Indonesia will send humanitarian aid worth US$1 million each to Sudan, Yemen, Palestine, and Vietnam.

Hurricane Milton barreled toward Florida's battered Gulf Coast as an enormous Category 5 storm on Tuesday, triggering massive traffic jams and fuel shortages as officials ordered more than 1 million people to flee before it slams into the Tampa Bay area.

ASEAN has tried to no avail for three years to find a negotiated solution to the Myanmar crisis, which has left thousands dead and forced millions to flee their homes.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded Friday, a ray of light in a dark year for world peace, with the International Court of Justice, UNRWA and UN chief Antonio Guterres seen as favorites.

A surge of drugs is engulfing the paradisal South Pacific, as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials have told AFP.  

Brazil's Supreme Court said Tuesday it was lifting a ban on Elon Musk's social network X, which was blocked in its biggest Latin American market for over a month amid a row over disinformation.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will represent the United States at summits with Asian leaders in Laos this week and expects to discuss human rights in Myanmar, China's "irresponsible" behavior in the South China Sea and Ukraine, the top United States diplomat for East Asia said on Tuesday.

UN humanitarian officials has called for urgent action to stop the escalating conflict in Lebanon from spiraling into a similar scene of devastation as seen in Gaza.

The topics of regional tension in the South China Sea and the civil war in Myanmar are expected to take center stage at the leaders' meeting hosted by Laos in Vientiane.

The Philippines accused China's coast guard on Tuesday of firing water cannon at government ships taking supplies to fishermen at a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, but Beijing said its "control measures" followed the boats' intrusions in its waters.

Israel ramped up its ground offensive against Hezbollah along Lebanon's southern coast on Tuesday, deploying more troops and urging civilians near the Mediterranean to evacuate.

The pair were honored "for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks," the jury said.

The 44th and 45th ASEAN Summit, slated to run in Vientiane until Friday, will be the first time that President Joko "Jokowi" misses the bloc’s leaders meeting.

Myanmar will send a representative to a regional summit this week for the first time in three years, a diplomatic source told AFP Tuesday, as the junta struggles to quell a civil war.

Ishiba will visit Laos from Thursday through Saturday "to attend ASEAN-related summits", deputy chief cabinet secretary Keiichiro Tachibana said.

Video provided by Transport for New South Wales showed the koala ambling through Casula station on Friday, around 34 kilometers south-west of the city's central business district.

The two countries also signed an extradition treaty, Yoon said, adding it will help them to step up judicial cooperation.

Nations remain in deadlock over a crucial pact on climate aid, with divisions over who pays, and how much, threatening chances of a deal being landed at next month's COP29 summit.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris condemned Hamas's attack on Israel a year ago Monday while pushing for peace in the Middle East -- treading a tightrope on a conflict that could impact next month's US presidential election.

Former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte registered his candidacy on Monday to run for mayor of the southern city of Davao in midterm polls due next year.

Increasingly intense floods and droughts are a "distress signal" of what is to come as climate change makes the planet's water cycle ever more unpredictable, the United Nations warned Monday.

United States scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun won the Nobel Prize in Medicine on Monday for their discovery of microRNA and its role in how genes are regulated, solving a decades-old mystery, the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute said.

A total of 40 Indonesians who were recently evacuated from Lebanon arrived in Jakarta on Monday, amid an intensified offensive by Israeli forces in the middle eastern country.

Thailand's Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said on Monday the regional bloc ASEAN must play a key role in ending the protracted civil war in Myanmar, ahead of a summit of the leaders of the 10-member group in Laos this week.

Hezbollah rockets hit Israel's third-largest city of Haifa, police said early on Monday, and Israeli media reported 10 injured in the country's north on the first anniversary of the Gaza war, which has spread in the Middle East.

Powerful criminal networks in Southeast Asia extensively use the messaging app Telegram which has enabled a fundamental change in the way organized crime can conduct large-scale illicit activity, the United Nations said in a report on Monday.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr agreed on Monday to boost defense cooperation as their countries elevated ties to a strategic partnership amid growing security challenges in the region.