Tokyo / AFP Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday for talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, her first visit since becoming her country’s de facto leader earlier this year. She and Abe are expected to discuss economic assistance and Myanmar’s peace-building process with its ethnic minorities, according to a Japanese foreign ministry official. Japan hopes …

  Beijing / AFP Malaysia and China signed a defence deal and pledged closer cooperation in the South China Sea on Tuesday, signalling a potential strategic shift by Premier Najib Razak as his ties with the United States fray over a corruption scandal. Najib’s week-long trip marks another potential setback for Washington’s “pivot” towards Asia, two weeks after President Rodrigo Duterte …

  Moscow / AFP A Russian activist jailed for staging solo anti-government protests claimed in a letter published on Tuesday that he was beaten and threatened with rape and murder in prison. Ildar Dadin, a 34-year-old activist serving a two-and-a-half year sentence at a prison in Russia’s northwestern region of Karelia, was the first person to be imprisoned under a …