Asia

    A new horizon of cooperation in space and telecommunication among the South Asian nations is going to be opened up as the much-awaited South Asia Satellite will be launched on Friday. After the launching of the South Asia Satellite into orbit, the top leaders of the seven South Asian nations will join a videoconferencing from their respective countries. ‘Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will join the videoconferencing from her official Ganabhaban residence in the evening,’ said PM’s Press Secretary Ihsanul Karim. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will participate in the videoconferencing from New Delhi. Besides, the heads of state of Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Nepal and Bhutan are expected to join the videoconferencing from their respective countries, s...

    China has reportedly told its citizens living in North Korea to return home, over fears that tensions between Pyongyang and Washington DC could continue to escalate. The Korea Times reports that the Chinese embassy in North Korea began advising Korean-Chinese residents to return to China last month, over fears the country’s military provocations could lead to retaliation from the US. According to Radio Free Asia, a US-based radio station that broadcasts to Asian countries, the embassy began sending the message to citizens ahead of the 85th anniversary of the Korean People’s Army last month. The radio station quoted a Korean-Chinese man living in Pyongyang who had been contacted by the embassy. Related video: North Korea propaganda video shows missile strike on US Capitol T...

    A Bangladeshi woman was rescued from the brothel in Budhwarpeth, Pune, in December 2015. After her salvage, she had been lured to India under the false pretext of a job, and was instead sold into commercial sex work, had to first find her way home. But now that clearance from her home country to accept her back has come through, she has tweeted a hand-written letter to the Prime Minister to help her convert the Rs 10,000 she had saved in the old denominations to new ones. In her letter to both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and minister of external affairs Sushma Swaraj, the survivor has laid bare her circumstances and how the money she had collected as tips from customers amounting to Rs 10,000 was in the possession of the brothel owners at the time of demonetisation, repor...

    A man who claimed to be the oldest person alive has died aged 146, the family say. Mbah Gotho is understood to have outlived four wives, 10 siblings and all of his children. The Indonesian from Central Java is believed to have checked himself out of hospital six days after being admitted on April 12. The great-great-grandfather then died shortly afterwards after 'refusing' to eat or drink. He died shortly afterwards having "refused" to eat or drink. Mbah hit the headlines last year after presenting documentation showing he was born in December 1870. Remarkably, the "heavy smoker's" papers were recognised by Indonesian officials, who claimed they were valid. If correct, he would have lived significantly longer than the verified oldest person in the world ever - Jeanne Calme...

    Japan’s biggest warship will accompany a U.S. supply vessel in the first such operation since the East Asian country relaxed laws limiting its military activity. Tensions are mounting in the region over North Korea’s missile tests. The U.S. ship has been dispatched to refuel American naval forces in the region, including the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group that North Korea has threatened to sink, the BBC reported. Under conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan has been gradually expanding the role of its heavily-regulated military. The country’s post-World War II constitution means it can only use force in cases of self-defense. A 2015 update expanded this to cover some acts of collective self-defense, such as protecting the equipment of an ally who is defending Ja...

    North Korea warned on Monday that it will carry out a nuclear test at any time and at any location set by its leadership, in the latest rhetoric to fuel jitters in the region. Tensions on the Korean peninsula have been running high for weeks, with signs that the North might be preparing a long-range missile launch or a sixth nuclear test and with Washington refusing to rule out a military strike in response. A spokesman for the North’s foreign ministry said Pyongyang was fully ready to respond to any option taken by the US. The regime will continue bolstering its preemptive nuclear attack capabilities unless Washington scrapped its hostile policies, he said in a statement carried by the state-run KCNA news agency. The DPRK’s measures for bolstering the nuclear force to the...

    A submarine-launched ballistic missile is displayed during a military parade in Pyongyang, North Korea, to celebrate the 105th birth anniversary of Kim Il Sung, the country's late founder and grandfather of current ruler Kim Jong… North Korea fired another ballistic missile early Saturday morning, but it exploded within seconds of being launched, American and South Korean defense officials said. Coinciding with renewed diplomatic and military pressure on North Korea from the Trump administration, this latest launch underscores both Kim Jong Un’s determination to make technical progress on his weapons programs and his defiance amid international pressure. President Trump, who was briefed on the launch soon afterward, took to Twitter to reiterate his expectation that Chinese...

    A North Korean propaganda outlet released a video clip on Thursday showing simulated attacks on the United States and declaring that the enemy to be destroyed is in our sights. The video comes at a particularly tense time in relations between North Korea and the United States, with the Trump administration sending warships to the region in a show of force against Kim Jong Un’s regime. This week, North Korea conducted large-scale artillery drills, showing off conventional weaponry that can easily reach South Korea’s capital, Seoul, the center of a metropolitan region that is home to about 25 million people. President Trump, who has been urging China to apply pressure on North Korea and has warned that his administration will act if Beijing doesn’t, convened members of Congr...

    Pioneering lap band surgery on the world’s heaviest woman in Mumbai has turned nasty. The operation was a success but most of the doctors treating the woman have resigned after her family accused them of lying about her weight loss and ignoring a possible stroke. Eman Ahmed’s family say the 36-year-old, from Alexandria in Egypt, was born weighing 5kg (11lbs) and has lymphedema, a condition that causes body tissue to swell. She had a stroke aged 11 and has been unable to leave the house in 25 years. In February, weighing about 500kg, she was flown to Mumbai for treatment by one of India’s leading bariatric surgeons, Muffazal Lakdawala. Video: Is Instagram Helping People With Dieting? (Wochit News) Unable to attend at the Indian embassy in Cairo, Ahmed was initially denied a...

    North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is one of the great agitators in modern political culture. Known for being temperamental—he is said to have executed his uncle for plotting a coup and unpredictable, Kim has helped give his country the reputation of being a wild card that can capture the attention of the world’s superpowers. Like any powerful leader, Kim was once just a bright young man with homework. At the behest of his father, former supreme leader Kim Jong-il, Kim was schooled in a Swiss boarding school between 1998 and 2000, and the media has often turned to his former classmates to uncover details about his teenage personality. No one has yet discovered his doodled-on yearbook or a prom photo, but his peers did have some other insights. Here’s what we know about Kim ...