Over 200 passengers and crew were plucked to safety after the Mercraft 3 keeled over in heavy seas en route to a remote island, officials said."The wind suddenly picked up and the boat was forced to stop when the bow started taking in water.

Philippine officials are investigating whether three deaths were linked to an anti-dengue vaccine that the country's regulators have suspended, health officials said Thursday.More than 830,000 Filipino schoolchildren were injected with Sanofi's Dengvaxia vaccine last year in the world's first public dengue immunisation programme.The Philippine government suspended its sale and distribution this month after the French company warned it could worsen symptoms for people who had no

Throughout the whole year, a number of independent media outlets in Cambodia have been shut down for various reasons given by the government.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the military to suspend operations against communist rebels over Christmas, the government said Wednesday, despite ending peace talks and branding the insurgents "terrorists"."This unilateral ceasefire would lessen the apprehension of the public this Christmas season," Duterte's spokesman Harry Roque said in a statement, adding the government expects the rebels to make "a similar gesture of goodwill".The &quot

The commander of the Philippine Navy was abruptly sacked Tuesday in a surprise move which a legislator and news reports linked to a dispute about a contract for warships.Vice Admiral Ronald Joseph Mercado was replaced by Rear Admiral Robert Empedrad in compliance with "the instructions from higher authorities", said military spokesman Colonel Edgard Arevalo."The reason for this change of command will be explained in due time," Arevalo said in a statement.The navy spokesman

Two Myanmar journalists working for an international newswire who have not been heard from since they were arrested last week should be immediately released, the EU demanded Tuesday.The sudden detention of reporters Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, who work for Reuters, has spread fears about diminishing press freedoms in Myanmar, where Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government is under growing global pressure over human rights abuses.The two men, who have been held incommunicado since Dec

Myanmar's army says it is investigating a mass grave found in a village in northern Rakhine state, a region where the UN has accused troops of committing atrocities against Rohingya Muslims.Northern Rakhine has been nearly emptied of its Muslim population since late August, when an army crackdown on Rohingya rebels sent more than 655,000 refugees fleeing across the border to Bangladesh.

For decades the Rohingya have been denied recognition in Myanmar but the persecuted minority is close to securing a crucial symbol of their identity – their own unique digital alphabet.The language of the stateless Muslim people has been included in the planned upgrade to the Unicode Standard, the global coding system that turns written script into digital characters and numbers.It would allow the Rohingya to write emails, send texts and post on social media in their own language – a major st

As the world continues to be fixated on nuclear tensions in the Korean Peninsula, lesser attention has been devoted to China and their island building activities in the disputed South China Sea area.Beijing claims nearly all of the sea and according to a report by Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), has been turning reefs in the Spratly and Paracel chains into islands, installing military facilities and equipment on them.In a feature published last Thursday, AMTI said that Beijing e

Indonesia is set to lose its first and only female constitutional justice, whose term is up next year, potentially dealing a blow to women’s rights in a country where they’re being challenged in the face of growing religious conservatism.Maria Farida Indrati will end her second and final term in about eight months, leaving the nine-member board of justices entirely male on one of the two highest courts in the country – where cases on discrimination, domestic violence, early-age marriage and f