Asia News

PARIS/TUNIS (Reuters) - The main opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) will use an international meeting on the Syrian crisis to push for urgent measures to ferry humanitarian aid to stranded civilians, a move it hopes will win Russian and Chinese support. Speaking in Paris two days before Arab and Western foreign ministers …

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Countries opposed to an EU law forcing the world's airlines to pay for greenhouse gas emissions agreed on a basket of retaliatory measures, adding to a series of threats that have raised the prospect of the globe's first carbon trade war. But the EU dismissed the threats as "hypothetical" and Russia's …

LANGMU, China (Reuters) - Tibetans in northwest China marked a tense traditional new year on Wednesday with prayer, the sounding of gongs and subdued defiance in the wake of a string of self-immolations and protests against Chinese control. The traditional new year, or "Losar," is a combination of Buddhist ceremony and …

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's steelmakers, the nation's biggest users of electricity, urged the early restart of nuclear power plants on Wednesday, fearing that potential power cuts and more costly electricity will further squeeze a sector reeling from the strong yen. Big businesses have reacted furiously to plans by Tokyo …

A Japanese court on Wednesday ruled that a Dutch supporter of militant environmentalist group Sea Shepherd was not guilty of assaulting a man in the dolphin-hunting town of Taiji.

South Korea's President Lee Myung-Bak urged China Wednesday to handle fugitives from North Korea under international norms, adding to growing pressure on Beijing not to repatriate them.

TOKYO (Reuters) - "What Japan needs most now is a dictator." Toru Hashimoto, a lawyer and TV celebrity-turned politician, was quick to add when he made that widely publicised remark last year that a Hitler-style dictatorship was neither desirable nor possible given Japan's democratic checks and balances. But the call for …

MOREH, India (Reuters) - As dusk falls on a lonely police station in the eastern tip of India, a young policeman nervously keeps an eye on the Arakan hills above him, dotted with poppy fields. Just 22 bumpy miles from the capital of India's restive Manipur state, he and his colleagues are outnumbered by gunmen from a faction …

ANKARA (Reuters) - Activists from China's Muslim Uighur minority burnt Chinese flags in Ankara on Tuesday where China's leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping was holding talks with Turkish officials on regional issues. About 60 Turkic-speaking Uighurs from China's northwestern Xinjiang province protested outside the hotel where …

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan officials are holding talks with the Taliban in Pakistan, the head of a provincial peace council in the insurgency's heartland Kandahar said on Tuesday, in a possible signal that Islamabad is boosting its support for Afghan peace efforts. Kandahar peace council head Ata Mohammad …

PALOUGE OIL FIELD, South Sudan (Reuters) - South Sudan has expelled the head of Chinese-Malaysian oil consortium Petrodar, the main oil firm operating in the new African nation, top southern officials said on Tuesday, escalating a row between Juba and Chinese oil firms. South Sudan has attacked Chinese oil firms and launched …

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday invited the Taliban leadership to direct talks with his government, while urging Pakistan to facilitate negotiation efforts towards ending 10 years of war.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe turned 88 on Tuesday, joking about reports circulating for years of his imminent demise and vowing to stay in power despite international condemnation of his economic and human rights record. Mugabe said he was in tip-top shape in an interview with state radio, and made …

An explosion at a steel plant in northeastern China killed 13 people and injured another 17, a company official said Tuesday, in the latest industrial accident to hit the country.

A senior executive of the scandal-hit technology firm Olympus has been found dead in a children's park outside his flat near New Delhi after apparently taking his own life.

South Korea will seek global support at a UN meeting next week for its efforts to rescue North Korean refugees recently arrested in China and facing repatriation, according to the foreign ministry.

OFUNATO, Japan (Reuters) - In a large, bright room not far from the ocean that raged through this coastal Japanese city nearly a year ago, a handful of people with magnifying glasses pore over boxes of photographs of friends or loved ones. The massive March 11 tsunami that levelled buildings and flattened towns along a …

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan is close to agreement with Washington on the size of cuts refiners must make in imports of Iranian crude oil to win waivers from U.S. sanctions, two ministers said Tuesday after a media report the two sides would settle on an 11 percent cut. The Yomiuri newspaper, citing unidentified sources, said …

Pakistan's Senate on Monday passed a bill that makes violence against women and children an offence carrying jail terms and fines, state media said.

CAIRO (Reuters) - The Arab League chief said on Monday there were signs that China and Russia could be shifting their stance on Syria after the two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council vetoed a Western-backed Arab peace plan aimed at ending violence there. "There are indications coming from China and to some extent …

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria risks a slide into civil war as its 11-month revolt grows increasingly bloody, with the army pounding opposition areas and a growing rebel force calling for foreign intervention and arms. Western and Arab powers, increasingly critical of President Bashar al-Assad but wary of direct intervention, …

The Afghan government said Monday that police had rescued 41 children from becoming suicide bombers as they were about to be smuggled across the mountains into Pakistan.

AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) - China accused Western countries of stirring civil war in Syria and two Iranian warships docked at a Syrian naval base, underscoring rising international tensions over the near year-long crisis. Despite pursuing a sustained military crackdown on the opposition in cities across the country, President …

Two Italian soldiers were due before a magistrate in India on Monday for allegedly shooting dead two Indian fishermen mistaken for pirates trying to attack an oil tanker.

Hundreds of Tibetans gathered in China's southwest to hold a vigil for a young Buddhist monk who set himself on fire, a rights group said, in the latest self-immolation to hit the country.

SHANGQIU, China (Reuters) - Liu Tao knows he will never be rich enough to own one of the luxury apartments in Beijing that he has been paid to decorate for more than a decade, but he's saving hard so that in another 10 years he'll have enough for a home with indoor plumbing. Like many of the 158 million rural migrant workers …

BEIJING (Reuters) - A teenage Tibetan Buddhist monk has set himself on fire and died in southwestern China, a rights group said, in the latest reported self-immolation by a monk denouncing Chinese policies in Tibet and demanding the return of the Dalai Lama. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said last week the self-immolations …

(Reuters) - Most people in Thailand's drug rehabilitation centres are there for using it. Most drug arrests in Japan are related to it. And Vietnam, the United Nations says, is its "next big market." Methamphetamine is now the top drug in many Asian countries, its soaring popularity straddling social and economic divides. …