Gyms and public baths are now also off limits to Afghan women, the Taliban confirmed yesterday, days after banning them from parks and funfairs.

Southeast Asian leaders agreed Friday to engage Myanmar opposition groups as they seek ways to quell the country's escalating bloodshed which has seen thousands killed in clashes since last year's coup.

Australia will provide $135 million in 2022-23 for the Rohingyas and other communities in Myanmar and Bangladesh to assist with the delivery of life-saving food, water and shelter as a part of the Albanese government's commitment to supporting the humanitarian response.

Seven people have been killed in fighting between the Philippine military and Muslim rebels in the country's south, authorities said Thursday, in one of the deadliest clashes since a landmark peace pact was signed in 2014.

The United Nations yesterday warned of a worsening food crisis in bankrupt Sri Lanka and said the number of people needing urgent humanitarian help had doubled to 3.4 million.

Indonesia said Monday the number of child deaths from kidney failure or damage linked to harmful substances found in syrup medicines has risen to 195.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said yesterday he welcomed the government’s offer to launch a judicial commission to investigate the attack in which he was shot in the leg on Thursday.

More than 80 Rohingya people seeking to travel by boat to Malaysia have been detained in Myanmar’s southeast after traffickers abandoned them, a security source told AFP yesterday.

Mahathir Mohamad, the nearly 100-year-old elder statesman of Malaysian politics, yesterday filed his candidacy in what is likely to be his final race, as campaigning for upcoming general elections began.

Myanmar’s military government is responsible for a lack of progress on a peace plan agreed with Asean, Indonesia’s foreign minister said yesterday, adding the regional bloc has done its part in trying to end hostilities in the strife-torn country.

Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation this year is up by a third, the UN’s drugs agency said yesterday, in its first report on the issue since the hardline Taliban took power in 2021.

South Korean police yesterday admitted their emergency response to a deadly Halloween crush had been “insufficient”, with top officials saying crowd management failures had likely contributed to the disaster.

Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan won another national assembly seat in a weekend by-election, officials said yesterday, as he leads a so-called “long march” of thousands of supporters to Islamabad.

A Pakistani known for being the oldest detainee at the US-run Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba was released to his home country yesterday, the South Asian country’s foreign ministry said.

North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) off its east coast yesterday, South Korea’s military said, while South Korean forces were wrapping up nearly two weeks of exercises aimed at deterring their northern neighbour.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) is gravely concerned about escalating violence in Myanmar, the bloc’s chair Cambodia said, in remarks

Tightening markets for liquefied natural gas (LNG) worldwide and major oil producers cutting supply have put the world in the middle of “the first truly global energy crisis”, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said yesterday.

Myanmar was added on Friday to a global financial blacklist while Russia was sidelined by the international money-laundering watchdog FATF.

Australia and Japan agreed to share sensitive intelligence and deepen defence cooperation yesterday, signing a security pact to counter China’s military rise.

Myanmar was added on Friday to a global financial blacklist while Russia was sidelined by the international money-laundering watchdog FATF.