Asia & Pacific

Choi Soon-sil, a close friend of South Korea’s ousted president, received a three-year jail term Friday on charges of obstructing duty after a court found her guilty of soliciting academic favors for her daughter, local media reported.

A draft law on national anthem was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for its first reading Thursday.

China has more than 240,000 drug users in compulsory detox, the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) said Wednesday.

China's media watchdog on Thursday announced it is requiring several websites, including Sina Weibo and AcFun, to shut down its multimedia content for failing to obtain a license and for broadcasting negative social commentaries.

A video uploaded online in August 2016 depicted the test drive of an “elevated bus” that cars could easily drive underneath. The video prompted awe and controversy – but now it seems the experimental bus project has come to a crashing halt.

The United States is aware of a video purporting to show Kevin King, a US citizen held hostage in Afghanistan, and will work to verify it, US Department of State spokesperson Heather Nauert said on Thursday.

China launched a project on Wednesday to digitize the information collected from the country's scientific research and investigations in the South China Sea, including the islands and reefs in the region.

The Department of Justice (DoJ) has issued a report that a 60-year-old resident of Leesburg, Virginia, has been arrested and charged with espionage. Kevin Mallory, a consultant with a former Top Secret security clearance, has been formally charged in federal court with passing classified information to a Chinese agent in March and April of 2017.

"South Korea must realize that following psychopath [US President Donald] Trump … will only lead to disaster," a recent article in North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper warned.

As part of an ever-intensifying effort to lean on North Korea’s nuclear program, China and the United States have agreed to further tighten sanctions on the Hermit Kingdom. Specifically, they are banning American and Chinese companies from doing business with North Korean industries.

Additional police were deployed in the streets of Yulin, South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, in a bid to prevent vendors from selling and slaughtering dogs on the street during the dog meat festival, which fell on Wednesday. The scale of this year's festival is much smaller compared with previous years.

Kulbhushan Jadhav, the Indian naval officer sentenced to death by Pakistan on charges of alleged espionage, has filed a mercy petition to the Chief of Army Staff of Pakistan on Thursday.

The push for indigenous sniper rifles by Narendra Modi government has met with a major setback as the Indian Army has outrightly rejected the state-owned Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) manufactured ‘shoot to kill’ rifles after trials.

According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, drought conditions in 2016 and early 2017 led to widespread crop failures, in particular for rice paddy - the country’s staple food.

Despite persisting political and strategic differences between India and China on multiple fronts, the trade and commerce between the two countries continues to grow, even if the overall balance of trade remains in favor of China. Now, China’s East Hope Group is going to invest $300 million in setting up a manufacturing unit at Mundra port.

The US is now showing off its military might in the Korean peninsula because it has exhausted non-military means of resolving its differences with Pyongyang, according to political analyst Vladimir Batyuk.

In January 2017 US President Donald Trump thanked car manufacturer Ford for not building a million dollar plant in Mexico. However, it appears that the president may have to withdraw his gratitude as Ford has decided instead to move the production of the Ford Focus to China.

In a bid to strengthen naval power on the eastern coastline, the Indian Navy has decided to deploy an additional floating dock at Port Blair, which is very close to the Strait of Malacca, which connects the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea.

Over 76 percent of South Korean citizens back the idea of resumption of a dialogue with the North in an effort to settle the nuclear crisis, a poll showed Thursday.

Japan and South Korea will open communication channel between the defense ministers of their two countries in order to enhance cooperation amid the nuclear and missile activities of North Korea, according to local media.