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A half-century after the Tet offensive punctured American hopes of victory in Vietnam, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is visiting the former enemy in search of a different kind of win: incremental progress as partners in a part of the world the Pentagon has identified as vital for the United States to compete with China and Russia.
Mattis, a retired general who entered the Marine Corps during Vietnam but did not serve there, on Monday arrived in Indonesia, where he’ll spend two days before…

New centres for manufacturing medicines are to receive £70 million of funding from the UK government.

As Vietnam prepares to welcome up to 17 million international tourists this year, a 30 per cent increase on last year’s record, even those in the nation’s most impoverished regions are ready to reap the benefits.
Among them is Zu, a Black Hmong woman from the tiny village of Ta Van in northwest Vietnam, who walks the rice terraces of her neighbourhood for almost six hours every day.
She married at 16 and had her first child soon after. Now 24 and a mother of two, Zu takes tourists…

A measles outbreak is feared to have killed about 100 malnourished people in Indonesia’s Papua, an official said on Sunday, highlighting a health crisis in the country’s easternmost province.
A total of 69 toddlers have died in the remote Asmat region, said Papua military spokesman Muhammad Aidi, while reports on the ground suggest 27 people have died in an equally remote and mountainous district named Oksibil. “We have received reports from villagers that the outbreak is…

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said Pakistani authorities closed the Islamabad bureau of its Pashto-language Radio Mashaal on Friday after Pakistan’s intelligence agency accused it of airing programmes “against the interest of Pakistan”.
Pakistan’s spy agency, known by the acronym ISI, also accused the US- funded broadcaster of operating “in line with [a] hostile intelligence agency’s agenda”, without naming the agency, according to the RFE/RL site….

In a different era, the tempestuous weather that gripped Singapore and Malaysia this month would have been the perfect metaphor of the bilateral relationship between the two neighbours. For decades after the end of their acrimonious post-independence union in 1965, the former British colonies publicly bickered over everything; the ownership of a railway station, water supplies, rocky outcrops in the sea, airspace and even the provenance of a shared cuisine they both call their own. The…

Even for a president famed for turning the air blue, it was a colourful way to conduct a press conference. “You are not only throwing toilet paper – you are throwing s*** at us,” snarled Rodrigo Duterte at hapless Rappler journalist Pia Ranada as he brandished a copy of the news site’s latest exposé, railing against what he labelled “fake news”.
It wasn’t hard to grasp why the Filipino president was so angry. Just a day earlier, on January 15,…

Employment rights stipulated in law in Singapore could be extended to all employees in the city state under potential reforms being consulted on by the government.

The recent change of ownership at Irish football league club Dundalk FC could mark the start of a new investment strategy in European football, an expert has said.

Almost two-thirds of the UK’s gender pay gap cannot be explained by reference to male and female workers’ age, working patterns or occupation, official statisticians have said.