The clothing tag on a boy's shirt by Wal-Mart's brand Faded Glory, which is made in Bangladesh, is shown after purchase from a Walmart store in Encinitas, California, May 14, 2013.The announcements came after clothing giants Inditex of Spain and H&M of Sweden said on Monday they were signing up to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety following the disaster at a garment factory that supplied Western retailers.

China and five Southeast Asian countries, namely Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, have signed a joint declaration at a ministerial meeting in Myanmar, with the aim to strengthen cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking.

A Bloomberg spokesman acknowledged that "limited customer relationship data has long been available to our journalists," without "security-level" data, trading data or messages.

The death toll in Bangladesh's worst industrial disaster on Friday soared past 1,000 after more bodies were found in the rubble of a collapsed nine-storey building outside the capital Dhaka.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday dismissed his influential deputy prime minister Vladislav Surkov credited with designing the country's tightly-controlled political system.

The leaders of the United States and South Korea on Tuesday vowed no concessions to North Korea after months of high tension, saying the burden was on the communist state to end the crisis.

Akira Matsu, a member of the House of Councillors – the upper house of the Japanese parliament, visited the ASEAN Secretariat and met with Minh in Jakarta on May 6 during her visit to Indonesia .  ASEAN Secretary General Le Luong Minh

Malaysia's ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) retained its 56-year hold on power in hard-fought elections on Sunday, with the final tally of 133 seats or 59.91 per cent of votes.

ASEAN member countries plus Japan, China and the Republic of Korea (ASEAN+3) have agreed to remain vigilant about negative impacts on the global monetary easing policy-stemmed region.

Three new cases of a new SARS-like virus have been detected in Saudi Arabia, the World Health Organisation reported on Friday.

 During the meeting, the two sides exchanged views on a number of issues of mutual interest, including ways and means to further strengthen the ASEAN-China Strategic Partnership.

  Dutch King Willem-Alexander waves next to his wife Queen Maxima at the end of a boat parade in Amsterdam April 30, 2013.