Category: Asia

Seoul, South Korea CNN  —  South Korea redeployed firefighting helicopters after a fatal crash caused a temporary grounding on Wednesday as authorities struggle to contain “unprecedented” deadly wildfires that have ravaged the country’s southeast, destroying a centuries-old Buddhist temple. The helicopter crashed while working to contain a fast-spreading fire in Uiseong County, located more than…

Hong Kong/Seoul CNN  —  A Bangkok restaurant has reclaimed the number one spot at the annual Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards. Gaggan, named the best restaurant in Asia in 2025, is known for its boundary-pushing fine-dining experience that serves progressive Indian cuisine with influences from around the world. It was the first time the eponymous…

Hanoi, Vietnam Reuters  —  Vietnam will cut its tariffs on several US products including liquified natural gas (LNG) and cars, and moved to approve Starlink services, as the country tries to avoid being hit with US tariffs because of its large bilateral trade surplus. The Southeast Asian industrial hub announced in past weeks a series…

Seoul CNN  —  South Korea’s government fabricated birth records, falsely reported children had been abandoned and failed to properly conduct safety checks of prospective parents during its postwar frenzy of sending babies overseas for adoption, a long-awaited investigation reported on Wednesday. Authorities say more than 200,000 South Korean children have been adopted overseas since the…

Hong Kong/Beijing CNN  —  A light earthquake rattled Beijing overnight, waking residents and sending students rushing from their dorms as videos of shaking living rooms went viral on Chinese social media on Wednesday. The 4.5-magnitude quake struck a suburb of the nearby port city of Tianjin at 01:21 a.m. local time at a depth of…

Summary Officials are working to identify additional human remains from a fatal pileup crash on Interstate 40 in Arizona. The remains could belong to three South Korean tourists who have been missing since March 13. GPS data from the family’s rental car coincides with the location and time of the crash. The accident involved 22…

CNN  —  Doctors in China have become the first to report details about a transplant of a genetically modified pig liver into a human. The liver was transplanted last year into a person who was brain-dead, and it “functioned very well in the human body” for 10 days, the researchers said. The blood flow to…

Tokyo CNN  —  Japanese hot springs—better known as onsens—are prized for their zen experience, with travelers coming from around the world to lounge in natural pools and bliss out. The country is home to 27,000 natural hot spring sources, but a surge in tourism has left some onsen towns running low on water; leaving local…

Hong Kong CNN  —  In the world of electric vehicles, there’s a Chinese company outdoing Elon Musk’s Tesla. And it’s just getting started. BYD, the Shenzhen-based Chinese EV champion, eclipsed Tesla in annual sales last year. Last week, it unveiled a revolutionary battery charging technology that it says adds 250 miles of range in five…

Hong Kong Reuters  —  China’s glacier area has shrunk by 26% since 1960 due to rapid global warming, with 7,000 small glaciers disappearing completely and glacial retreat intensifying in recent years, official data released in March showed. Glaciers around the globe are disappearing faster than ever, with the largest glacial mass loss on record taking…