Hanoi / AFP Severe flooding in central Vietnam has killed at least 25 people and destroyed thousands of homes, officials said Monday, as the country braced for further destruction with a typhoon barrelling closer. Images from flood-hit provinces showed houses almost completely submerged and people paddling down waterlogged streets following heavy rain that started last week. Four people are ...

  Colombo / AFP Sri Lanka’s top anti-corruption prosecutor resigned on Monday after President Maithripala Sirisena accused her of launching politically-motivated investigations into former military officials, including the brother of his predecessor. Sirisena, who came to power last year promising to end corruption and restore rule of law, took the unusual step of publicly condemning Dilrukshi Wickramasinghe last week over ...

  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 ...

  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 ...

  London / AFP Stock markets swung mostly lower on Monday, with attention fixed on central bank policy before an ECB meeting this week and speculation on the outlook for US borrowing costs. Asian markets diverged following healthy gains for world equities at the end of last week, as investors bet that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates before ...

  Dubai / Reuters Potential investors in the Saudi Arabian government’s first international bond issue are preoccupied by a key question: how will the Saudis resolve their dilemma between size and pricing? Any issuer must choose between raising as much money as it can and selling debt as cheaply as possible. But as Saudi Arabia holds investor roadshows in the ...

  Bloomberg Iran, OPEC’s third-biggest member, plans to boost its oil output to 4 million barrels a day this year, potentially complicating the producer group’s plan to cut supply in an effort to prop up prices. Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said he hopes the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will agree next month at a meeting in Vienna to ...

  Reuters Iran will launch next month its first new style tender to develop oil and gas fields since the lifting of international sanctions, a leading oil official said on Monday, after months of internal discussions over the terms, intended to be more alluring to foreign companies. OPEC’s third largest oil producer hopes to revive its energy sector following the ...