North Korea on Friday claimed its Covid-19 outbreak began when two residents touched "unusual things" near the South Korean border, according to state media.

Doctors and bankers were among hundreds of Sri Lankans who marched on Wednesday to demand the government resolve a severe fuel shortage at the heart of the Indian Ocean island's worst economic crisis in decades or step down.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and journalist Maria Ressa said Tuesday the Philippine government has ordered her news organization Rappler to shut down.

Sri Lanka will shut schools and only allow fuel supplies to services deemed essential like health, trains and buses for two weeks starting Tuesday, a minister said, in a desperate attempt to deal with a severe shortage.

Sri Lanka is struggling to secure fresh fuel supplies, a top government minister said on Sunday, as the crisis-hit country of 22 million people is down to just 15,000 tons of petrol and diesel to keep essential services running in the coming days.

Aid groups scrambled on Thursday to reach victims of a powerful earthquake that rocked eastern Afghanistan, killing more than 1,000 people in an area blighted by poor infrastructure, as the country faces dire economic and hunger crises.

Sri Lanka's economy has "completely collapsed," Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said Wednesday, as the crisis-hit nation faces an increasingly dire situation that has left millions struggling with fuel, electricity and food shortages.

Singapore has reported the first confirmed case of monkeypox in Southeast Asia during this year's outbreak -- while two further suspected cases of the disease have been found in South Korea.

Cambodian villagers on the Mekong River have caught what researchers say is the world's biggest freshwater fish ever recorded, a stingray that weighed in at 661 pounds (about 300 kilograms), and took around a dozen men to haul to shore.

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Sri Lanka's fuel stocks will last for about five more days, its power and energy minister said on Thursday, as the island nation awaits official confirmation from the Indian government for a new $500 million credit line for fuel.

Coverage of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol building. Read articles and watch videos about the day Trump supporters broke into the US Capitol while Congress certified Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

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Japan's parliament on Monday passed legislation making "online insults" punishable by imprisonment amid rising public concern over cyberbullying sparked by the suicide of a reality television star who had faced social media abuse.

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Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe on Sunday accused the United States of being a "bully" and "hijacking" countries around the region, during a combative speech in which he said his country would "fight to the very end" to stop Taiwanese independence.

Thailand on Thursday became the first country in Asia to decriminalize cannabis -- but tough penalties will still apply to those who use the drug to get high, according to the minister who spearheaded the change.

It's a busy Saturday morning for Jeong Kwan, a South Korean Buddhist monk.

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Singapore says it is facing a dengue "emergency" as it grapples with an outbreak of the seasonal disease that has come unusually early this year.