The red-shirted supporters of Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said on Wednesday they could take to the streets to protect the government from protesters who have forced her to call a snap election, setting the scene for a possible confrontati

Her eyes welling with tears, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra pleaded on Tuesday for anti-government protesters to clear the streets after she called a snap election, but protests leaders said she should step down within 24 hours.

Singapore's first major riot in four decades is forcing the wealthy island to confront a stubborn but vexing question: how to treat low-paid foreign workers whose muscle underpins much of the economy but whose presence increasingly riles its citi

A crowd of around 400 people set fire to vehicles and clashed with police in the Indian district of Singapore late on Sunday after a man was hit and killed by a bus, the first major riot in the city-state for more than 40 years.

A devastating fire ripped through a Bangladesh garment factory supplying major Western retailers, police and industry officials said on Friday, in a blaze set by workers angered over rumors of a colleague's death in police firing.

About 1,500 anti-government protesters forced their way into the compound of Thailand's army headquarters on Friday, the latest escalation in a city-wide demonstration seeking to topple Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

Nepal's Maoist former rebels, trailing in last week's election, have called for an independent investigation into complaints of vote fraud, but they also signaled willingness to compromise to end political deadlock in the Himalayan nation.

China has launched a broad investigation into safety at oil and gas pipelines, state media reported on Monday, as the death toll from an explosion at a Sinopec pipeline last week rose to 52.

Thousands of people protested in Tokyo on Thursday against a proposed secrets act that critics say would stifle information on issues such as the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

An explosion at a Sinopec Corp oil pipeline early on Friday killed 22 people in east China's Qingdao city, state media reported.

The text of a security pact between the United States and Afghanistan that sets out a military blueprint once Washington starts pulling out its troops after 2014 is unfinished a day before thousands of Afghan elders were due to start debating it.

The cost of rebuilding houses, schools, roads and bridges in typhoon-devastated central Philippines could reach 250 billion pesos ($5.8 billion), making it likely that the government will seek cheap loans from development agencies, a senior official

The United Nations expressed fear on Monday that some Philippine islands hit by a giant typhoon have not been reached 10 days after disaster struck and President Benigno Aquino said the scale of suffering "tempted him to despair".

Myanmar released 69 political prisoners on Friday in an amnesty the government described as an act of "loving kindness" in line with President Thein Sein's promise to free all prisoners of conscience by year-end.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino was under growing pressure on Thursday to speed up the distribution of food, water and medicine to desperate survivors of a powerful typhoon and to revive paralyzed local governments.

For many of Japan's oldest nuclear refugees, all they want is to be allowed back to the homes they were forced to abandon. Others are ready to move away, severing ties to the ghost towns that remain in the shadow of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear

China's domestic security chief believes a fatal vehicle crash in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in which five died was planned by a Uighur separatist group, designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and United Nations.

Chinese state media demanded severe punishment on Thursday for those behind what China has said is a holy war aimed at Beijing, which it has blamed on Islamist militants from the restive Xinjiang region.

An Islamist militant group is believed to be behind an attack on a rally by Indian Hindu nationalist politician Narendra Modi that killed six people and wounded more than 80, police said on Tuesday.

South Korea may struggle to cut its reliance on nuclear power, as a working group has suggested it do, because the country has no natural resources to fill its huge energy requirements, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Tuesday.

Three Chinese anti-graft activists who agitated for officials to disclose their assets went on trial on Monday in the first case of its kind, underscoring the limits of government tolerance of challenges to its authority.

North Korea repatriated six South Korean citizens at a heavily defended border crossing on Friday, South Korea's Ministry of Unification said, in a rare humanitarian gesture amid persistent tensions between Pyongyang and Seoul.

China has no intention of altering its "correct" policies in the restive region of Tibet as they have brought unprecedented achievements, a government white paper said on Tuesday, slamming the romanticized notion Tibet was once an idyllic f

India's opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has picked up support since naming Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi as its candidate for prime minister last month, but would need allies to form a government, two new opinion polls show.

Authorities in eastern China dispatched hundreds of security officers to block a possible second day of protests on Wednesday after thousands of angry flood victims clashed with police to demand official help for the worst floods in a century.

A court ordered former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf to be detained for 14 days on Friday, the latest twist in a long-running feud between the one-time army chief and the judiciary.

Nine people were killed on Tuesday evening in a fire at a garment factory in the Bangladeshi town of Gazipur, 40 km north of the capital Dhaka, emergency officials said.

China's Foreign Ministry dismissed concerns about Turkey's decision to co-produce a missile defense system with a Chinese firm, saying on Tuesday that the United States and others were needlessly politicizing a purely commercial deal.

Chinese President Xi Jinping showed no sign of bending to Southeast Asian pressure to resolve increasingly irascible territorial disputes over the South China Sea on Thursday, simply repeating calls for dialogue.

The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant said on Tuesday that four tonnes of rainwater contaminated with low levels of radiation leaked during an operation to transfer the water between tank holding areas.