The world should urgently provide promised aid to Afghanistan, the UN refugee agency said on Saturday, warning that a lack of resources is hampering efforts to avert an economic crisis that could push fresh flows of refugees to its neighbours and beyond.

A US delegation will meet with senior Taliban representatives in Doha on Saturday and Sunday in their first face-to-face meeting at a senior level since Washington pulled its troops from Afghanistan and the hardline group took over the country, two senior administration officials told Reuters.

A suicide bomb attack on worshippers at a Shia mosque in the Afghan city of Kunduz killed at least 55 people yesterday, in the bloodiest assault since US forces left the country.

Taiwan does not seek military confrontation. It hopes for a peaceful, stable, predictable and mutually-beneficial coexistence with its neighbours. But Taiwan will also do whatever it takes to defend its freedom and democratic way of life.

The Sri Lankan government yesterday ended price controls on essential foods in a bid to end black market trading as food shortages worsen amid a foreign currency crisis.

A blast went off Friday at a mosque packed with Shiite Muslim worshippers in northern Afghanistan, killing or wounding at least 100 people, a Taliban police official said.

Indian and Chinese military were engaged in a brief face-off in Tawang sector of north eastern Indian state Arunachal Pradesh last week, the Indian media reported today.

An earthquake of magnitude 5.7 hit southern Pakistan in the early hours of yesterday, killing 20 people, most of them women and children, and injuring about 300, at a time when many victims were asleep, authorities said.

Dengue affects tens of millions each year, producing brutal symptoms that have earned it the moniker “breakbone fever,” but new research may have found the first-ever treatment for the virus.

Around 20 people have been after a 5.7 magnitude earthquake hit southern Pakistan in darkness early on Thursday, government officials said.

Southeast Asian nations are discussing whether to exclude Myanmar’s junta chief from a summit due to slow progress on a plan to address turmoil after a coup in the country earlier this year, a top diplomat said yesterday.

Military tensions between China and Taiwan are at their highest in four decades, the island’s defence minister warned yesterday, adding Beijing would be in a position to launch a full-scale invasion in 2025.

Singapore has trialled patrol robots that blast warnings at people engaging in “undesirable social behaviour”, adding to an arsenal of surveillance technology in the tightly controlled city-state that is fuelling privacy concerns.

Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa yesterday ordered a probe into his niece’s overseas wealth after she and her husband were alleged in the Pandora Papers to have millions of dollars stashed abroad.

Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi will not call any defence witnesses at her incitement trial in a junta court, her lawyer said yesterday, as the military hit a detained US journalist with another criminal charge.

Malaysia late Monday summoned Beijings’s envoy to the Southeast Asian country in protest after Chinese vessels entered its maritime economic zone in the disputed South China Sea.

Taiwan falling to China would trigger “catastrophic” consequences for peace in Asia, President Tsai Ing-wen wrote in a piece for Foreign Affairs published yesterday, and if threatened Taiwan will do whatever it takes to defend itself.

Sri Lankan prosecutors yesterday indicted the alleged mastermind of the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide bombings along with 24 men they say were co-conspirators in the island’s worst single terror attack.

Myanmar’s detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday asked a judge to reduce the frequency of her court hearings due to strained health, her lawyer said, but assured the public there was no concern about her condition.

We are disappointed that the Myanmar authorities have not cooperated with the Special Envoy of the Asean on Myanmar. Unless there is progress, it would be difficult to have the Chairman of the SAC at the Asean Summit.”