A former president of the Maldives whose removal from power this year threatened to plunge the tropical holiday island chain into chaos was not forced from office illegally, a commission of inquiry found in a report released on Thursday.

India's Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the death sentence for Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of a group of militants who attacked the country's financial capital, Mumbai, in 2008 killing 166 people.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai filled gaps in two top security ministries on Wednesday as part of a reshuffle forced on him by a fractious parliament, but risked a destabilizing row with lawmakers by reappointing a sacked minister.

A typhoon with winds of up to 170 kmh (106 mph) buffeted South Korea's west coast on Tuesday, killing five people at sea and leaving 10 missing when two Chinese fishing vessels capsized.

A rogue Afghan soldier shot dead two U.S. troops in east Afghanistan on Monday, the NATO-led coalition said, the latest in a series of insider killings that have strained trust between the allies ahead of a 2014 pullout by foreign combat troops.

The Japanese government on Monday refused to let Tokyo metropolitan authorities land on islands at the centre of a territorial dispute with China, a move aimed at defusing tensions that led to biggest anti-Japan protests in years.

North Korea's figurehead head of state, not supreme leader Kim Jong-un, will attend a summit of non-aligned developing nations in Iran next week, Pyonyang's official KCNA news agency reported on Thursday.

China sentenced the wife of fallen Politburo member Bo Xilai to death on Monday but suspended her execution, setting the stage for a possible final purge of Bo himself in a scandal that has shaken Beijing ahead of a leadership transition.

Japan is to send home 14 Chinese activists who were detained after some of them landed on an island claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing, but sour notes from Beijing and South Korea showed the latest flare-ups in territorial disputes were far from over.

Politicians should treat India's economic growth as a national security issue, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Wednesday, warning a lack of consensus is holding back Asia's third-largest economy as it tries to drag millions from

China on Tuesday promised to help major firms invest in impoverished neighbor North Korea, signaling strong support for the North's untried young leader just as he is believed to be planning reforms to his country's broken economy.

Emergency workers and troops rushed food, water and clothes to nearly 850,000 people displaced and marooned from deadly floods spawned by 11 straight days of southwest monsoon rains that soaked the Philippine capital and nearby provinces.

GUWAHATI, India, Aug 6 (AlertNet) - Hundreds of thousands of people sheltering in squalid, overcrowded camps in India's northeast desperately need food, water and medicines after fleeing some of the worst communal violence in a decade, officials

Never mind the floods. Enjoy the rollercoaster ride and keep smiling.

Afghan security forces killed five insurgents and wounded one during a pre-dawn raid in Kabul on Thursday, with authorities saying they had thwarted a mass attack and captured intelligence pointing to the militant Haqqani network.

Half of India's 1.2 billion people were without power on Tuesday as the grids covering a dozen states broke down, the second major blackout in as many days and an embarrassment for the government as it struggles to revive economic growth.

China will try Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Politburo member Bo Xilai, on charges of murdering a British man, state media said on Thursday in the latest turn in a scandal that has rocked the government in Beijing and could bring Gu the death penalty

Talk that North Korea's young leader plans to reform the broken economy is already having an impact. It's helping send rice prices even further out of the reach of most families in one of the world's most under-fed societies.

Chinese President Hu Jintao has called for unity in the ruling Communist Party and unflinching backing for economic reforms in the face of "unprecedented challenges", as Beijing struggles with a scandal-hit leadership transition and economi

A bomb planted by the Taliban destroyed 22 NATO trucks carrying supplies to their forces in northern Afghanistan, the Taliban and police said on Wednesday.

Japan's ambassador to China returned to Beijing on Monday after Tokyo summoned him over the weekend to discuss the escalating tension over a group of islands that both countries claim.

Southeast Asian nations have failed to reach agreement on a maritime dispute involving China, ending a foreign ministers' summit in disarray after Beijing appeared to split the 10 countries over the contentious issue.

Masked gunmen stormed a house and killed nine police cadets in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore on Thursday, police said, the second attack on security forces claimed by the Taliban in relatively peaceful Punjab province in four days.

Major donors pledged on Sunday to give Afghanistan $16 billion in development aid through 2015 as they try to prevent it from sliding back into chaos when foreign troops leave, but demanded reforms to fight widespread corruption.

Pakistan and the United States reached a deal on Tuesday to reopen land routes that NATO uses to supply troops in Afghanistan, ending a seven-month crisis that damaged ties between the two countries and complicated the U.S.-led Afghan war effort.

Buffeted by industry worries about high electricity costs on one side and public safety fears about nuclear power on the other, Japan's leaders are still struggling to craft a coherent energy policy more than a year after the Fukushima disaster.

Japanese political heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa and 51 other lawmakers will quit the ruling party over a plan to increase the sales tax, an aide said on Monday, although the government will retain its majority in the powerful lower house of parliament.

China's Shenzhou 9 spacecraft returned to Earth on Friday, ending a mission that put the country's first woman in space and completed a manned docking test critical to its goal of building a space station by 2020.

Days of heavy rain in Bangladesh has set off flash floods and landslides which have killed more than 30 people and stranded about 150,000, police and officials said on Wednesday.

Thirteen people were killed before a long siege was ended at a popular hotel outside the Afghan capital, during which Taliban gunmen took scores of hostages, another bold attack that showed a potent insurgency remains after more than a decade of war.