Warnings of dangerous temperatures across parts of Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh and India as hottest months of the year are made worse by El Niño

Millions of people across South and Southeast Asia are facing sweltering temperatures, with unusually hot weather forcing schools to close and threatening public health.

Thousands of schools across the Philippines, including in the capital region Metro Manila, have suspended in-person classes. Half of the country’s 82 provinces are experiencing drought, and nearly 31 others are facing dry spells or dry conditions, according to the UN, which has called for greater support to help the country prepare for similar weather events in the future. The country’s upcoming harvest will probably be below average, the UN said.

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Ferdinand Marcos Jr says building trilateral ties vital, after the three countries criticise China’s ‘dangerous and aggressive behaviour’ in the region

A cooperation agreement by the Philippines, the United States and Japan will change the dynamic in the South China Sea and the region, the Philippine president has said, while seeking to assure China it was not a target.

“I think the trilateral agreement is extremely important,” Ferdinand Marcos Jr told a press conference in Washington on Friday, a day after meeting President Joe Biden and the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, in the nations’ first trilateral summit.

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US president describes defence commitment to Philippines and Japan as ‘ironclad’ during first joint summit with Manila and Tokyo

Joe Biden has pledged to defend the Philippines from any attack in the South China Sea, as he hosted the first joint summit with Manila and Tokyo amid growing tensions with Beijing.

“The United States’ defence commitments to Japan and to the Philippines are ironclad,” the US president said on Thursday as he met the Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos and Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida.

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Bids for trunks from 1975 fight against Joe Frazier could reach $6m in online Sotheby’s auction

The shorts worn by Muhammad Ali during his famous “Thrilla in Manila” fight in 1975 are set to smash auction records at Sotheby’s in New York next week.

The white satin Everlast trunks, which Ali signed with a black Sharpie pen, have attracted bids of $3.8m (£3m) in an online auction that closes on 12 April. That is set to make them the most expensive item of Ali memorabilia sold at auction, and experts at Sotheby’s said they expect bids to increase to as much as $6m.

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Governments across region grappling with how to respond as temperatures soar to unseasonable highs

Thousands of schools in the Philippines have stopped in-person classes due to unbearable heat. In Indonesia, prolonged dry weather has caused rice prices to soar. In Thailand’s waters, temperatures are so high that scientists fear coral could be destroyed.

A “historic heatwave” is being experienced across south-east Asia, according to Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist and weather historian. In updates posted on X, he said heat that is unprecedented for early April had been recorded at monitoring stations across the region this week, including in Minbu, in central Myanmar, where 44C was recorded – the first time in south-east Asia’s climatic history that such high temperatures had been reached so early in the month. In Hat Yai, in Thailand’s far south, 40.2 C was reached, an all-time record, while Yên Châu in north-west Vietnam hit 40.6C, unprecedented for this time of year.

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Tuberculosis remains the world’s most deadly infectious disease but change is coming that could cut the threat and consign the illness to the past

Electricity cables slung low across the roads mean that only small vehicles can make their way through the bustling neighbourhood around Manila’s Karuhatan health centre. The clinic, in the same unit as a fire station and nursery, serves a working-class population, many of whom work in the multiple factories of Valenzuela City, a suburb of the Philippine capital.

Here, in a crowded area of a busy city, cutting-edge medical technology is being used in an effort to end tuberculosis, a disease that has plagued humanity for millennia. Every year, 1.5 million people die from TB – making it the planet’s top infectious killer.

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Mindanao island is the last stronghold of the endangered Philippine eagle. But now the raptor’s habitat is at risk from logging, hunting and armed groups

Christian Daug whistles with all the spirit he can muster. “The male and female were perched there yesterday,” he says, pointing to a dead tree amid the sea of flora that smothers the tallest mountain on the Philippine archipelago.

He whistles again as we look out over the jungle from a wooden observation post. This area is one of the last remaining strongholds of Pithecophaga jefferyi : one of the world’s largest and rarest eagles. Measuring about a metre in height when perched, with a wingspan that can reach more than two metres (6.5ft), it is known locally as the “monkey-eating eagle”. The enormous raptors prey primarily on macaques, but also feed on pythons, chickens, cats and dogs.

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Philippines spokesperson says Chinese vessel carried out ‘dangerous manoeuvres’ during mission to resupply military outpost

The Philippines has accused China’s coastguard of “reckless and illegal actions” that resulted in a collision that caused minor structural damage to one of its vessels in the fiercely disputed South China Sea.

Jay Tarriela, Philippine coastguard (PCG) spokesperson, said on social media that its vessels had “faced dangerous manoeuvres and blocking” from Chinese coastguard and Chinese maritime militia as they supported a resupply mission to military troops. This led to a collision that caused “minor structural damage to the PCG vessel”, he said in a statement on X.

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Three-year-old has given fresh hope of finding more survivors in a gold-mining village where death toll has climbed to 27

The rescue of a child nearly 60 hours after a landslide hit a gold-mining village in the southern Philippines has been hailed as a “miracle” after searchers had given up hope of finding more survivors.

The girl, who the Philippine Red Cross said was three years old, had been among scores of people missing after the rain-induced landslide hit the village.

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