Asia

The UN security council has been locked in last-minute wrangling over the details of a proposed 30-day ceasefire across Syria to allow for emergency humanitarian deliveries and medical evacuations. The backroom negotiations on Friday followed an appeal by...

A wealthy Japanese man has been granted sole parent rights to 13 children he fathered through Thai surrogate mothers, in a court ruling that paves the way for him to take them to Japan. Mitsutoki Shigeta, 28,...

More than 100 people have been killed and hundreds wounded on a day of “hysterical” violence in the opposition-controlled enclave of eastern Ghouta in Syria. The surge in the killing came amid reports of an impending regime...

Benjamin Netanyahu has described a police report on allegations of bribery and fraud against him as “full of holes, like Swiss cheese”, as he fights for his political life. Following a 14-month investigation into two cases of alleged...

North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-un, has invited the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, to visit Pyongyang at the “earliest date possible” for what would be the first summit between the two nations in more than a...

Israel has launched what it described as a large-scale air raid in Syria after one of its F-16 fighters crashed while under Syrian anti-aircraft fire. Twelve sites, including four “Iranian targets” near the Syrian capital, Damascus, were...

US and senior North Korean officials say they have no intention of meeting each other at the Winter Olympics – even though vice-president Mike Pence and Kim Jong-un’s younger sister will be seated just metres apart...

The United States has said it killed more than 100 fighters loyal to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad as it repelled an assault on a US-controlled base in eastern Syria, the most serious clash between the alliance...

Dotted among the ski slopes, ice rinks and bobsled tracks of the Winter Olympic venues in Pyeongchang are huge underground evacuation centres. The exact locations are a secret, but they symbolise the fear felt by South...

A strange and worrisome silence settled over Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa after Houthi rebels seized power in broad daylight one September day in 2014. For weeks, rumors had been floating that something of this sort would...