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  Seoul / AFP A handful of South Korean lawmakers on Monday finally got to question the woman at the heart of the impeachment crisis surrounding President Park Geun-Hye, after she snubbed a televised hearing at her detention centre. Choi Soon-Sil, a long-time friend of the president, has repeatedly ignored several summons to appear before a parliamentary committee probing a corruption ...

  Banda Aceh / AFP Thousands of Indonesians prayed for their loved ones at mass graves and mosques on Monday to mark a tsunami which devastated Aceh province 12 years ago today, one of the worst natural disasters in human history. Some 170,000 lives were lost in the country when a 9.1-magnitude “megathrust” quake struck Aceh, a predominantly Muslim province in ...

  Sochi / AFP Russian rescuers found on Monday the first parts of the Syria-bound military plane that plunged into the Black Sea, as officials said they do not suspect terrorism as the reason for the crash that killed 92 people on board. The Tu-154 jet, whose passengers included more than 60 members of the internationally-renowned Red Army Choir, was heading ...

  Tokyo / AFP Prime Minister Shinzo Abe departed on Monday for Hawaii where he will visit Pearl Harbour with US President Barack Obama as the two countries highlight decades of post-World War II reconciliation. Abe’s visit to the site, which was bombed by Japan in a surprise attack in December 1941 that drew the United States into World World II, ...

  Bangkok / AFP Thai authorities have detained at least nine people on suspicion of hacking, a senior junta official said on Monday, following days of disruption to government websites sparked by the passing of a controversial cyber censorship law. Earlier this month Thailand’s rubber-stamp parliament unanimously approved a new security law that will make it much easier for the junta ...

  Kiev / AFP A new indefinite truce in Ukraine held by a thread for a third day Monday as both pro-Russian insurgents and Kiev reported clashes near a prized railroad hub but no deaths. Ukraine and Russia—two ex-Soviet neighbours that are now sworn foes—agreed to the armistice Wednesday with the help of mediation from the Organization for Security and Co-operation ...

  LIGAO / AFP A powerful typhoon left at least four people dead and eight missing as it crossed the Philippine archipelago on Monday, spoiling the Christmas holidays with strong winds, heavy rains and destructive flooding. Nock-Ten made landfall on the eastern island province of Catanduanes with gusts of 235 kilometres (146 miles) an hour on Christmas Day, ravaging the Bicol ...

  Belgrade / AFP Illegal deportations of migrants seeking to reach western Europe along the so-called Balkans route have been on the rise, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) warned on Monday. Some 1,000 people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa “were expelled in November alone along the Balkans route… more than before”, the UNHCR spokeswoman in Serbia, Mirjana Milenkovska, said. ...

  Bloomberg Loan bankers in Asia are relying on companies’ merger and acquisition activities and China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative to fuel loan growth next year after volumes in the region stagnated in 2016. Asia-Pacific ex-Japan loan volume amounts to $451.5 billion year to date, just shy of the $452.3 billion syndicated and clubbed deals completed in 2015, due ...

  Bloomberg Wells Fargo is facing a multimillion-dollar film-finance fraud lawsuit, capping off a 2016 of legal woes for the banking giant. British financiers Vandermolen Film Co. and Bridgeworks Media Capital claim Wells Fargo employees conned them into funding bridge loans and they’re owed at least $14 million, according to a complaint filed in Florida state court last week. “Upon ...