CNN – Asia/Pacific

By Nectar Gan, CNN The football pitches sat empty and silent under the cold glare of floodlights, barricaded off on all sides. Nearby, hundreds of police patrolled the grounds, stopping and searching passersby and sealing off entrances to the park. For the second year in a row, the sea of candlelight that used to illuminate

By Gawon Bae, Emiko Jozuka and Helen Regan, CNN North Korea fired eight short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) into the waters off its east coast on Sunday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, a move that Japan has called “unprecedented.” The missiles were launched from multiple sites in North Korea into waters east of the

By Cape Diamond and Irene Nasser, CNN Two men will be executed in Myanmar by the military junta after their death sentence appeals were denied, the junta said Saturday, in what would mark the first judicial executions in the country in decades. “It’s confirmed that Phyo Zayar Thaw and [Ko] Jimmy would be on the

By Yong Xiong, CNN A train conductor was killed and eight other people injured after a high-speed train derailed in southern China on Saturday morning, state media CCTV reported. The train derailed at 10:30am local time after hitting debris from a landslide that was on the track while it was approaching Rongjiang county, Guizhou province,

By Nectar Gan and CNN’s Beijing bureau Multiple neighborhoods in Shanghai were placed back under lockdown only a day after city-wide restrictions were lifted, as China’s stringent zero-Covid strategy continues to haunt the financial hub. Shanghai lifted its two-month lockdown on Wednesday, allowing most of its 25 million residents to leave their communities. But nearly

By Jessie Yeung, CNN For decades it was a symbol of freedom on Chinese controlled soil: every June 4, come rain or shine, tens of thousands of people would descend on Victoria Park in Hong Kong to commemorate the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The atmosphere would be at once defiant and somber.

By Rhea Mogul, Sophia Saifi and Azaz Syed CNN The alleged gang-rape of a woman on a moving train has sparked anger in Pakistan, putting the spotlight on the South Asian nation’s poor record with women’s rights. Three men — one of them a ticket checker — have been accused of raping the woman, a

By Helen Regan, CNN Concerns are growing for Australian TV host Cheng Lei, who has been detained in China for nearly two years, following an interview with her partner in which he claimed authorities had cut her access to embassy officials and tightened her food supply. Cheng, a former business anchor for China’s state broadcaster

By Brad Lendon and Simone McCarthy, CNN As China’s foreign minister began a Pacific islands tour to promote economic and security cooperation with Beijing, the smallest of the US government’s armed services was already on the scene, reinforcing Washington’s longstanding commitment to the region. Reacting to a request from the Solomon Islands, the first stop

By Brad Lendon, CNN Canadian surveillance planes helping to enforce United Nations sanctions on North Korea are being repeatedly buzzed by Chinese jets that fly so close their crews can see each other, Canada’s military has alleged. In some instances the Chinese warplanes have come so close the Canadian aircraft have had to change course

By Heather Chen and Kocha Olarn, CNN A court in Thailand has sentenced a British man to eight years in prison for the 2014 murder of a woman, whose dismembered body was found stuffed into a suitcase and dumped in a river. Briton Shane Kenneth Looker, 51, admitted killing Laxami Manochat, 27, after meeting her

By Nectar Gan, CNN The skyscrapers lit up, roads filled with traffic, and young people drank and danced in the streets as fireworks boomed overhead. Shanghai celebrated Wednesday with a long-awaited burst of life, as the government lifted its city-wide lockdown. But the process of reopening is likely to be slow and painful, as residents

By Swati Gupta and Ruba Alhenawi, CNN Indian singer Krishnakumar Kunnath, known by the stage name of KK, died Tuesday night in Kolkata, according to the city’s CMRI hospital. Just hours before his death on May 31, the acclaimed 53-year-old singer performed at a concert in Nazrul Mancha, a venue at the Sir Gurudas Mahavidyalaya

By Heather Chen, CNN More than one billion methamphetamine pills were seized in East and Southeast Asia last year, a record figure that the United Nations says highlights a “staggering” increase in the regional synthetic drug trade. Meth production and trafficking is surging in countries in the Lower Mekong region — Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand

By Rhea Mogul and Manveena Suri, CNN The loss of a plane carrying 22 people in Nepal has highlighted the dangers of air travel in a country often referred to as one of the world’s riskiest places to fly. When a Tara Air flight crashed into a Himalayan mountain at an altitude of about 14,500

Story by Reuters Chinese teenager Zheng Qinwen suffered with menstrual cramps as she lost to Poland’s Iga Swiatek in the French Open fourth round on Monday after taking a set off the world’s number one tennis player. Zheng, 19, looked on track for a major upset when she claimed the opener in a tiebreak before

Story by Reuters China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday urged the Pacific region not to be “too anxious” about his country’s aims after a meeting in Fiji with his counterparts from 10 island nations was unable to agree to a sweeping trade and security communique. Wang hosted the meeting with foreign ministers from Pacific

By Nectar Gan, CNN China has ordered a nationwide review of school textbooks after illustrations deemed ugly, sexually suggestive and secretly pro-American caused public uproar. The news has alarmed some experts and parents who fear the campaign is turning into a political witch hunt and represents an unnecessary tightening of the country’s already stringent censorship