CNN – Asia/Pacific

By Nectar Gan and Anna Chernova, CNN Chinese leader Xi Jinping will fly to Moscow next week to meet with President Vladimir Putin in his first visit to Russia since Putin launched his devastating invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago. The visit will be seen as a powerful show of Beijing’s support for

By Nectar Gan, Gawon Bae and Junko Ogura, CNN The leaders of South Korea and Japan promised to resume ties in a fence-mending summit — the first such meeting in 12 years — as the two neighbors seek to confront threats from North Korea and rising concerns about China. “From now on, I would like

By Kocha Olarn and Heather Chen, CNN Authorities in Thailand are scrambling to locate a metal cylinder with dangerous radioactive contents that went missing from a power plant this week, warning the public of serious health risks should they come across it. The revelation comes just two months after Australia was forced to launch a

CNN By Gawon Bae, CNN North Korea launched a long-range ballistic missile early Thursday, the same day leaders from the two US allies were due to meet in Tokyo for the first such summit in 12 years. The missile was fired into the waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula early Thursday morning

By Gawon Bae, CNN North Korea launched a long-range ballistic missile early Thursday, the same day leaders from the two US allies were due to meet in Tokyo for the first such summit in 12 years. The missile was fired into the waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula early Thursday morning local

By Tara Subramaniam and Junko Ogura, CNN A YouTube star who became a Japanese lawmaker has been stripped of his role after he failed to show up for a single day of work in parliament. At a plenary session on Wednesday, Japan’s parliament expelled Yoshikazu Higashitani for his continued absence, the first time it has

By Heather Chen, CNN Three elderly king penguins have been fitted with custom-made eye lenses during surgery to remove cataracts in what is believed to be a world first procedure to improve their sight, according to a Singapore zoo. In a statement Tuesday, vets with the Mandai Wildlife Group said the birds were among six

By Hannah Ritchie, Kocha Olarn, Heather Chen and Angus Watson, CNN At least 22 people, including three monks, were killed at a monastery in Myanmar’s Southern Shan State on Saturday as local insurgent groups and the military-backed junta accused each other of carrying out a massacre. Myanmar has been mired in political violence since military

By Tara Subramaniam, CNN Honduras is taking steps to begin official diplomatic relations with China, President Xiomara Castro announced on Tuesday, a move that would sever ties with Taiwan. China refuses to maintain diplomatic ties with any country that recognizes Taiwan and has spent much of the past 40 years attempting to isolate the self-ruled

By Eric Cheung, CNN A Taiwanese state-owned military weapons developer unveiled five new types of indigenous military drones on Tuesday, as the self-ruled island looks to boost its asymmetric warfare capabilities against China’s growing military threat. A CNN team was among reporters invited to the National Chung-shan Institute of Science and Technology, where the Taiwanese

By Heather Chen, CNN Michelle Yeoh’s history-making Oscar win caused jubilation this week in her native Malaysia, but it also sparked false rumors that a national holiday had been declared — something the country’s government quickly dispelled. In a statement published on its Facebook page Monday, the office of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim debunked a

By Chris Lau, Junko Ogura and Emiko Jozuka, CNN Japanese Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe, a writer who was renowned for a strong pacifist stance that weaved its way into much of his work, has died of “old age”, his publisher confirmed Monday. The publisher, Kodansha, said the 88-year-old had passed away ten days earlier

By Eric Cheung and Nectar Gan, CNN A Taiwanese soldier who went missing last week from an island near the Chinese coast has been found in mainland China, a Taiwan official said on Monday, raising the possibility of a highly unusual defection amid heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait. Speaking to reporters, Chiu Tai-san, minister

By Nectar Gan and CNN’s Beijing bureau China’s leader Xi Jinping on Monday vowed to bolster national security and build the military into a “great wall of steel,” in the first speech of his precedent-breaking third term as president. Speaking at the closing of the annual meeting of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, Xi underscored the need

By Kathleen Magramo, CNN Behind the gleaming skyscrapers and multimillion-dollar homes that have made this city the world’s most expensive property market lies a far less attractive parallel reality: one of the world’s seemingly most intractable housing crises. Welcome to Hong Kong, where the average home sells for well north of a million dollars —

By Chris Lau and Jennifer Hauser, CNN A Chinese city has sparked a backlash on social media after saying it would consider the use of lockdowns in the event of an influenza outbreak. The city of Xi’an — a tourism hotspot in Shaanxi province that is home to the famous terracotta warriors — revealed an