Asia

    Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been accused of spying on his citizens through his office’s official smartphone app. A security researcher, tweeting under the pseudonym Eliott Alderson, has said Indians personal data was sent to a third party’s server in the US without prior permission and the claim has drawn the ire of the main opposition Congress Party. Mr Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has denied the allegations and said in a tweet that the data was merely being used to provide users with the most contextual content. Mr Alderson, whose name is an homage to the television drama Mr Robot, posted a series of tweets over the weekend with screenshots of code that supposedly detail the data privacy breach of the app, which has been downloaded by at lea...

    US-Bangla Airlines has claimed there have been no technical glitches in the aircraft and the pilot is also experienced one. The airlines also said the conversation between the pilot and the air traffic control tower at Tribhuvan International Airport indicates ‘some confusion’. ‘However, this is a matter of justification and investigation. The probe committee will look into it,’ Md Kamrul Islam, General Manager (GM), Marketing Support and PR of US-Bangla Airlines said, reports the UNB. He said there was no problem in their aircraft and there is no lacking of experience of the pilot. ‘He (pilot) flied over 5000 hours with over 1700 hours with this aircraft,’ Kamrul Islam said. At least 50 people died as an aircraft of US-Bangla Airlines from Dhaka to Kathmandu cra...

    A Chinese, who has been identified as Chen, reportedly assumed her husband, who was suffering from terminal stomach cancer for several months, was dead after she found him in a limp state. Without really checking properly or even consulting a doctor, she sent the body to the morgue. The husband in question, who has been identified by the local media as Huang, from Shiyan, spent his final hours in a morgue, where people were in the process of preparing him for his funeral. It was only when the morgue cosmetologist was getting him ready that he noticed Huang’s mouth and fingers twitching slightly. Seeing this movement, the workers at the mortuary immediately called for medical help. While speaking to the Shiyan Evening News, a mortuary worker Ren said, It’s easy fo...

    Bollywood superstar Sridevi Kapoor drowned in her hotel bathtub after fainting this weekend, police have said. The 54-year-old actress, described as India's first female superstar, died on Saturday night in Dubai. Her brother-in-law, actor Sanjay Kapoor, told the Indian Express on Sunday she had suffered a heart attack and had no known heart condition. On Monday Dubai police, citing a post-mortem, tweeted: "The death of Indian actress Sridevi occurred due to drowning in her hotel apartment's bathtub following loss of consciousness." Police have now referred the case to the public prosecutor. Sridevi, who was known only by her first name, was in the Gulf to attend a wedding with her husband, Boney Kapoor, and younger daughter Khushi. Videos appearing to show her ...

    Salvagers are confident debris and human remains can be recovered if Malaysia Airlines MH370 is finally found, despite the pitch-black darkness, crushing pressure and ice-cold water awaiting them. The disappearance of the Boeing 777 carrying 239 passengers and crew almost four years ago is one of aviation's greatest mysteries, with an Australian-led hunt across a 120,000 square-kilometre (46,000 square-mile) zone failing to reveal the crash site. Yet a new probe now underway by private firm Ocean Infinity commissioned by Malaysia on a no find, no fee basis has revived hopes the doomed plane might be found. If the wreckage is located in treacherous terrain up to six kilometres (19,685 feet) deep far off Western Australia and north of the earlier search site experts ...

    Imran Khan has married for a third time to a faith healer who has helped him in the past, his party has announced. Fawad Hussain, spokesman for Khan's Pakistan Taherik-e-Insaf (PTI) party said the 65-year-old cricket legend-turned politician married Bushra Maneka. His bride is a divorced faith healer from a deeply conservative and politically influential family from eastern Punjab province. Friends say he has turned to her in the past for spiritual healing. The PTI released photographs of him smiling, sitting with his new wife, who is wearing a veil, and her relatives. His first marriage, to socialite Jemima Khan, ended in divorce in 2004, after nine years, while his second, to journalist Reham Khan lasted just just 10 months before ending in 2015. Considered by...

    China and Russia preparing for war with West China and Russia could soon match the military might of the US and her allies - and the decline of western supremacy could lead to all out war. Those are the conclusions of a report by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), which says that although war between the great powers is not inevitable, Washington, Moscow and Beijing are now preparing for the possibility. The IISS’s annual Military Balance 2018 report sets out at length how China’s leadership has stepped up its military programme in recent years, with huge spending on new technology that could give it an advantage on land, sea and air. The opening of China’s first overseas military base in Djibouti will enable it to carry out missions over va...

    A woman climbed into an X-ray machine during a security check at a Chinese train station, saying she was trying to make sure her handbag wasn't stolen. Security staff got a fright when they saw the woman's body flashing across their screen. She jumped onto the conveyor belt because she feared that she could lose her handbag during the screening process at a train station in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, according to the Daily Mail. Footage shows the woman emerging from the X-ray machine, hunched over on the conveyor belt before someone helps her off. Images show the woman's silhouette and heels as she crouches over her handbag while passing through the scanner. The woman grabbed her bag and left the area before security staff had a chance to intervene, and it's u...

    The UK and China will not always see eye-to-eye, Theresa May said on the eve of a three-day trade visit where she said she would underline the importance of a rules-based approach to economic expansion. The prime minister’s warning before her visit to Wuhan, Beijing and Shanghai suggests she will attempt to walk a tightrope between championing a new post-Brexit era of free trade alongside coded suspicion of President Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road initiative, a $900bn (£636bn) global infrastructure project which has political designs to bring neighbouring countries closer into Beijing’s orbit. Her visit, accompanied by 50 business leaders, also comes amid a deteriorating human rights situation in mainland China, growing alarm over the erosion of Hong Kong’s pol...

    More than 9,000 people have evacuated the area around the Philippines most active volcano as lava flowed down its crater Monday in a gentle eruption that scientists warned could turn explosive. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology increased the alert level for Mount Mayon late Sunday to three on a scale of five, indicating an increased tendency toward a hazardous eruption. Lava flowed at least half a kilometer (less than half a mile) down a gulley from the crater and on Monday morning, ash clouds appeared mid-slope, said Renato Solidum, head of the volcano institute. Molten rocks and lava at Mayon's crater lit the night sky Sunday in an reddish-orange glow despite a shroud of thick clouds that covered the volcano, leaving spectators awed but sendi...