CNN – Asia/Pacific

By Heather Chen, CNN Three elderly king penguins have been fitted with custom-made eye lenses during surgery to remove cataracts in what is believed to be a world first procedure to improve their sight, according to a Singapore zoo. In a statement Tuesday, vets with the Mandai Wildlife Group said the birds were among six

By Hannah Ritchie, Kocha Olarn, Heather Chen and Angus Watson, CNN At least 22 people, including three monks, were killed at a monastery in Myanmar’s Southern Shan State on Saturday as local insurgent groups and the military-backed junta accused each other of carrying out a massacre. Myanmar has been mired in political violence since military

By Eric Cheung, CNN A Taiwanese state-owned military weapons developer unveiled five new types of indigenous military drones on Tuesday, as the self-ruled island looks to boost its asymmetric warfare capabilities against China’s growing military threat. A CNN team was among reporters invited to the National Chung-shan Institute of Science and Technology, where the Taiwanese

By Emiko Jozuka, CNN The world’s longest-serving death row convict was on Monday granted a retrial by a Japanese court in the latest twist in a legal saga dating back to the 1960s. Iwao Hakamada, 87, spent nearly five decades waiting for the hangman’s call following his 1968 conviction for quadruple murder before new evidence

By Heather Chen, CNN Michelle Yeoh’s history-making Oscar win caused jubilation this week in her native Malaysia, but it also sparked false rumors that a national holiday had been declared — something the country’s government quickly dispelled. In a statement published on its Facebook page Monday, the office of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim debunked a

By Chris Lau, Junko Ogura and Emiko Jozuka, CNN Japanese Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe, a writer who was renowned for a strong pacifist stance that weaved its way into much of his work, has died of “old age”, his publisher confirmed Monday. The publisher, Kodansha, said the 88-year-old had passed away ten days earlier

By Eric Cheung and Nectar Gan, CNN A Taiwanese soldier who went missing last week from an island near the Chinese coast has been found in mainland China, a Taiwan official said on Monday, raising the possibility of a highly unusual defection amid heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait. Speaking to reporters, Chiu Tai-san, minister

By Nectar Gan and CNN’s Beijing bureau China’s leader Xi Jinping on Monday vowed to bolster national security and build the military into a “great wall of steel,” in the first speech of his precedent-breaking third term as president. Speaking at the closing of the annual meeting of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, Xi underscored the need

By Kathleen Magramo, CNN Behind the gleaming skyscrapers and multimillion-dollar homes that have made this city the world’s most expensive property market lies a far less attractive parallel reality: one of the world’s seemingly most intractable housing crises. Welcome to Hong Kong, where the average home sells for well north of a million dollars —

By Chris Lau and Jennifer Hauser, CNN A Chinese city has sparked a backlash on social media after saying it would consider the use of lockdowns in the event of an influenza outbreak. The city of Xi’an — a tourism hotspot in Shaanxi province that is home to the famous terracotta warriors — revealed an

By Laura He, CNN Business, and Riley Zhang China’s rubber-stamp legislature has appointed Li Qiang, a long-time aide of leader Xi Jinping, as premier, the man tasked with reviving the world’s second-largest economy after three years of zero-Covid restrictions. The National People’s Congress endorsed Li in a largely ceremonial vote at the Great Hall of

By Brad Lendon and Wayne Chang, CNN When a Chinese high-altitude balloon suspected of spying was spotted over the United States recently, the US Air Force responded by sending up a high-flying espionage asset of its own: the U-2 reconnaissance jet. It was the Cold-War era spy plane that took the high-resolution photographs — not

By Angus Watson and Nectar Gan, CNN The outgoing president of Micronesia has accused China of engaging in “political warfare” in the Pacific, in an explosive letter advocating for the the dissolution of diplomatic ties with Beijing. In the 13-page letter, which CNN has obtained, David Panuelo alleges China is preparing to invade the self-ruled

By Yoonjung Seo and Brad Lendon, CNN North Korea fired off at least six short-range missiles on Thursday afternoon in what could be the opening salvo in weeks of military displays on both sides of the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, analysts said. Photos released by state-run media on Friday showed North Korean leader