Asia

    Recent news reports suggest that the Chinese Communist Party is considering abandoning one of its longest-running and most abusive practices: its reproduction planning policy, commonly known as the one-child policy. The decision comes as the nation faces a number of domestic crises resulting from the policy, from a rapidly aging labor force to severe gender imbalances. Returning reproductive rights to the people, however, does not exempt the Communist Party from responsibility for decades of trauma and murder committed under the euphemistic rubric of population planning. It’s hard to describe the devastation I witnessed. The voices and stories of those suffering will remain with me always. Women were physically and mentally traumatized, families torn apart. Generat...

    A smiling Kim Jong Un has been pictured enjoying a late-night stroll in Singapore ahead of his landmark meeting with Donald Trump. The North Korean dictator was surrounded by heavy security amid reports he was heading to the luxury Marina Bay Sands - a 55-floor hotel with a rooftop bar and infinity pool. Singapore's foreign minster Vivian Balakrishnan tweeted a selfie of himself with Mr Kim during the surprise walkabout. His stroll came just hours before his summit with Donald Trump, where he will become the first North Korean leader to meet with a US president. The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said Mr Trump's ultimate objective will be the irreversible denuclearisation of Mr Kim's regime. The president's most senior expert on weapons of mass destruction...

    A day after Donald Trump revealed his proposed meeting with Mr Kim was back on the calendar for June 12 after a positive meeting at the White House with a senior North Korean official, it emerged that mundane matters could be getting in the way of an historic geopolitical achievement. As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin and Mr Kim’s de facto chief of staff, Kim Chang Son, seek to hammer out logistical details in Singapore ahead of the meeting barely ten days away, it was reported the North Korean leader has asked to stay at the five-star Fullerton Hotel. Yet, according to the Washington Post, the cash-strapped country has demanded someone other than North Korea pay the hotel bill, which would include a $6,000 per night fee for the presidential suite. The...

    An Indonesian fashion designer who shot to global fame with her Muslim-themed collection was sentenced to 18 years in prison Wednesday for a multi-million dollar fraud and money-laundering. A court near Jakarta convicted Anniesa Hasibuan, 31, and her husband of cheating customers who booked pilgrimage trips to Islam's holiest city Mecca through a travel agency they operated. The pair were accused of bilking thousands of clients out of at least 848 billion rupiah ($60 million), a steep fall from grace for Hasibuan who had become a household name in the world's biggest Muslim-majority country. In 2016 Hasibuan's collection was shown at New York Fashion Week where all her runway models wore hijab head scarves and Muslim-inspired designs, a first for the prestigious ev...

    Russia will send its top diplomat to North Korea for discussions on a range of topics, including the rogue nation's nuclear weapons program, as uncertainty remains over a potential meeting between leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump. Pyongyang has invited Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to meet his North Korean counterpart Ri Yong Ho, the government-run KCNA news agency reported on Wednesday. The Russian foreign ministry confirmed the report and accepted the invitation in a statement shortly after. The negotiations are planned between the foreign policy institutions’ heads, over the course of which they will likely discuss the bilateral agenda, opinions on the situation around the Korean peninsula situation and other key international as well ...

    Passengers on a flight which was preparing to take off in Indonesia were left injured in a scramble to flee after a man made a threat that there was a bomb on board. The plane was preparing to leave from Borneo to Jakarta when the threat was made. Passengers overheard Frantinus Nirigi, 26, telling a flight attendant there was a bomb on the Lion Air plane, which had 189 passengers on board, police spokesman Nanang Purnomo said. Mr Purnomo said another passenger broke the emergency exit windows. He and Nirigi were arrested. Video online showed dozens of people standing on the Boeing 737's right wing. 22 incredible photos from where jumbo jets go to die Some slid down the right engine and landed on the ground in their effort to escape the aircraft. Mr Purnomo sai...

    South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Sunday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had reaffirmed his commitment to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and looked forward to meeting President Donald Trump on June 12, in the latest attempt by the two Korean leaders to keep recent engagement efforts on track. The remarks by Mr. Moon came a day after the two Korean leaders met for an unannounced summit at the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom on Saturday, in the second meeting between the two men in as many months. Mr. Moon said the North Korean leader reached out to him on Friday for talks, and that the two sides agreed to meet at Panmunjom in a surprise summit that Mr. Moon said on Sunday was like an ordinary meeting between friends. The me...

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Moon Jae-in met in the border truce village where they held their… North and South Korea's leaders held surprise talks on Saturday after President Donald Trump cast an uncertain pall over the turbulent Korean peninsula by cancelling a historic summit with Pyongyang only to suggest it might still go ahead. Photos released by South Korea showed President Moon Jae-in shaking hands with his counterpart Kim Jong Un on the North Korean side of the Demilitarised Zone separating the two nations. South Korea's presidential Blue House said the two leaders held talks for two hours on Saturday afternoon in the same Panmunjom truce village where they had met last month, making a declaration vowing to improve ties. "They exchanged vi...

    The Chinese air force has landed long-range bombers for the first time on an airport in the South China Sea, a state newspaper said Saturday, in a move likely to further fuel concerns about Beijing's expansive claims over the disputed region. The China Daily newspaper reported that the People's Liberation Army Air Force conducted takeoff and landing training with the H-6K bomber in the South China Sea. China is pitted against smaller neighbors in multiple disputes in the South China Sea over islands, coral reefs and lagoons in waters crucial for global commerce and rich in fish and potential oil and gas reserves. A statement from the Defense Ministry late Friday said the exercise was conducted on an island reef, but it did not specify when or where, saying only tha...

    North Korea suspended high-level talks with South Korea and threatened to call off a planned U.S.-North Korean summit in June, citing its objections to military exercises being conducted by the U.S. and South Korea. The North’s official Korean Central News Agency, in a report published early Wednesday in Pyongyang, pointed to the drills involving the South Korean and U.S. air forces as a major concern, calling the maneuvers a rehearsal for invasion. The air exercise is a deliberate military provocation to the trend of the favorably developing situation on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea said. “The U.S. will have to think twice about the fate of the DPRK-U.S. summit now on high agenda before a provocative military racket against the DPRK in league with the south Ko...