Asia

Thousands of people were evacuated in Taiwan ahead of Typhoon Haikui, with hundreds of flights cancelled and businesses closed as authorities prepared Sunday for the first tropical storm to directly hit the island in four years.

Thousands of Pakistan traders shuttered their shops on Saturday, striking over soaring energy and fuel bills stirring widespread discontent ahead of national elections. Decades of mismanagement and instability have hobbled Pakistan's economy, and this summer Islamabad was forced into a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to avert default. However, the global lender demanded…

North Korea fired multiple cruise missiles off its west coast on Saturday, Seoul's military said, the latest in a string of recent Pyongyang military actions.

A road accident killed 16 people, mostly Iranian pilgrims, north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad overnight, the state news agency INA reported Saturday.

The latest mission in India's ambitious space programme blasted off Saturday on a voyage towards the centre of the solar system, a week after the country's successful unmanned Moon landing.

Singapore's former deputy prime minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam was elected president Friday, earning a landslide victory in the city-state's first contested vote for the largely ceremonial position in more than a decade.

Thailand's jailed former premier Thaksin Shinawatra had his prison sentence cut from eight years to one by the king on Friday, just days after he returned from a decade and a half in exile.

Tens of millions of people in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and other southern Chinese megacities sheltered indoors Friday as Super Typhoon Saola threatened to become the strongest storm to hit the region in decades.

The central parity rate of the Chinese currency renminbi, or the yuan, strengthened 23 pips to 7.1788 against the dollar on Friday, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. In China’s spot foreign exchange market, the yuan is allowed to rise or fall by two percent from the central parity rate each trading day.…

Fifteen people, including a three-year-old child, were killed Thursday when a fire ripped through a house used as a clothing factory in the Philippines, officials said.

A journalist who defied Iran's strict dress code and was freed on bail this month has been rearrested for not wearing the headscarf in public, a news agency reported Wednesday. "Nazila Maroufian has been arrested for wearing inappropriate clothing in public places, and for publishing these photographs on social media," the Tasnim agency reported. Since…

Former Pakistan Prime Minister, Imran Khan, has had his three-year sentence for corruption suspended, but it is unclear if he will be freed from jail. The Islamabad High Court gave him bail until his appeal over the conviction is heard.