Manila speaks with 2 voices on China

Ferocious winds and torrential rain lashed India’s southeastern coast as Cyclone Arnab made landfall on Wednesday, forcing nearly 100,000 people to evacuate their homes in two states, authorities said. Arnab hit Andhra Pradesh as a “very severe cyclonic storm”, with winds of 125-135km/h (78-84 mph) and gusts reaching 150km/h, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said. A storm surge of 1.5 to 2.5 ‌metres (5-8 feet) above normal tide is very ⁠likely to ⁠inundate low-lying areas of the state...

Immigration restrictions, rising living costs and strains in US-India relations are testing support for President Donald Trump among some Indian-Americans who backed the Republican Party in 2024, analysts say, ahead of November’s midterm elections. A survey released in August by AAPI Data and Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote found that 66 per cent of Indian-American respondents favoured Democratic candidates for the US House of Representatives, compared with 18 per cent for Republicans....

More than 1,000 people are still taking shelter in evacuation centres, awaiting temporary housing three months after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Japan’s Kumamoto prefecture, damaging their homes. The quake occurred at 4.27pm on July 28. As of Monday, the death toll stood at 38 – 36 from confirmed disaster-related causes and two suspected to be disaster-related – bringing the number of casualties to 420. Evacuation centres remain open at 21 locations in seven cities and towns. In...

South Korea wants to take back wartime command of its troops from the United States within the next two years, but analysts say Washington is refusing to commit to a date to keep a hold on a military it sees as vital to countering China. The dispute is over wartime operational control, known as OPCON, which the US has held since shortly after the outbreak of the Korean war in 1950. If fighting were to break out again under the current arrangements, designated South Korean units would be assigned...

A heated disagreement over recent land mine explosions is part of the legacy of the truce that halted the Korean War 73 years ago.

The storm, Arnab, is forecast to make landfall Wednesday on the country’s eastern coast and then cut inland and head north toward Nepal.

To make good on Khurelsukh’s announcement, Mongolia’s foreign policy will require more than two decades of sustained continuity.

The election may change the political setting in which India-Israel relations operate, but it is unlikely to erase the interests and institutional links that sustain them.

The Communist Party uses a “national team” of state-owned investment funds to stem the market rout. But this time, investors are not sure it will work.

Discussions highlight the training challenges posed by Japan’s expanding arsenal and opportunities for closer defense cooperation with New Delhi.

In much of the world, Chinese firms introduced local consumers to Japanese aesthetics. Now, they are ready to sell Japanese culture back to Japan itself.