Taiwan's foreign minister Joseph Wu urged the international community Wednesday to help defend his country and region against "expansionist" Chinese moves, saying Taipei feared Beijing would resort to force.Taiwan was "on the front-line defending democracies from being taken over by the communist China" and needed help from other countries, he told the France 24 TV station.Wu said China "has been intensifying its military threat against Taiwan" in recent yea

Thailand's monarchy is protected by one of the world's toughest royal defamation laws, making any criticism of the powerful King Maha Vajiralongkorn all but impossible inside the country.Some student leaders have called for the abolition of the laws as a pro-democracy movement gathers steam in Thailand.What Is The '112' Law?Under section 112 of Thailand's penal code, anyone convicted of defaming, insulting or threatening the king, queen, heir or regent faces between t

Opposition parties in Myanmar are calling for November's election to be postponed as the country scrambles to control a coronavirus surge.New infections are doubling every week - albeit from a relatively low base - and hospitals in the biggest city, Yangon, are overwhelmed in a nation with one of the world's poorest healthcare systems.The sharp jump comes as Myanmar prepares to hold national elections on 8 November, with leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (

Coronavirus-ravaged economies across the Asia Pacific will make a "swoosh-shaped" recovery next year, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) forecast Tuesday, but it warned that further restrictions to combat the contagion could derail the region's return to growth.Developing Asia - stretching from the Cook Islands in the Pacific to Kazakhstan in Central Asia - is expected to contract in 2020 for the first time in nearly six decades, throwing tens of millions of people into poverty,

Authorities in the Indonesian capital re-imposed a partial coronavirus lockdown Monday and vowed to strictly isolate anyone testing positive for COVID-19 as infections soared in the metropolis.Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan said the city would resume large-scale social restrictions for two weeks starting Monday, calling it a necessary measure to prevent the health system from collapsing. Non-essential businesses are only allowed to operate at 25 percent capacity, restaurants can onl

Cemeteries in the Philippine capital will be closed on All Saints' Day for the first time, officials said Monday, preventing millions in the Catholic-majority country from visiting their dead loved ones as the coronavirus rages.

The United States (US) on Saturday called a decision by Beijing to impose restrictions on all American diplomats on Chinese soil an "escalation," the latest rebuke in an ongoing tit-for-tat dispute over foreign missions.Relations between the world's top two economies have deteriorated in recent months, with both sides locked in fierce recriminations over trade disputes, human rights and the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.On Friday, China announced "reciprocal restrict

When hundreds of Rohingya refugees paid traffickers to escape their squalid camp in Bangladesh, they were promised a new life in Malaysia after just one week at sea.Instead, the group of mostly women and children suffered more than 200 days of terror on the high seas, until they landed this week on Indonesia's northern coast, where they are now back in refugee tents.Beaten by the traffickers, they battled hunger and thirst as storms lashed their wooden vessel, and watched in horror as th

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on 11 March that the outbreak of COVID-19 had become a pandemic. Six months on the virus has cost the lives of over 900,000 people.Back in March the death toll stood at 4,200 from 120,000 cases, with most of the fatalities in the Wuhan region of China where the virus first came to light last December.Those figures were enough to cause concern back then.

President Rodrigo Duterte's pardon of a United States (US) marine convicted of killing a transgender woman should help the Philippines gain access to coronavirus vaccines being developed by American companies, his spokesman said Thursday."I accept the reality that the president is upholding the higher national interest," spokesman Harry Roque said, although he insisted that he was expressing a personal opinion, and not that of Duterte.Duterte sparked controversy earlier this we