"The People's Republic of China can't have its cake and eat it too," State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.

Wong rose to prominence in 2020 as co-chair of the pandemic taskforce and was named Lee's successor in April 2022 after a series of consultations between the political leadership and Wong's peers.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations has led so far fruitless diplomatic efforts to solve the conflict unleashed by the military's putsch, which has displaced 2.7 million people, according to the United Nations. 

China and Russia declared a "no limits" partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War Two.

Wong, 51, comes from among a crop of so-called "4G" leaders, a new generation of politicians hand-picked by the long-ruling People's Action Party (PAP) to take over the reins of the key Asian trade and financial centre. 

Boeing breached obligations under an agreement that had shielded it against legal proceedings for the accidents, department officials said in a letter to a federal court in Texas.

The inaugural dialogue -- announced during Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit last month to Beijing but without a confirmed date -- will take place in Geneva.

Putin will be in Beijing from Thursday to Friday, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement, the Russian leader's first trip abroad since his March re-election and his second in just over six months to China.

"Shots were fired at the gendarmes using high calibre weapons and hunting rifles. There have been no deaths," High Commissioner of the Republic Louis Le Franc told reporters.

The US move "seriously infringed on China's sovereignty and security," the military said.

China's embassy in Manila had orchestrated "repeated acts of engaging and dissemination of disinformation, misinformation and malinformation", with the objective of sowing discord, division and disunity, Eduardo Ano said in a statement.

Indonesia reiterated its commitment to strengthening ties with Papua New Guinea on Wednesday in a “historic” meeting in Jayapura that emphasized defense cooperation with the Pacific Island nation amid unabating geopolitical tensions in the region.

A senior US treasury official said this week the United States saw Iran's capacity to move its oil as being reliant on service providers based in Malaysia. 

"The pilot successfully ejected and the plane crashed thereafter within Tengah Air Base," it said in a statement.

Johari Abdul Ghani said the "orangutan diplomacy" strategy would gift the endangered great apes to palm oil trading nations, especially major importing territories like the EU and India.

Each month since June 2023 has ranked as the planet's hottest on record, compared with the corresponding month in previous years, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin.

Brian Nelson, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, was speaking during a four-day visit to Singapore and Malaysia. 

A Chinese fighter jet endangered an Australian military helicopter during an unsafe and unacceptable confrontation over the Yellow Sea, Australia said on Monday.

Indonesia recently suggested to the South Korean government that it would pay about 600 billion won ($442.47 million) for the KF-21 joint fighter jet project, Yonhap reported, citing multiple unnamed government sources. 

AC exhaust units are a common feature of urban landscapes in many parts of Asia, clinging like limpets to towering apartment blocks in Hong Kong or tucked in a cross formation between the windows of a building in Cambodia.

Like much of Southeast Asia -- where schools have recently been forced to close early and electricity usage has surged -- southern and central Vietnam have been scorched by devastating heat.

Philippine officials have said a coast guard ship and a fisheries vessel were damaged when Chinese coast guard vessels fired water cannons at them while on their way to the disputed Scarborough shoal on Tuesday to help Filipino fishermen at sea. 

The Philippine coast guard said its two vessels stood their ground at the Scarborough Shoal, a key battleground in the South China Sea, but one sustained damage from use of water cannon by two Chinese coast guard ships.

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called on the new leaders of Indonesia and Singapore to bring ties between the two countries to "greater heights", while President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo urged them to ensure the full implementation of both countries' milestone deals.

The meeting, a long-held tradition in which the countries’ leaders and ministers meet informally each year to discuss ways to strengthen ties, was the seventh and final one for both leaders, who will be leaving office in 2024.

Two years of talks towards sealing a landmark accord on prevention, preparedness and response hit the deadline last month with nothing agreed in terms of concrete wording. The next deadline is the May 27 start of the World Health Organization's annual assembly of member states. 

The annual leaders’ retreat between President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and his Singaporean counterpart Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will be a swansong for the two outgoing leaders and the first meeting between their successors, president-elect Prabowo Subianto and Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, respectively.

Extreme heat has scorched Southeast Asia in recent days, prompting thousands of schools to suspend in-person classes and authorities to issue health warnings. 

The small airport near a wildlife sanctuary on the southern coast opened in 2013 but was immediately plagued by problems, and has been a running sore on state coffers since. 

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) came up with a peace plan in 2021 that Myanmar's generals agreed to, but it has only been partially implemented, causing fissures in the bloc and frustration from its most prominent members.