An Australian man who raped and strangled his Indian student neighbor and threw her body into a canal in a suitcase was jailed Friday for 45 years for the “horrifying” murder.

Cyclone Mahasen weakened Thursday afternoon into a tropical storm and then dissipated, causing far less damage than had been feared as it passed over Bangladesh and spared Myanmar almost entirely, meteorological officials said.

South Korea Thursday criticized an “unhelpful” visit to North Korea by a senior aide to Japan's prime minister, saying it weakened the united front needed to deal with Pyongyang.

Three people were killed when the ceiling of a warehouse fell in at a shoe factory in Cambodia, a government minister said on Thursday, adding to concern about safety standards at Asian factories producing clothes cheaply for Western consumers.

Australia on Thursday extended tough refugee policies to any asylum-seeker who lands on its mainland, allowing them to be banished to remote Nauru or Papua New Guinea for detention.

Singapore has asked the parents of a U.S. man found hanged in the city-state last year to provide evidence for their claim that he was murdered, rather than committing suicide as medical experts said.

The maverick mayor of Osaka is to meet former wartime sex slaves, reports said Thursday after he pledged to apologize to them, while insisting Japan's soldiers were not unique in brutalizing women.

A plane crashed while trying to land at a mountain airstrip in northern Nepal early Thursday, and all 21 people on board, including eight Japanese tourists, survived with injuries, police said. Four of the injured were in critical condition, police officer Bhim Bahadur Chand said.

A coin toss has decided the lucky winner of mayor for a small Philippine town, after rival candidates were tied at the end the vote count, en election official said Thursday.

A Malaysian court on Thursday sentenced a couple to 24 years in jail for starving their Cambodian maid to death, one of many such abuse cases straining ties between the country and its neighbors.