Sydney / AFP Australia’s detention of asylum-seekers on a remote Pacific island “amounts to torture” under international law, Amnesty International said on Monday in a report that alleged widespread abuse and an “epidemic of self-harm”. Canberra sends asylum-seekers who try to reach the island continent by boat to the Pacific islands of Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus, where …

  Maungdaw / AFP Buddhist teachers have been airlifted and trucked out of northwestern Myanmar to escape a new surge of violence in the ethnically divided region, another blow to persecuted Muslim Rohingyas already marginalised by a lack of opportunity. Residents have fled their homes in the area near the Bangladesh border on military helicopters and other army vehicles over the …

  Seoul / AFP South Korea says efforts to lift the Sewol ferry that sank more than two years ago may drag on into next year, with salvage operations hampered by poor visibility and the sheer scale of the undertaking. The 6,825-tonne vessel was carrying 476 people when it capsized and sank off the southwestern island of Jindo in April …