AFP News

South Korea fell in a political crisis when President Yoon Suk Yeol, currently suspended, declared martial law on December 3.

Just inland from the crashing waves on Sri Lanka's palm-fringed shores, the train slowly came to a stop on Thursday -- marking the moment a deadly tsunami hit 20 years ago.

Under the shade of trees at a mass grave in Indonesia's Aceh province, survivors and mourners recited Islamic prayers, commemorating the deaths of tens of thousands killed when a tsunami decimated the area two decades ago.

Beside India's holy rivers, a makeshift city is being built for a Hindu religious festival expected to be so vast it will be seen from space, the largest gathering in history.

The Embraer 190 aircraft that was supposed to fly northwest from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the city of Grozny in Chechnya in southern Russia, but instead flew across the Caspian Sea and went down near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.

Asia's stocks rose in thin Boxing Day trade on Thursday, extending a "Santa Rally" with key markets Hong Kong and Sydney still shut for the holidays.

The quiet resumption of operations at a desalination plant in the Gaza Strip last month marked a small but significant step toward restoring public services in the Palestinian territory ravaged by more than 14 months of war.

More than 1,500 prisoners escaped from a Maputo prison Wednesday, taking advantage of the third day of unrest triggered by the controversial confirmation of the long-ruling Frelimo party as the winner of recent elections.

Survivors and victims' relatives will next week mark the 20th anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, which killed more than 220,000 people across more than a dozen countries.

Emotional ceremonies were expected across Asia on Thursday to remember the 220,000 people who died two decades ago when a tsunami devastated coastal areas around the Indian Ocean, in one of the worst natural disasters in human history.

A "terrorist act" sank the cargo ship that went down in international waters in the Mediterranean this week, the Russian state-owned company that owns the vessel said Wednesday.

Desi Bouterse, the former dictator of Suriname who was a fugitive from justice for the murder of political opponents four decades ago, has died at 79, the government said Wednesday.

Syria's new authorities torched a large stockpile of drugs on Wednesday, two security officials told AFP, including one million pills of captagon, whose industrial-scale production flourished under ousted president Bashar al-Assad.

An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet with 67 people on board crashed on Wednesday in western Kazakhstan after veering from its scheduled route, officials said.

Pakistan air strikes in an eastern border region of Afghanistan killed 46 civilians, the Taliban government said Wednesday, whilst a Pakistan security official said the bombardment had targeted "terrorist hideouts".

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday denounced an "inhumane" attack from Russia, which launched dozens of missiles and drones on his war-torn country's energy grid on Christmas Day.

New Vietnamese internet rules requiring Facebook and TikTok to verify user identities and hand over data to authorities came into force on Wednesday, in what critics say is the latest attack on freedom of expression.

Christmas revellers around the world donned red and white Santa hats, offered meals to the homeless and lit candles on Wednesday, as Pope Francis launched observation of the global holiday with a sombre mass in the Vatican.

With flickering candles and the sound of organs, hundreds of Catholics held a muted Christmas Eve mass in Indonesia's Aceh province, the only one under ultraconservative Islamic law in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation.

Japanese foreign minister Takeshi Iwaya was due in Beijing on Wednesday for talks with counterpart Wang Yi and other top officials as Tokyo acknowledged "challenges and concerns" in ties.

Fuelled in part by the success of TV hit "Shogun", foreign studios are hungry for quality Japanese content and local creators are adapting to meet demand.

From riding pillion on zooming motorbikes to round-the-clock airport stakeouts, India's celebrity-hunting paparazzi photographers have gone from "outcasts" to becoming a key part of Bollywood's vast film industry machine.

Santa Claus has no need to worry about recent mystery drone sightings over New Jersey, a US Air Force general said Tuesday, as an annual tradition of "tracking" Saint Nick swung into action.

A leading US government agency that tracks foreign disinformation has terminated its operations, the State Department said Tuesday, after Congress failed to extend its funding following years of Republican criticism.

Pope Francis opened the "Holy Door" of St Peter's Basilica on Christmas Eve on Tuesday, launching the Jubilee year of Catholic celebrations set to draw more than 30 million pilgrims to Rome.

Protesters in Panama on Tuesday burned an image of US President-elect Donald Trump following his threat to demand control of the country's interoceanic canal be returned to Washington.

AFP photographer Sameer al-Doumy never dreamed he would be able to return to the hometown in Syria that he escaped through a tunnel seven years ago after it was besieged by Bashar al-Assad's forces.

A rift between Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa and his deputy deepened on Tuesday as his ally-turned-adversary accused the leader of the South American nation of trying to banish her to Turkey.

Syria's new leaders announced Tuesday that they had reached an agreement with the country's rebel groups on their dissolution and integration under the defence ministry.