South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said on Wednesday that trilateral cooperation with the United States and Japan has become more important than ever to overcoming North Korea's growing nuclear threats and other crises.

An Indian state-owned arms manufacturer has shipped artillery barrels to military-ruled Myanmar, an activist group said Wednesday, warning they could be used by the junta in its crackdown on dissent.

The blending of TPNPB members with local civilians has been cited as the primary obstacle for the whole operation.

The decision comes just days after the centre-left Labor government launched a consultation on reforming superannuation - retirement funds - saying it wanted the country's pension system to become sustainable and equitable.

In an open letter issued on Monday, Prawit Wongsuwan, a former army chief and veteran political dealmaker in Thailand's royalist establishment, said democracy should be allowed to take its course and authoritarian governments installed by elites would always lose out to elected, liberal forces.

Japan's Fair Trade Commission said on Tuesday it filed criminal complaints against Dentsu and five other advertising firms as well as seven individuals over alleged bid-rigging on contracts for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Foreign ministers from around the world meet in New Delhi this week in the shadow of Russia's war in Ukraine and spiralling US-China tensions, with host India hoping that issues like climate change and Third World debt are not overlooked.

The Philippines is in talks to possibly include Australia and Japan in planned joint South China Sea patrols with the United States, a senior diplomat said on Monday, in another sign of concern over Beijing's activities in the strategic waters.

The optional self-registration will be followed from March 1 by a month-long collection of details by more than 120,000 enumerators using tablets and mobiles, which organizers say will make the process more accurate, transparent and credible.

The March 1-2 meeting of the G20 foreign ministers will be held days after a meeting of finance chiefs of the bloc in Bengaluru, where they wrangled over condemning Russia for the war, failed to reach a consensus on a joint statement and settled instead for a summary document.

"Our country's plan is (to acquire) 400 units" of the cruise missile, Kishida told the lower house budget committee without elaborating, citing the military sensitivity of the purchase.

China has sought to position itself as a neutral party on the conflict, even as it has maintained close ties with Russia and helped scuttle a joint statement condemning the war at a G20 gathering in India.  

The determination -- noted in a classified report by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines's office, The Wall Street Journal reported -- marks a shift by the Energy department, which had previously said it was undecided on how the virus emerged.

There they were: a pair of blue Nike running shoes with a tracking device hidden in one of the soles.

India, which as chair of the Group of Twenty (G20) economies was hosting a meeting in the city of Bengaluru, was reluctant to raise the issue of the war but Western nations insisted they could not back any outcome that did not include a condemnation.

Ajay Banga, US President Joe Biden's pick to run the World Bank, will face a tough slate of issues around the institution's finances and capital structure from the get-go, thorny problems he must address as he reshapes the bank into a force for combating climate change on top of its traditional role as a poverty fighter.

Finance leaders from the world's biggest economies were unable to resolve differences on Saturday over the war in Ukraine and inched forward on moves to restructure distressed nations' debt, people familiar with the discussions said.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's plan to rebuild quickly after devastating earthquakes rocked the country risks courting another disaster unless urban planning and building safety are carefully re-considered, architects and engineers say.

 If North Korea follows through on its threat to turn the Pacific Ocean into a "firing range", it would allow the isolated and nuclear-armed state to make technical advances in addition to signaling its military resolve, analysts said.

US congressional efforts to counter China's military threats toward Taiwan could stumble over a problem much closer to home: partisan battles in Washington imperiling billions of dollars in security assistance for the self-governed island.

Finance leaders of the world's top economies sought on Friday to bridge differences over how to deal with Russia following its invasion of Ukraine a year ago, as the West stepped up sanctions against Moscow.

As climate change impacts strengthen and water security becomes a growing concern in both India and Pakistan, India has proposed renegotiating a six-decade-old water sharing treaty - a move Pakistan so far opposes.

The very changes that have allowed the virus to infect wild birds so efficiently likely made it harder to infect human cells, leading disease experts say.

China called Friday for urgent peace talks as it released its plan to end the war in Ukraine, but several Western powers rebuffed the proposals while warning against Beijing's closening ties to Moscow.

Seeking to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic, Japan is now proactively catering to the significant Muslim population in Southeast Asia, including in Indonesia, to boost its tourism industry.

Three months into the job, Anwar is having to balance fiscal prudence with demands to address higher costs of living and a slowdown in Malaysia's export-driven economy. 

The United Nations voted overwhelmingly Thursday to demand Russia immediately and unconditionally withdraw its troops from Ukraine, marking the one-year anniversary of the war with a call for a "just and lasting" peace.

China called Friday for Russia and Ukraine to hold peace talks as soon as possible while insisting that nuclear weapons must not be used in their conflict.

Reuters reported in 2021 that a small number of US special operations forces have been rotating into Taiwan on a temporary basis to train their forces. 

Cambodia reported an 11-year-old girl from a province east of the capital Phnom Penh died after being infected by the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu.