Asia (except ME & Indian SC)

TOKYO (AP) — Japan signed a deal with the United States on Thursday to purchase up to 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles as part of its ongoing military buildup in response to increased regional threats.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government has pledged to double its annual defense spending to around 10 trillion yen ($68 billion) by 2027, which would make Japan the world’s third-biggest military spender after the United States and China.

TAIPEI, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Taiwan's defence ministry said it detected 18 Chinese air force planes operating around Taiwan and carrying out "joint combat readiness patrols" with Chinese warships on Wednesday, the first large-scale military activity after the Taiwanese election.

China, which views Taiwan as its own territory, has over the past four years regularly sent warplanes and warships into the skies and waters around the island as it seeks to assert sovereignty claims that the Taipei government rejects.

SINGAPORE, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Singapore's former Transport Minister S. Iswaran has been charged in court for graft, the anti-corruption agency said on Thursday, in one of the most high-profile graft cases involving a minister in the Asian financial hub in decades.

The Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB), in a statement, said Iswaran, who was arrested in July last year, is alleged to have obtained kickbacks valued at S$384,340.98 ($286,181) from property tycoon Ong Beng Seng, partly to advance Ong's business interests.

MANILA, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Philippine troops on Wednesday killed two suspected rebels in a clash in Negros Occidental province in the central Philippines, a military report said.

The report said that the fighting between the troops and around five rebels from the New People's Army (NPA) occurred in La Castellana town around 6:45 a.m. local time.

The troops recovered an AR-15 rifle, a homemade shotgun, a .45-caliber pistol, and ammunition from the encounter site.

TOKYO, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Japan's automaker Daihatsu Motor Co. on Wednesday said it plans to recall two mini-vehicles with a door defect.

The recall, which would potentially involve about 320,000 units, was announced a day after Japan's transport ministry instructed the company to consider recalling the Cast model sold under the Daihatsu brand and the Pixis Joy sold under the marque of its parent Toyota Motor Corp. following the scandal that the company had rigged safety tests for most of its models.

JAKARTA, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Jakarta-Bandung High-speed Railway (HSR), the first of its kind in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, has set a target to serve 31,000 passengers per day throughout this year, said PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia-China (KCIC), a joint venture consortium between Indonesian and Chinese state-owned firms that constructs and runs the HSR.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Even for a nation that has perfected the provocative, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s declaration that he would abandon the existential goal of reconciling with rival South Korea was a shock. But a closer look shows it’s the almost inevitable culmination of years of building tension.

World powers will now be closely watching to see how one of Kim’s biggest foreign policy declarations since he took power in 2011 plays out as he works to gain leverage in a region that holds both promise and danger for his small, impoverished, nuclear-armed nation.

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 16 (NNN-BERNAMA) – Malaysian authorities said yesterday, they had seized 528 kg of drugs worth 19 million ringgit (4.06 million U.S. dollars) hidden in a forest reserve in Perlis state, near the border with Thailand.

Four suspects had been arrested in connection with the case, with four vehicles and seven motorcycles seized as well, Bukit Aman Narcotics Crime Investigation Department (NCID) director, Mohd Kamarudin Md Din said.

VIENTIANE, Jan 16 (NNN-KPL) – Six people suffered serious injuries, when a landmine detonated, as people prepared land for the planting of cassava in southern Laos’ Attapeu province.

The incident took place in Viengxay village of Phouvong district in Attapeu province, some 560 km south-east of the Lao capital, Vientiane, on Jan 11, Lao national radio reported, today.

The explosion wounded three females and three males, two of whom were children, according to the report.

TOKYO, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Two passenger planes made contact on the ground at New Chitose Airport in Japan's northern prefecture of Hokkaido on Tuesday evening, with no reports of injuries so far.

At around 5:30 p.m. local time, a Korean Air aircraft and a Cathay Pacific plane "came into contact with each other," according to national broadcaster NHK, citing the operator Hokkaido Airports Co., Ltd. as saying.