Deposed Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa faced calls for his arrest yesterday after returning home from self-imposed exile under the protection of the government that took charge when he fled.

Bankrupt Sri Lanka’s deposed former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa is expected to end his self-imposed exile in Thailand and return home early today, a top defence official told AFP yesterday.

A Myanmar junta court yesterday sentenced ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to three years in jail “with hard labour”, for electoral fraud in the 2020 polls that her party won in a landslide, a source said.

The United Nations yesterday appealed for $160 million to help Pakistan as army helicopters rescued stranded families and dropped food packages into inaccessible areas following “epochal” rains and flooding.z

Tens of millions of people across swathes of Pakistan were battling the worst monsoon floods in a decade yesterday, with countless homes washed away, vital farmland destroyed, and the country’s main river threatening to burst its banks.

Afghan defence minister Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid yesterday accused Pakistan of providing airspace for US drones to enter his country, characterising the incursions as a continuation of Washington’s “invasion”. Mujahid’s comments came less than a month after US President Joe Biden announced the killing of al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike in Kabul.

Japan pledged $30 billion in aid for development in Africa yesterday, saying it wants to work more closely with the continent, with the rules-based international order under threat after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The UN yesterday said that children in Sri Lanka are “going to bed hungry” because of the island nation’s economic crisis, warning other South Asian countries could be approaching similar situations.

Malaysia’s top court ordered former prime minister Najib Razak to begin a 12-year prison sentence yesterday after upholding a guilty conviction on charges related to a multi-billion dollar graft scandal at state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

Malaysia's former premier Najib Razak on Tuesday (Aug 23) failed in his final appeal against a graft conviction, which is set to see him serve 12 years in jail for misappropriating millions of funds from a company linked to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

South Korea and the United States began their largest joint military drills in years yesterday with a resumption of field training, officials said, as the allies seek to tighten readiness over North Korea’s potential weapons tests.

Japanese PM Fumio Kishida has tested positive for Covid-19, his office said yesterday, a week before the leader was expected to attend an African development conference in Tunisia. Kishida took a PCR test “after experiencing a mild temperature and a cough” from Saturday evening, an official from the Prime Minister’s Office of Japan told AFP.

Myanmar's junta chief said on Friday he would consider allowing deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi to be moved to house arrest from prison but only after verdicts in a litany of cases against her have been reached.

The Taliban will deal with the international community in line with sharia law, Haibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of the hardline Islamist group said, according to a copy of his speech given to around 3,000 tribal leaders and shared by the information ministry yesterday.

Myanmar’s military chief yesterday said the junta is open to negotiations with ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to end the crisis sparked by its coup after her trials in a junta-run court have concluded.

At least 20 people were killed and six more were injured when a bus caught fire after colliding with an oil tanker in Pakistan yesterday, police said. The passengers were a couple of hours into a long journey when their vehicle crashed on the outskirts of the central city of Multan.

The UN’s new special envoy for Myanmar began her first trip to the country yesterday, a day after a junta court sentenced ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi to six more years in jail for corruption.

Sri Lanka’s government yesterday granted permission for a controversial Chinese research vessel to visit the island despite neighbouring India’s concerns that it could spy on New Delhi’s military installations, officials said.

An Australian economist and former adviser to deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has pleaded not guilty in a closed Myanmar court to charges of violating a state secrets law, according to media reports yesterday.

Flash floods caused by abnormally heavy monsoon rains killed at least 549 people in Pakistan over the past month, with remote communities in the impoverished southwestern province of Balochistan among the hardest hit, a government agency said.