News/S. Asia/Philippines

  Dutchman Elwold Horn (left) and Swiss national Lorenzo Vinciguerra, who were reportedly taken by gunmen in Tawi-Tawi, are seen in this photo released Manila: With foreign funding drying up and a decade of US-backed military pressure taking a t...

  YANGON: Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has postponed a major political rally in the central city of Mandalay because the venue offered by the authorities is too small, her party said yesterday. Tens of thousands of supporters turne...

Manila: Philippine troops battled Islamist extremists on a remote southern island yesterday where a day earlier three of Southeast Asia’s top terror suspects were killed in a US-backed air strike, the army said. Soldiers who approached the bombed ...

SHAKTIKHOR, Nepal: Nepal’s Maoist former rebels shed their camouflage uniforms yesterday and began leaving their camps to join their families in a first step to their reintegration five years after the end of a civil war.     The rehabilitation...

  Hong Kong: Actor Michelle Yeoh said yesterday playing the role of Aung San Suu Kyi in the “The Lady” was an opportunity of a lifetime, as the film about the Myanmar democracy leader made its debut in Hong Kong. But the Hong Kong-based, Malay...

MANILA: As his kidnappers took him in a speeding boat toward a notorious militant stronghold in the southern Philippines, Ivan Sarenas decided that he would die if he didn't try to escape. When he saw some fishermen, he took his chance, diving deep a...

Manila: The Philippine army said it killed three senior leaders from the Al-Qaeda linked Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah militant organisations in an air raid on a remote southern island yesterday. The three were among 15 militants killed on Jolo, a...

YANGON: Myanmar’s youth, no strangers to the country’s long struggle for democracy, are increasingly daring to emerge from the political shadows as the regime promises a new era of openness. Their enthusiasm offers much-needed new blood for Nobe...

KATHMANDU: Guinness World Records experts said yesterday they are to travel to a remote valley in southwestern Nepal to measure a 72-year-old claiming to be the world’s shortest man. Chandra Bahadur Dangi is 56cm (22in) tall and weighs 12kg (26lbs)...

KATHMANDU: Bimala Bardewa stands by her fragile cement block home on the riverbank, directing her children as they prepare for school and ignoring the stench which rises from the fetid water below. Her 50-year-old husband Badri Pariyar, a lower-cast...

  A female turtle preparing to lay eggs at a remote sanctuary of turtles, in Tawi-Tawi province, in the Philippines’ southern island of Mindanao. Manila: Globally endangered green turtles are enjoying a baby boom on remote Philippine islands a...

Manila: Two European birdwatchers and their Filipino guide were abducted yesterday in the remote southern Philippines where Islamic militants frequently kidnap foreigners to extort ransoms, authorities said. Gunmen seized the men, including a Dutch ...

YANGON: Myanmar agreed to a ceasefire with ethnic Mon separatists yesterday, a peace mediator said, the latest in a series of tentative peace deals sought by a nominally civilian government trying to escape economic sanctions. The ceasefire between ...

COLOMBO: US-led sanctions aimed at spurring Iran to abandon its nuclear programme also hurt Sri Lanka, which imports all its oil, the island’s president said yesterday. Sri Lanka’s only oil refinery is geared to handle Iranian light crude and an...

  US Navy servicemen of the USS Wayne E Meyer (DDG 108), a guided missile destroyer, conduct a maintenance check on a SH-60 Seahawk helicopter which docked at the South Harbor of Manila, Philippines, yesterday.

MANILA: The 2009 CNN Hero of the Year and educator Efren Peñaflorida is expanding his kariton (pushcart) classroom project to a slum area in Indonesia. Peñaflorida gained recognition for starting a pushcart classroom program to educate poor childr...

  Manila: The Philippines’ bachelor president, Benigno Aquino, confirmed yesterday that he had put the fizz back into his love life by dating a South Korean media personality more than 20 years his junior. “Well, we’re seeing each other, OK?...

  The President of Myanmar, Thein Sein (left), and his Singaporean counterpart Tony Tan shake hands during an official visit to Singapore. SINGAPORE: Myanmar President Thein Sein has denied his country is trying to obtain nuclear weapons from No...

SINGAPORE: Myanmar President Thein Sein said his government was committed to political reform and would put the stability of the country ahead of economic development, Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper reported yesterday. The president, in Singa...

MANILA: The plan to expand United States military presence in the Philippines as agreed during the January 27 bilateral dialogue in Washington, DC has been assailed by the country’s groups but defended by officials of the government of President Be...

COLOMBO: President Mahinda Rajapaksa was emphatic: China’s presence in Sri Lanka is strictly business, and not political. Challenged on speculation that China financed and built the $1.4bn Mahinda Rajapaksa port on Sri Lanka’s south coast so it ...

  Nepalese students carrying an effigy of Prime Minister Dr Baburam Bhattarai shout anti-government slogans to protest against the Nepal Oil Corporation’s decision to hike prices of petroleum products, including petrol, diesel, kerosene and LPG...

MANILA: Bankers are urging beneficiaries of remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) not to accumulate US dollars as economic growth in the economic superpower is expected to crawl in the long term. Bankers Association of the Philippines pr...

  COTABATO CITY: The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is to hold more dialogues with Christian leaders in Mindanao to discuss the intricacies of the government-MILF talks. In a statement, MILF chief negotiator Muhaquer Iqbal said their main ob...

MANILA: Malacañang vowed yesterday to engage China positively, saying the West Philippine Sea dispute is just a small facet in the relationship of Manila and Beijing, and that improving defenxe capabilities would not harm the efforts to resolve the ...

SINGAPORE: Myanmar yesterday signed an agreement with Singapore seeking the financial centre’s help as the country emerges from political and economic isolation after decades of military rule. President Thein Sein arrived Sunday for a four-day sta...

DHAKA: A Bangladesh court has ordered millions of copies of a school textbook to be seized in a dispute over credit for the nation’s 1971 independence struggle, a state prosecutor said yesterday. The high court in Dhaka instructed police to confis...

MANILA: The influential Catholic church in the Philippines said yesterday it had asked boxing superstar Manny Pacquiao to follow in the footsteps of NFL hero Tim Tebow and become a “bible ambassador”. Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, who presides ov...

  PUERTO PRINCESA CITY: The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) revealed to the public its latest war material – the Barko ng Republika ng Pilipinas (BRP) Gregorio Del Pilar (PF-15). The naval patrol boat will be opened to the public on Februa...

  Philippine President Benigno Aquino stand beside Thailand Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra (left) as the Philippine national anthem is played at the Malacanang palace in Manila yesterday. MANILA: Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra yeste...