Category Archives: Asia Pacific

Volunteer rescuers race to find survivors two days after Myanmar earthquake

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Red Cross says devastation is of a level not seen in Asia for over a century as more than 1,700 people killed

Rescue volunteers, many of them poorly equipped local people, raced to find survivors in the rubble of collapsed buildings across central Myanmar, two days after a huge earthquake killed more than 1,700 people in the country and at least 18 in neighbouring Thailand.

Red Cross officials said Myanmar was facing “a level of devastation that hasn’t been seen over a century in Asia”, after a 7.7-magnitude quake struck near the centre of the country on Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock.

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Thailand and Myanmar earthquake death toll rises as Bangkok declared disaster area with dozens trapped under skyscraper – live

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United States Geological Survey said the quake was shallow, at a depth of just 10km (six miles) with the epicentre near the central city of Mandalay

A 30-storey skyscraper under construction for government offices has collapsed in Bangkok trapping 43 workers, police and medics said, after the city was rocked by a strong earthquake.

According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the building in the north of the Thai capital was reduced to a tangle of rubble and twisted metal in seconds after the 7.7-magnitude quake in neighbouring Myanmar.

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Strong 7.7-magnitude earthquake strikes Myanmar, with tremors felt in neighbouring Thailand

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Witnesses in Bangkok more than 1,000km away said people ran out onto the streets in panic

An earthquake of magnitude 7.7 has struck Myanmar, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said, causing hundreds of people to pour out of swaying buildings in Bangkok, the capital of neighbouring Thailand 1,400km away.

USGS said the quake on Friday was shallow, at a depth of just 10km (six miles) with the epicentre near the central city of Mandalay, about 50km (30 miles) east of the city of Monywa.

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Pete Hegseth, dogged by scandal at home, pledges US support for Manila against China

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Defence secretary’s Philippines visit, aimed at bolstering ties in Asia-Pacific, comes amid rising tensions with Beijing and calls for his resignation

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has met with the Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos, in Manila saying the two countries must stand “shoulder to shoulder” in the face of the threat represented by China.

Hegseth’s meeting at the presidential palace comes as he opens a tour of Pacific allies that risks being overshadowed by a mounting scandal over leaked plans for military strikes.

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End of an era for Canada-US ties, says Carney, as allies worldwide decry Trump’s car tariffs

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Canadian PM says Donald Trump has permanently altered relations, as countries around the globe insist import taxes are harmful to all, including Washington

Canada’s prime minister has said the era of deep ties with the US “is over”, as governments from Tokyo to Berlin to Paris sharply criticised Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on car imports, with some threatening retaliatory action.

Mark Carney warned Canadians that Trump had permanently altered relations and that, regardless of any future trade deals, there would be “no turning back”.

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South Korea wildfires become biggest on record as disaster chief points to ‘harsh reality’ of climate crisis

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Officials point to ultra-dry conditions as death toll reaches 27 and fires threaten Unesco heritage sites

Authorities in South Korea are battling wildfires that have doubled in size in a day in the country’s worst ever natural fire disaster.

At least 27 people have died and hundreds of buildings destroyed in the south-eastern province of North Gyeongsang, with the country’s disaster chief saying the fires had exposed the “harsh reality” of global heating.

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Taiwan jails four soldiers, including three who worked in presidential office, for spying for China

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Soldiers had worked for ‘extremely sensitive and important units’ and ‘their acts betrayed the country’, Taipei court says

A Taiwan court has sentenced four soldiers, including three who worked in the president’s security team, to jail for up to seven years on charges of spying for China.

The men were convicted of violating the national security law by passing “internal military information that should be kept confidential to Chinese intelligence agents for several months” between 2022 and 2024, the Taipei district court said on Wednesday.

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South Korea fires: 18 dead as acting president speaks of ‘unprecedented damage’

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A 1,300-year-old Buddhist temple is among buildings destroyed after dry and windy weather saw mostly contained blazes spread again

Wind-driven wildfires that were among South Korea’s worst ever are ravaging southern regions, killing 18 people, destroying more than 200 structures and forcing 27,000 people to evacuate, officials said on Wednesday.

Han Duck-soo, South Korea’s prime minister and acting president, said five days of fires had caused “unprecedented damage” and asked agencies tackling the disaster to “assume the worst-case scenario and respond accordingly”, according to Yonhap news agency.

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Wong calls ‘reprehensible’ letter targeting Hong Kong activist in Australia a ‘threat to national sovereignty’

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Ted Hui received letter offering reward for information about his family after China accused Australia of interfering with its internal affairs

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has described another threatening letter sent to an exiled Hong Kong dissident in Australia as “reprehensible”, a “threat to our national sovereignty” and “the safety and security of Australians”.

The anonymous letter, mailed from Hong Kong and sent to Ted Hui’s Adelaide office, offered his colleagues $203,000 for information on his whereabouts and his family. It arrived just days after China’s foreign ministry accused the Albanese government of interfering with its internal affairs.

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Australia to redirect $100m in foreign aid to Indo-Pacific region after Trump pulls funding

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Foreign affairs minister Penny Wong says ‘hard strategic decisions’ need to be made

Australia will redirect more than $100m in foreign aid toward the Indo-Pacific region to urgently plug funding gaps after Donald Trump announced the US would cancel around $US54bn worth in overseas development assistance programs.

The official development assistance budget for 2025-26 will reach $5.1bn, an increase of $135.9m from 2024-25, but $119m will be reprioritised to support economic, health, humanitarian and climate responses in the neighbouring regions.

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China remains top military and cyber threat to US, intelligence report says

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Annual report says Beijing making ‘steady but uneven’ progress on capabilities to capture Taiwan

China remains the United States’ top military and cyber threat, according to a new report by US intelligence agencies that said Beijing was making “steady but uneven” progress on capabilities it could use to capture Taiwan.

China has the ability to hit the United States with conventional weapons, compromise US infrastructure through cyber-attacks, and target its assets in space, as well as seeking to displace the US as the top AI power by 2030, the Annual Threat Assessment by the intelligence community said.

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Samsung Electronics co-CEO Han Jong-hee dies of heart attack at 63

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Head of tech giant’s consumer electronics and mobile devices division passed away at a hospital on Tuesday

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics said on Tuesday that its co-chief executive officer Han Jong-hee has died due to cardiac arrest. Han was 63.

Han was in charge of Samsung’s consumer electronics and mobile devices division, while co-CEO Jun Young-hyun oversees the chip business of South Korea’s biggest company.

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Violence and sexist harassment against female MPs ‘rife across Asia-Pacific’

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Report reveals scale of abuse faced by women in politics from countries such as Australia, India, Laos and Mongolia

Sexism, harassment and violence against women are rife in parliaments across the Asia-Pacific region, according to a damning report published on Tuesday that lays bare the scale of abuse faced by women in politics.

Based on interviews with 150 female MPs and parliamentary staff across 33 countries across the region – including Australia, Mongolia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Fiji and Micronesia – the study found that 76% of MPs and 63% of staff had experienced psychological gender-based violence, with 60% of MPs saying they had been targeted online by hate speech, disinformation and image-based abuse. An equal number of women were interviewed from each country.

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Tokyo court orders dissolution of ‘Moonies’ Unification church

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Assassination of former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe spurred official request for closure of South Korea-based sect

A court in Japan has ordered the Unification church to be dissolved after a government request spurred by the investigation into the 2022 assassination of the former prime minister Shinzo Abe.

The church, founded in South Korea and nicknamed the “Moonies” after its late founder, Sun Myung Moon, is accused of pressuring followers into making life-ruining donations, and blamed for child neglect among its members, although it has denied any wrongdoing.

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Exonerated prisoner awarded $1.4m after 46 years spent on death row in Japan

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Iwao Hakamada, the world’s longest serving death row prisoner, had been wrongly convicted of a quadruple murder

A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4m in compensation, an official has said.

The payout represents 12,500 yen ($83) for each day of the 46 years that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last.

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Weather tracker: Severe thunderstorms threaten flooding in northern Australia

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A broad trough has dragged in warm, moist air and offers perfect ingredients for heavy rainfall and even supercells

Northern parts of Australia have been under a flood warning this weekend, with further flooding set to bring havoc to south-eastern parts of the Northern Territory and western Queensland early this week. A broad trough – an area of locally lower pressure – has been moving across northern Australia, dragging in warm, moist air from the Gulf of Carpentaria and providing the perfect ingredients for the formation of severe thunderstorms, and even supercells.

More than 70mm (2.75in) of rain fell in an hour under the slow-moving storms over the weekend in what is usually an arid, low rainfall zone with a desert/grassland climate classification. Some parts of the region have sparse observation data, but some local stations have been able to record more than 100mm within 24 hours, with 132mm of rain at Marion Downs, Queensland.

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South Korea’s Han Duck-soo reinstated as acting president after court strikes down impeachment

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The ruling is the latest twist in months of political turmoil since suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law declaration last year

South Korea’s constitutional court has ruled against the impeachment of the country’s prime minister, Han Duck-soo, and to restore his position as acting president, marking the latest political twist in months of political turmoil.

Han took over as acting president after the country’s leader, Yoon Suk Yeol, was himself impeached over his short-lived declaration of martial law late last year.

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Chinese premier meets pro-Trump senator and calls for ‘dialogue over confrontation’

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Meeting comes as China hopes to reach a deal to avert further tariff pressure from Washington

Republican senator Steve Daines, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, met Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing on Sunday, as China hopes to reach a deal to avert further tariff pressure from Washington.

The meeting marks the first time a US politician has visited China since Trump took office in January. Earlier this month, China’s ministry of foreign affairs promised that China will “fight to the end” with the US in a “tariff war, trade war or any other war”.

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The obscure Jimmy Lai ruling that exposed the erosion of Hong Kong’s rule of law

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The moves that barred the media mogul’s choice of lawyer are immune from legal challenge, giving the national security committee what one expert called ‘the powers of a police state’

The dwindling freedom in Hong Kong over the past few years has been described as “death by a thousand cuts”. Critics have been jailed, elections have been transformed into “patriots only” affairs, journalists have been harassed and hundreds of thousands of people have left.

This week, an obscure legal development has, in the eyes of some legal experts, inflicted another cut on the city’s once revered legal system.

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Major-power conflict ‘no longer unimaginable’, Australian intelligence review finds

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Independent assessment, which was handed to government before US election, warns of ‘global geopolitical and economic fragmentation’

Australia faces a world more volatile and dangerous than it has known for more than four decades, and “major-power conflict is no longer unimaginable”, a review of the country’s intelligence agencies has found.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, commissioned the review of the work of the 10 agencies that make up Australia’s national intelligence community in September 2023.

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There have been shifts in relative global power balances, accompanied by a sharp contest between nation-states for power and influence. This contest is at once diplomatic, military, economic and technological, and is pursued within Australia’s borders as much as beyond them, including through cyber-attacks and foreign interference.

New technologies are being used to amplify some old threats while creating entirely new ones.

There are a range of transnational challenges, including climate change, pandemics, irregular migration, terrorism, and polarisation and fraying social cohesion in many democracies. In a globalised world, the ripples from even geographically distant conflicts inevitably reach Australia, with significant, often grave, consequences.

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