Manila / AFP Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is willing to hold military exercises with China but not longtime ally the United States, Chinese media quoted him on Monday as saying on the eve of a state visit. Duterte heads to Beijing on Tuesday for a four-day trip that appears set to cement his dramatic foreign policy tilt away from United …

  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 …