Amidst the Papal visit to Myanmar, one issue still looms – the humanitarian crisis unfolding at the Rakhine State in Myanmar near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.Rohingya refugees who return to Myanmar following a Bangladesh-Myanmar repatriation agreement will initially have to live in temporary shelters or camps, Dhaka said Saturday."Primarily they will be kept at temporary shelters or arrangements for a limited time," Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.H.

Talks about the “Quad” – a four-way security dialogue between the US, India, Japan and Australia – has resurged since it was first championed by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2007. This time, it centred around the notion of a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”What the term, “Indo-Pacific” popularised by US President Donald Trump during his visit to Asia entails is still not set in stone.

Every day a large number of people consume “fake news” around the region.

Pope Francis plunges into a diplomatic minefield next week with visits to under-fire Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh amid mounting outrage over the plight of persecuted Rohingya Muslims.Some 620,000 Rohingya, more than half their total number, have fled from Myanmar's Rakhine state to Bangladesh since August as a result of violence that the UN and the United States have described as ethnic cleansing.Most of the refugees, a third of them children, have ended up in squalid refugee camp

Myanmar has agreed to take back hundreds and thousands of Muslim Rohingya refugees who’ve been sheltering in neighbouring Bangladesh, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dhaka said in a statement.Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali and Myanmar’s Union Minister U Kyaw Tint Swe signed the bilateral agreement in Myanmar on Thursday, just a day after U.S.

On 23 September, the Islamic State (IS) Al-Hayat media wing released a three-minute propaganda video featuring radicalised Singaporean, Megat Shahdan Abdul Samad. In the video, he urged Muslims to wage religious war – or jihad – in East Asia and bring upon “black days” on “crusaders” here.

Eight warships joined a US aircraft carrier and scores of helicopters and planes Thursday to search for three American sailors who went missing after their plane crashed in the Philippine Sea.The families of the missing sailors were notified after a C-2A "Greyhound" aircraft with 11 people on board went down Wednesday afternoon around 930 kilometres (500 nautical miles) southeast of Okinawa, the US Navy said in a statement.Eight sailors were rescued shortly after the accident and ta

Father William's 16-strong flock on Myanmar's eastern border is one of the Catholic Church's tiniest outposts, but next week they will join a tide of 200,000 faithful in Yangon for a historic mass led by Pope Francis.The Pope, renowned for powerful entreaties for peace no matter how highly-charged the issue, arrives on Monday in a country on the defensive over its treatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority.Some 620,000 Rohingya have been driven from western Rakhine state to Bang

Singapore prides itself as a nation with one of the most efficient public transportation systems in the world. However, that reputation has taken a hit, of late, when a stalled Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) train was rear-ended by another train, injuring 29 commuters.This was the third incident to happen in two months after two separate incidents occurred last month.

A military aircraft with 11 people aboard has crashed into the Philippine Sea while en route to an aircraft carrier, the US said Wednesday, the latest accident to hit its armed forces in East Asia."A United States Navy aircraft carrying 11 crew and passengers crashed into the ocean southeast of Okinawa," a statement from the Navy said."Personnel recovery is under way and their condition will be evaluated by USS Ronald Reagan medical staff."The aircraft was en route to the