The son of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif took charge of Punjab province yesterday, the country’s most politically important region, further bolstering the dynasty’s grip on power.

A Myanmar junta court today postponed giving its first verdict in the corruption trial of ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a junta spokesman told AFP, a case which could see the Nobel laureate jailed for 15 years.

Pakistan’s National Security Council, a body of top civil and military leaders, has rejected ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan’s accusations that United States had conspired to topple his government through a parliamentary vote of confidence.

Travellers fully vaccinated against Covid-19 will no longer need to take any Covid-19 tests to enter Singapore from next Tuesday (April 26).

By the time he reached a third Colombo pharmacy out of stock of the drug his cancer-stricken wife desperately needs, Dawood Mohamed Ghany was distraught.

The International Monetary Fund will consider providing quick financial assistance to debt-burdened Sri Lanka following representations by India, Sri Lanka’s finance ministry said yesterday.

At least six people were killed and 24 wounded yesterday by two bomb blasts that struck a boys’ school in a Shia Hazara neighbourhood of the Afghan capital, police and hospital staff said.

Myanmar's former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has called for unity among her people, according to a source familiar with her legal proceedings, in rare remarks since her overthrow in a military coup last year.

Families of detained Myanmar protesters had their hopes dashed yesterday after political prisoners were not included in some 1,600 people released by the junta to mark the Buddhist new year.

Pakistan said yesterday incidents of its security forces being targeted in cross-border attacks from Afghanistan had risen significantly, and called on Taliban authorities to act against militants, a day after purported air strikes by Pakistan.

Kim Jong Un supervised the test-firing of a new guided weapons system to improve North Korea’s “tactical nukes”, state media said yesterday, capping days of celebrations surrounding the birthday of the country’s founding leader.

At least five children and a woman were killed in an eastern Afghan province when Pakistani military forces fired rockets along the border in a pre-dawn assault yesterday.

Pakistan’s new ruling alliance took control of the lower house of parliament yesterday with the election of a new speaker, cementing control of the assembly after former premier Imran Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong yesterday said that Finance Minister Lawrence Wong would succeed him as the city-state’s leader.

The Taliban prohibition on girls’ education shows the movement’s ultra-conservatives retain tight control of the Islamist group, and exposes a power struggle that puts at risk crucial aid for Afghanistan’s desperate population, experts say.

A meeting of Pakistan Army officials yesterday took note of the recent criticism directed at the institution on social media and expressed complete confidence in the leadership’s “well-considered stance to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law”.

Shehbaz Sharif, who became Pakistan’s new prime minister yesterday after leading the opposition alliance that ousted Imran Khan, is a tough administrator with a penchant for quoting revolutionary poetry.

Over a month after the no-confidence motion was tabled against Prime Minister Imran Khan on March 8, members of the National Assembly finally cast their votes to make Imran Khan the first prime minister in the country’s history to be ousted through a vote of no confidence.

Sri Lanka’s doctors warned yesterday they were nearly out of life-saving medicines and said the island nation’s economic crisis threatened a worse death toll than the coronavirus pandemic.

The young woman from Myanmar and her family now live amid the tall grasses of a riverbank on the Thai border, trapped between a country that does not want them and a country whose military could kill them.