Timor Leste will hold its fifth presidential election on Saturday since gaining independence, after a campaign also focused on economic security and jobs.

Australia last year dodged an "in danger" listing for the reef, a World Heritage site, for a second time, after heavy lobbying by Canberra led UNESCO to postpone a decision to this year.

The Department of Conservation said 29 long-finned pilot whales were already dead when the pod of 34 marine mammals was found at remote Farewell Spit on the South Island late Thursday.

The call, first announced by the White House on Thursday, comes at a pivotal moment in US-China relations and in Ukraine, where heavily outnumbered local forces have prevented Moscow from capturing any of the country's biggest cities so far.

The White House announced last month that US President Joe Biden would play host to a special summit with ASEAN on March 28 and 29.

Blinken told reporters that the United States is concerned that China is considering directly assisting Russia with military equipment.

At the top end, China has developed systems, such as reconnaissance and armed drones, guided weapons and battlefield communications, that might help Russia fill gaps that are being exposed on the Ukraine front.

Sam Rainsy, the self-exiled founder of the disbanded opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), has already been convicted of multiple offences and was among those found guilty on Thursday over remarks the authorities says were tantamount to plotting to overthrow the government.

Around 860,000 voters are registered to choose the next head of state in Southeast Asia's youngest country. 

Prayut Chan-O-Cha heads a sprawling coalition facing criticism over his mismanagement of Covid-19, a pandemic economy still in the doldrums and simmering tensions over huge 2021 pro-democracy protests that have dominated the past 12 months.

The country confirmed a total of 621,328 COVID-19 infections over a 24-hour period, exceeding the previous record of 400,741 set a day earlier, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

The Hang Seng Index jumped 5.79 percent, or 1,163.47 points, to 21,250.97 by the break.

The Southeast Asian country has vaccinated 92.31% of its population of 16 million against the coronavirus, one of the highest vaccination rates in the region, official data shows.

Pictures of the amphibious transports, typically used for landing expeditionary forces ashore, published by Japan's defence ministry showed what appeared to be military trucks loaded onto the deck of one of the vessels.

The North test-fired what was most likely a ballistic missile from the Sunan area of the capital, home to some three million people, early Wednesday, South Korea's military said. 

The magnitude 7.4 quake, which struck shortly before midnight on Wednesday and revived memories of the March 11, 2011 disaster, also severed transport links to the northeast, with Shinkansen bullet train service indefinitely suspended and at least one major highway to the region closed for safety checks.

Debris fell in or near Pyongyang after a failed test-fire from the airport on Wednesday, Seoul-based NK News reported, citing unnamed witnesses and a photograph of the test showing a red-tinted ball of smoke at the end of a zig-zagging rocket launch trail in the sky above the city.

The country recorded 3,290 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, including 11 severe cases.

The war in Ukraine has garnered broad sympathy in Taiwan, with many seeing parallels between Russia's invasion and the military threat posed by China, which views the democratically governed island as its own territory.

Vaccinated Australians can travel to New Zealand from April 12 and then from May 1 tourists from visa-waiver countries such as the United States and Britain will be able to visit, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said at a press conference.

Prawit Wongsuwan, an influential royalist and former army chief, was responding to news reports that he had met some leaders of the 17-party coalition on Monday to propose house dissolution after the summit in mid-November.

Myanmar's military-controlled government has already said it would also accept China's renminbi as an official settlement currency.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has said the government will relax the border control measures, criticized as being too strict, in stages, taking into account the infection situation at home and abroad and border control steps implemented by other nations.

"The US has repeatedly spread malicious disinformation against China on the Ukraine issue," the Chinese embassy in London told Reuters in a statement.

The American and French firms said they would pull out of Myanmar following growing international pressure from human rights groups to cut financial ties with the junta after last year's military coup.

Australia banned the entry of cruise ships in March 2020, when they were the source of about 20% of Australia's early coronavirus infections. The vessels became a flashpoint in its pandemic response after symptomatic passengers were allowed to disembark in Sydney, many of whom later tested positive.

China reported 5,280 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, more than double the previous day's tally as the highly-transmissible Omicron variant spreads across a country which has tethered tightly to a 'zero-COVID' strategy.

The northeastern province of Jilin was worst hit, accounting for more than 3,000 cases, according to the National Health Commission.

Mainland China reported 1,337 new domestically transmitted COVID cases with confirmed symptoms on March 13, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Monday. That brought the total this year to more than 9,000, compared with 8,378 in 2021, according to Reuters calculations.

The report compared weapons transactions worldwide for the five years through 2021 to the previous five years through 2016. It showed that out of the top 10 arms importers, six were from Asia and Oceania.