Responding to Austin, Chinese Lieutenant General Jing Jianfeng accused the United States of seeking to build "an Asia-Pacific version of NATO", and described the superpower as the "greatest challenge to regional peace and stability". 

In a survey of military exercises in Asia between 2003 and 2022, the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies said drills are expanding at an increasing rate, driven in part by US and Chinese efforts to test capabilities and boost strategic diplomacy.

One passenger died of a suspected heart attack and dozens were injured after Singapore Airline Flight SQ321, flying from London to Singapore, encountered what the airline described as sudden, extreme turbulence while flying over Myanmar. The ministry said the investigation was ongoing. 

The India Meteorological Department (IMD), which reported "severe heat-wave conditions", recorded the temperatures at two Delhi suburbs stations at Narela and Mungeshpur.

The complaint, lodged by the royalist military that ousted the government of his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, had stemmed from an interview the influential tycoon gave to foreign media in 2015.

China, which claims democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory, started two days of drills last Thursday in what it called "punishment" for Lai's inauguration speech that week.

As the summit opened, Li said the meeting was "both a restart and a new beginning" and called for the comprehensive resumption of cooperation between East Asia's economic powerhouses.

Relief teams in the Pacific nation have been trickling into the difficult-to-access northern Enga region since Friday though officials said the odds of finding survivors were slim.

China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control. Taiwan's government rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims.

The numbers of those buried around Yambali village in Enga province in the country's north are based on estimates from local authorities which have been rising steadily since Friday's landslide.

The storm crossed the coastal regions of Bangladesh's Mongla port and the adjoining Sagar Islands in India's West Bengal state with wind speed measuring up to 135 kmph (about 84 mph), the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said.

The neighbours had agreed to hold a summit every year starting in 2008 to boost regional cooperation, but the initiative has been disrupted by bilateral feuds and the COVID-19 pandemic. Their last trilateral summit was in late 2019.

Hundreds are feared dead in the landslide in the Pacific nation north of Australia that levelled Kaokalam village in Enga Province, about 600 km northwest of capital Port Moresby, around 3 a.m. on Friday.

"The US Navy 7th Fleet remains committed to upholding the rules-based international order that underpins regional security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region," a public relations officer at the 7th Fleet told Reuters when asked to comment on the Chinese military drills around Taiwan this week.

Lee Hsien Yang, the estranged younger brother of the former prime minister, made defamatory allegations against the two ministers "of the gravest kind", wrote Justice Goh Yihan.

The airline is adopting a more cautious approach to turbulence, including not serving hot drinks or meals when the seat belt sign is on, it said in a statement to Singapore broadcaster Channel News Asia. 

UNHCR is coordinating with its local partners and authorities to gather more details on the group - who appeared to be made up of women and children - and to organise aid, senior communications assistant Yanuar Farhanditya told Reuters, 

But as the Boeing 777-300R soared above Myanmar it suddenly hit extreme turbulence, wildly throwing passengers, flight attendants and inflight meals and kettles around the cabin. 

Macron's plane was en route from France to the troubled islands, a holiday destination now strewn with hundreds of charred vehicles and scarred by burned-out stores, businesses and schools.

The scheduled London-Singapore flight on a Boeing BA.N 777-300ER plane diverted to Bangkok after the plane was buffeted by turbulence that flung passengers and crew around the cabin, slamming some into the ceiling.

Photographs from the interior of the plane showed gashes in the overhead cabin panels, oxygen masks and panels hanging from the ceiling and luggage strewn around.

Israel and Hamas, engaged in heavy fighting in the Gaza Strip, both angrily rejected on Monday moves to arrest their leaders for war crimes made before an international court.

France's High Commission in New Caledonia said on Tuesday the airport remains closed for commercial flights, and it will deploy the military to protect public buildings.

Lai was sworn in early Monday Taiwan time and will face rising geo-political turbulence in the region, with Chinese military pressure building and tense Washington-Beijing relations.

The president-elect joined a chorus of congratulatory messages from countries across the globe for Wong, Singapore's first new prime minister in 20 years.

"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.