Asia

    A small plane crashed in Nepal on Wednesday in bad weather, killing all 23 people on board, a police official said, the country's second air disaster in as many years. The Twin Otter aircraft, operated by private Tara Air, was on a flight from Pokhara, 125 km (80 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu, to Jomsom when it lost contact with the control tower. "It has broken into pieces," police officer Bishwaraj Khadka told Reuters from Myagdi, the town nearest the crash site. "There are no survivors." A Chinese national and a Kuwaiti citizen were among the dead. Officials said thick fog had enveloped the Mustang area where Jomsom is located. Mustang is a popular hiking area on the Mount Annapurna trekking circuit. A similar aircraft crashed in west Nepal in 2014, killing 18 p...

    A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was singed between Bangladesh and Malaysia on Thursday to send 15 lakh Bangladeshi workers to the county under the government to government plus (G2G plus) agreement. Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister of Bangladesh Nurul Islam BSc and Human Resources Minister of Malaysia Dato Seri Richard Riot signed the MoU on behalf of their respective countries at a ceremony at the ministry in the morning. After the signing of the deal, Nurul Islam BSc said Malaysia will recruit Bangladeshi workers in all sec-tors, including infrastructure, agriculture, plantation and manufacturing, adding the recruitment pro-cess will start very soon. The total cost for going to Malaysia from Bangladesh through working visa has been fixed at Tk 34...

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered preparations for launching ISIS-style terror attacks on South Korea, Seoul's spy agency claims. The warning comes as tensions between the rival nations grow after Pyongyang's recent nuclear test and rocket launch. In a private briefing to ruling Saenuri Party members, the National Intelligence Service said the North's spy agency has begun work to implement the order to "actively muster capabilities" to carry out cyber and other attacks on South Korea, North Korea has a history of attacks on South Korea, such as the 2010 shelling on an island that killed four South Koreans and the 1987 bombing of a South Korean passenger plane that killed all 115 people on board. During the briefing, the NIS said the attacks could target anti-Pyon...

    China has placed surface-to-air missile equipment on one of the disputed islands in the South China Sea, newly published satellite images appear to show. Tensions in the region could rise after two batteries of eight missile launchers and a radar system were deployed to Woody Island in the past week according to images taken by the private company Image Sat International. The mages were first published by Fox News. The missile move has been confirmed by Taiwan which also claims sovereignty of the island. Maj Gen David Lo told Reuters news agency that Taiwan “will closely watch subsequent developments.” Interested parties should work together to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea region and refrain from taking any unilateral measures that would increase ten...

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un greets North Korea's female soccer team as they arrive at Pyongyang International Airport on Monday after winning the 2015 EAFF East Asian Cup. The leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, has built a visitors centre in an attempt to attract more tourists. The repressive state currently receives around 100,000 leisure visitors every year; most of them Chinese in tour groups. However, to try and increase the number of visitors, Kim Jong-un has invested £7 million in a hub for tourists, according to the Mirror. In addition, border controls are to be relaxed for day trips between Dandong in China and Sinuiji in the north-west North Korea. At a cost of £83 per person, the day trips also come with numerous rules for their conduct while inside the secr...

    UK British tourist refused entry to Thailand after using passport as loo roll A British tourist has been refused entry into Thailand because she ripped pages out of her passport to use as toilet paper on a night out. Faye Wilson, 28, a hairdresser from the Lake District, was escorted all the way back to the UK by a security guard after being turned back at the airport by immigration. She said that she and a friend had used the passport pages as toilet paper when they'd got caught short a few years earlier. Faye, who had been planning on spending a month in Thailand before working in Australia for a year, had caught a connecting flight to Bangkok from Dubai. She said she didn't even have the chance to explain why her passport pages were missing before she was turned away. S...

    The passenger, believed to be a man who was travelling with his wife and child, passed away while flying from New Delhi to Singapore on Wednesday. The incident is reportedly being investigated by police, according to The Straits Times. The passenger, believed to be a 34-year-old Indian national, was pronounced dead on the flight by doctors, the website reported. A source speaking to Channel NewsAsia said the passenger was a male and had been with wife and child. But a Singapore Airlines spokesperson did not confirm whether the passenger had been travelling with their family and said further details regarding the incident could not be shared “for privacy purposes”. The spokesperson told the website: “We can confirm with regret that a passenger had passed away on flight SQ40...

    Sushil Koirala, a former Nepalese prime minister and leader of nation's largest political party, has died in Kathmandu. He was 78. His doctor, Karbir Nath Yogi, said Tuesday that Koirala died due to complications from pneumonia and respiratory failure. Koirala was a key figure in adoption of Nepal's new constitution last September. After ethnic Madhesis later blocked border points with India and imposed a general strike in south Nepal to protest against the constitution, Koirala attempted to resolve the issue by negotiating with the protesters. Koirala spent his life in politics fighting for democracy in Nepal and led protests in 2006 that ended a centuries-old monarchy system and turned Nepal into a republic. His politics meant he was always in trouble with the country's k...

    North Korea fires rocket into space North Korea has defied international warnings and launched a long-range rocket carrying what it has said is a satellite. The rocket took off at around 9am Pyongyang time from the North's west coast, according to South Korea's defence ministry. In a state TV broadcast, a female North Korean announcer, wearing a traditional dress, said the "epochal" launch, personally ordered by leader Kim Jong-Un, had "successfully put our Earth observation satellite ... into orbit". Japan's NHK broadcaster reported that debris from the rocket was believed to have fallen about 155 miles (250km) off the southwest coast of the Korean Peninsula into the East China Sea about 14 minutes after the launch. North Korea launched a long-range missile on Feb. 7, 201...

    Air strikes have destroyed a radio station run by Islamic State jihadists in eastern Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday, two months after the group took to the airwaves in a sign of their growing reach. The Pashto-language "Voice of the Caliphate" beamed IS propaganda in irregularnightly broadcasts from an undisclosed location in Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan. The Afghan defence ministry said the programme was broadcast from a moving vehicle and air strikes on Monday destroyed the transmission equipment hidden in the basement of a house in volatile Achin district. "The radio programme has not been heard since Tuesday," Achin district governor Haji Ghalib told AFP. "It was very demoralising for our troops and it is welcome news that it has been destroyed." The gr...