China’s tighter social restrictions to fight its latest Covid-19 outbreak, now in its fourth week and involving more than a dozen cities, are hitting the services sector especially travel and hospitality in the world’s second-largest economy.

China will ban karaoke songs perceived to “endanger national security”, as state controls attempt to muzzle the mics of a KTV-obsessed nation.

Rescuers were working to clear tonnes of rocks and mud Wednesday after a landslide buried about 60 people in India’s Himalayan north, killing at least 10.

Taliban fighters could isolate Afghanistan's capital in 30 days and possibly take it over in 90, a U.S. defence official told Reuters on Wednesday citing U.S. intelligence, as militants took control of an eighth provincial Afghan capital.

All Indian Visa Application Centres (VACs) in Bangladesh  resume operations today as the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions have been eased.

The Taliban seized another Afghan provincial capital yesterday -- the seventh in less than a week -- as tens of thousands of people fled their homes in the north for the relative safety of Kabul and other centres.

China yesterday demanded Lithuania recall its envoy to Beijing, after Vilnius allowed Taiwan to set up an office under its own name in a move seen as provocative by the Chinese government.

Giant pumps whir deep underground at a plant in Singapore that helps transform sewage into water so clean it is fit for human consumption while reducing ocean pollution. 

Myanmar’s junta had “nothing to do” with an alleged plot to attack the country’s ambassador to the UN Kyaw Moe Tun, who has defied the military and backed the pro-democracy movement, state-backed Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper said yesterday.

1966 - A treaty to end three years of hostilities between Malaysia and Indonesia was signed in Jakarta.

The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un yesterday called Seoul authorities “perfidious” over the South’s joint military exercises with the United States, and demanded Washington withdraw its forces from the peninsula.

India today asked all citizens living in and around Afghanistan’s third largest city Mazar-e-Sharif to return home by a special flight this evening, amidst reports that the Taliban are preparing to launch an attack to capture the city.

The United States said it was up to Afghan security forces to defend the country after Taliban militants captured a sixth provincial capital on Monday, along with border towns and trade routes.

More than seven decades after the Indian communists gave the slogan of “ye azadi jhoota hai,”  the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has decided to mark the country’s independence day with fanfare on August 15 and will hoist the national flag in all its party offices.

South Korea’s health minister apologised for Covid-19 vaccine shortages yesterday, saying US drugmaker Moderna Inc would deliver less than half its planned shipment this month due to production issues.

Sri Lanka has begun mass cremations to clear a backlog of dead bodies from Covid-19 as cases surge across the island, officials said yesterday.

Nepal’s indigenous peoples have been subjected to human rights violations including torture and unlawful killings under the country’s conservation policies, Amnesty International and a local activist group said yesterday.

The threat to human rights and bodily integrity are the “highest in police stations”, Chief Justice of India Justice N V Ramana said at a function on Sunday, expressing concern about custodial torture, reports NDTV online.

Rohingyas have no desire to be citizens of Bangladesh and their only goal is to go back to Myanmar, said Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights today in response to recent World Bank report that suggested refugee integration in 14 of the host countries.

South Korea and the United States will begin preliminary military drills on Tuesday, the Yonhap news agency reported on Monday, despite North Korea's warning that the exercises would dent signs of an inter-Korean thaw.