start of the Labour Day holiday.The five-day break is typically one of China's busiest travel periods, but the country's worst COVID resurgence since early in the pandemic is expected to keep people home.Faced with the highly transmissible Omicron variant, Chinese officials have doubled down o

"Ukraine and its allies, including London, are threatening Russia for the last 1,000 years, to move NATO to our borders, to cancel our culture – they have bullied us for many, many years."That is what Yevgeny Popov, a member of the Russian Duma (parliament) and an influential TV host in Russia, told the BBC's Ukrainecast on 19 April.

April was, by all accounts, a cruel month for the residents of Shanghai.As an Omicron-induced outbreak of COVID-19 swept across China’s biggest city, millions of people were confined to their homes.

Philippines presidential election frontrunner Ferdinand Marcos Junior rejected on Friday a challenge to debate rival Leni Robredo one-on-one, as the country heads into the final week of campaigning for the 9 May polls.Marcos Jr, son and namesake of the country's former dictator, has snubbed invitations to participate in debates with rivals, rarely gives media interviews and often ignores journalists' questions at rallies.He has sought to avoid a repeat of the 2016 vice-presidential