The two Koreas on Monday restored their hotlines that the North severed months ago, with Pyongyang urging Seoul to step up efforts to improve relations after criticising what it called double standards over weapons development.

Indonesia will reopen its tourist island Bali for some international travellers, including those from China, New Zealand, and Japan, among others, from October 14, senior cabinet minister Luhut Pandjaitan said on Monday.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Saturday he was retiring from politics, a surprise move that fuelled speculation he was clearing the way for his daughter to run to succeed him, despite her filing for re-election as mayor.

North Korea has rejected roughly three million Covid-19 vaccine doses of China's Sinovac Biotech (SVA.O), saying they should be sent to severely affected countries, the UNICEF said on Wednesday.

Uzbekistan has accepted about 400 more refugees from Afghanistan and put them up in temporary accommodation near the Afghan border, the Russian state news agency TASS reported on Saturday, citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter.

Thirty-seven people have been rescued from a migrant boat with 45 people on board that sank south of Turkey, and Turkish naval ships and an aircraft are continuing search and rescue operations, the defence ministry said on Friday.

Russia said on Monday it had successfully tested a Tsirkon(Zircon) hypersonic cruise missile, a weapon President Vladimir Putin has touted as part of a new generation of missile systems without equal in the world.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman on Sunday condemned a European Union court decision to allow employers to ban staff wearing Muslim headscarves as appeasing Islamophobia.

US humanitarian aid is a "sinister political scheme" to put pressure on other countries, a North Korean researcher said, after suggestions from US allies such as South Korea that coronavirus vaccines or other help could promote cooperation.

The leaders of North Korea and China traded messages vowing to strengthen cooperation on the anniversary of their treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance between the two countries, North Korea's KCNA news agency reported on Sunday.

Taiwan has asked its office in Washington to remind the United States not to cause "unnecessary speculation or misunderstanding" after the White House deleted a social media post on Covid-19 vaccine donations that included Taiwan's flag.

Tajikistan has taken in more than 1,000 civilian refugees fleeing the violence in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province across the border, the government of Tajikistan's Gorno-Badakhshan province said on Wednesday.

Debris believed to be from a missing An-26 plane has been found in Russia's far east, where it appears to have crashed into a rock, Interfax and TASS news agencies reported on Tuesday citing unnamed sources.

Philippine authorities ordered on Monday an investigation into the crash of an Air Force plane that overshot a runway killing 47 soldiers on board, three civilians on the ground and injuring dozens.

A British warship's entry into what Moscow considers Russian territorial waters near Crimea last month is the kind of provocation that demands a tough response, the Kremlin said on Sunday.

A plane carrying Philippine troops crashed and broke up in flames in the southern Philippines on Sunday with 92 people aboard, and media reported at least 17 people had been killed,

Gun in hand, 55-year-old Dost Mohammad Salangi recites poetry as he leads a small group of men to a look-out post high in the rugged hills of Parwan province, north of the Afghan capital Kabul.

A rare mention in North Korean state media of leader Kim Jong Un's health could be intended to head off speculation and play up shared sacrifice amid food shortages, analysts said.

Moscow yesterday recorded the worst daily coronavirus death toll so far for a Russian city, as countries across the Asia-Pacific region extended or reimposed restrictions to tackle fresh waves of infections.

A South Korean industrial designer has come up with a satirical solution for “smartphone zombies” who can’t take their eyes away from their screen long enough to stop themselves walking into a wall or other obstacle.