Japan's Emperor Akihito has announced his intention to abdicate in the coming years, public broadcaster NHK reports. The 82-year-old, who has had health problems in recent years, did not cite a reason for his decision.

An explosion ripped through a busy commuter train in Taiwan's capital, Taipei, late on Thursday injuring at least 24 people, police say.

Twenty foreign hostages have been killed at a cafe in the Bangladeshi capital, the army has said, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group that ended after a 10-hour siege when commandos stormed the building.

Rodrigo Duterte has been sworn in as president of the Philippines, after a landslide election victory in May.

A tornado has killed 51 people in eastern China and injured dozens more, state media say.

A new report claims that China is still engaged in the widespread and systematic harvesting of organs from prisoners, and says that people whose views conflict with the ruling Chinese Communist Party are being murdered for their organs.

A video has surfaced online showing staff at a Chinese bank being publicly spanked for poor performance, sparking outrage.

The governor of Tokyo has submitted his resignation after weeks of pressure on him to step down over allegations of misusing public funds.

By next May, none of Singapore's public servants will have access to the internet while at work.

The city-state, which prides itself on strong law and order, is cutting off online access for government workers from about 100,000 computers, according to the Straits Times.

Police in Papua New Guinea have opened fire on students protesting against Prime Minister Peter O'Neill.

Indian police say they have arrested the suspected leader of an illegal human kidney trading gang in one of the country's leading private hospitals.

The World Health Organization has congratulated Thailand as the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. 

It is also the first with a "large HIV epidemic" to eradicate mother-to-child transmission of the diseases. In 2014, an estimated 450,000 people were living with HIV in Thailand. 

Plenty of Chinese lawyers have been harassed, detained, even jailed in China but the photograph of one with his clothes reportedly torn off him by police has drawn plenty of attention in China.

Police in China's north-western region of Xinjiang are asking some residents to provide DNA samples and other biological data when applying for travel documents.

Around 330 million people in India are affected by drought, according to the government.