A secondary teacher has been dubbed “China’s Superdad” for adopting nearly 300 parentless children over the past three decades. Bai Jian, 52, is a physical education (PE) teacher at Anshan No 2 Middle School, Liaoning province, northeastern China. He rents a big property to accommodate 20 to 30 children. Since 1995, at least 276 children have lived on the estate which is called Dream Home by Bai, the news outlet The Paper reported. Among the children have been orphans or others simply discarded...

Risks of conflict in the Gulf of Oman are rising after the US Navy fired on an Iranian-flagged cargo ship, though analysts say both Washington and Tehran have shown a reluctance to prolong the war. US President Donald Trump on Sunday confirmed that the guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance opened fire on the Touska after its crew reportedly ignored repeated orders to halt. The incident took place about 550km (342 miles) east of the Strait of Hormuz in the strategic waters connecting the Persian...

Forest fires raging through Laos, Myanmar and Thailand have smothered large areas in dangerous smoke, leaving overstretched firefighters battling blazes and smog-choked communities looking to the skies for rain and their governments to fix a scourge that worsens each year. Dry season fires have brought a public health crisis to northern Thailand, including Chiang Mai, as well as much of Laos and eastern Myanmar, as parched bush provides tinderbox conditions for wildfires. Some fires are also due...

China issued a “strong protest” after a Japanese destroyer, travelling to military exercises in the Philippines, passed through the Taiwan Strait on the anniversary of an 1895 treaty ceding the island to Japan. Friday’s voyage was a “deliberate provocation”, said Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry. The 14-hour passage by the JS Ikazuchi “once again exposes the dangerous plot of some people in Japan to intervene militarily in the Taiwan Strait and undermine peace and stability...

China’s central bank chief has urged the IMF to serve as a bulwark against “rising unilateralism”, at a time when escalating trade restrictions and an intensified Middle East conflict threaten energy and food security. The International Monetary Fund should “take a clear stand against protectionism and defend multilateralism”, People’s Bank of China governor Pan Gongsheng said in a statement to the fund’s International Monetary and Financial Committee, for its 53rd meeting, held on Thursday and...

The United States is planning to build an “economic security zone” in the Philippines to counter China’s dominance in critical technologies. The 4,000-acre (1,619-hectare) hi-tech industrial hub will reportedly be the first of its kind in the world, operating under US common law despite being on Philippine soil. Washington says it will be the first “AI-native investment acceleration hub” developed under the US-led Pax Silica initiative, a framework aimed at mobilising allied economies around...

Malaysia’s busiest container port has started refusing Middle East-bound cargo unless shipping lines can guarantee prompt pickup, in one of the clearest signs yet that the Gulf crisis is working its way past oil and into the everyday trade that moves across Asia. Longer transit times, missed sailings and sharply higher insurance premiums are now rippling across the region’s logistics chain, with wine, spirits and other time-sensitive goods acting as an early indicator of disruption that analysts...