Asia

    Rescuers raced to find additional survivors after a powerful, shallow earthquake struck southern Taiwan before dawn Saturday and collapsed a high-rise residential complex, killing at least seven people and sending scores to hospital. Rescuers pulled 249 survivors from the rubble in the worst-hit Tainan city, and about eight people remained unaccounted for. More than 1,200 firefighters scrambled with ladders, cranes and other equipment to the ruins of a 17-floor residential building that folded like an accordion. Local media said the building included a care center for newborns and mothers, and a newborn was among the dead in the disaster, which came two days ahead of the Lunar New Year celebrations that are the most important family holiday in the Chinese calendar. Most peo...

    The Afghan government declared Wasil Ahmad a hero for leading a militia’s defense against a Taliban siege last year, parading him in front of cameras in a borrowed police uniform too big for him. On Monday, the Taliban triumphantly announced that they had assassinated him with two bullets to the head. Wasil Ahmad was 10 years old. He was gunned down in Tirin Kot city, the capital of southern Oruzgan Province, just a few months after leaving militia life and enrolling in school as a fourth grader. Wasil’s story is a painful example of how child combatants continue to be a part of life in Afghanistan, both in the ranks of pro-government forces and among the Taliban insurgents. Rafiullah Baidar, a spokesman for the Afghan independent human rights commission, said that despite...

    A Scottish man has died after being gored by an elephant in Thailand, local press has reported. Gareth Crowe, 36, and his 16-year-old daughter had been riding the animal when it apparently turned on its handler on the island of Koh Samui. The Bangkok Post said the 13-year-old elephant, called Golf, became agitated when its handler stopped in a forested area to take pictures, hitting the handler with its trunk before stabbing him in the torso with a tusk, causing serious injuries. It then threw Mr Crowe and his daughter from its back, trampling on Mr Crowe and goring him with its tusk, killing him instantly. His daughter was treated in hospital after sustaining minor injuries. When the incident was over, the elephant ran off into the forest. It had reportedly appeared upset...

    A note from mom can make a basic school lunch seem much more special, and one mother who recently came to the end of her lunch-making career left her son a note that ‘s been reducing Internet users to tears. According to Rocket News 24, a Japanese high school student named Yuki opened his lunch on the last day of high school before graduation to find the same type of bento his mother had been making him every day for his entire school career. Now he was graduating, though, and his mother realised that this would be the last bento she’d be making him. The note was so moving that Yuki took a picture of the note and posted it to Twitter, saying that it was his last day of high school and his mother had sent him this note with the bento. According to Rocket News 24’s translatio...

    A cold snap sweeping across East Asia has led to more than 50 deaths in Taiwan and stranded at least 60,000 tourists in South Korea. Taiwanese media reported a rash of deaths from hypothermia and cardiac disease following a sudden drop in temperature over the weekend. Meanwhile heavy snow forced the closure of the airport on the Korean holiday island of Jeju, cancelling flights. The cold spell has also hit Hong Kong, southern China and Japan. Unusually low temperatures Many of those who died in Taiwan were elderly people living in northern regions such as Taipei, Kaohsiung and Taoyuan. The north saw an unusually low temperature of 4C (39F) on Sunday. Authorities have warned people, especially senior citizens, to keep warm and stay out of the cold. In South Korea, more than...

    Twenty-seven male Bangladeshis working in Singapore have been arrested for supporting the armed jihad ideology of terrorist groups such as Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda. Some of them had considered waging armed jihad overseas, but they were not planning any terrorist attacks in Singapore, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said today. The men, who were working in the construction industry here, were detained arrested under the Inter-nal Security Act (ISA) between November 16 and December 1 last year. Of the 27, 26 were members of a closed religious study group that subscribed to extremist beliefs and teachings of radical figures like Anwar al-Awlaki, an American and Yemeni Islamic lecturer alleged to have ties with militant group al-Qaeda. Awlaki was killed in a drone st...

    At least 30 people have been killed and more than 50 wounded in a gun attack on a university in Pakistan. Four armed men in suicide vests opened fire at the Bacha Khan University campus in Charsadda, in the north-west of the country. The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the killings. Local media reports the attack appeared to have begun at a hostel for male students, although the victims include both men and women. The gunmen climbed over a wall to reach the building at around 9.30am local time (4.30am GMT), before firing indiscriminately on students and staff. “They were directly shooting at the heads of the students,” one student named Naseer told The Guardian. Eyewitness reports suggest that grenades or suicide bombings may have also formed part of the a...

    North Korean scientists claim to have invented the world’s first hangover-free alcohol, adding that drinkers love it because it makes them look suave. The liquor is said to have been made from the plant extract ginseng, which Pyongyang officials have previously declared the elixir of life and falsely claimed to be a cure for SARS and Aids. Called Koryo Liquor, the drink is made at the state-run Taedonggang Foodstuff Factory where scientists have been working for years to replace the alcohol in sugar with burnt rice. They have now declared the process a success, saying that after years of working on different formulas they have finally stopped the drink being unpalatably bitter – with the added unexpected bonus of the drink being hangover-free. Koryo Liquor, which is made o...

    A 15-year-old Pakistani boy cut off his own hand believing he had committed blasphemy, only to be celebrated by his parents and neighbours for the act, police told AFP Friday. Local police chief Nausher Ahmed described how an imam told a gathering at a village mosque that those who love the Prophet Mohammad always say their prayers, then asked who among the crowd had stopped praying. Mohammad Anwar, 15, raised his hand by mistake after apparently mishearing the question. The crowd swiftly accused him of blasphemy so he went to his house and cut off the hand he had raised, put it on a plate, and presented it to the cleric, the police chief said. The incident took place at a village in Hujra Shah Muqeem district, some 125 kilometres (77 miles) south of Lahore, the capital of...

    Suicide attackers struck the Indonesian capital Thursday, with a series of explosions and gunfire that tore through a Starbucks cafe and shook an embassy district in the Muslim-majority nation. At least seven people were known to have died -- including two who police said blew themselves up in the area which is also overlooked by United Nations offices, in what the country's president dubbed "acts of terror". An unknown number of gunmen were involved in the blasts, including at a police post that left four mangled bodies lying in the road. "Five terrorists are dead," Security Minister Luhut Panjaitan told reporters. He said that one Indonesian and one Dutch citizen had died, but the Dutch embassy said only that one of its nationals was wounded and being treated in hospital...