Streets in major Chinese cities were eerily quiet yesterday as people stayed home to protect themselves from a surge in Covid-19 cases that has hit urban centres from north to south.

China, which chairs a high-stakes UN biodiversity summit in Montreal, was due to present a long-awaited compromise text yesterday in an attempt to seal the “peace pact with nature” that the planet sorely needs.

Four Pakistani police officers were killed and another four critically wounded yesterday when suspected militants attacked a police station in the country’s volatile northwest, police said.

An oil tanker overturned and caught fire in Afghanistan’s high-altitude Salang pass, killing 12 people and injuring dozens, officials said yesterday.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan today said the government has been monitoring the use of Myanmar mobile network in Rohingya refugee camps and formed a committee to discourage it.

North Korea fired two ballistic missiles Sunday, Seoul's military said, days after Pyongyang announced a successful test of a solid-fuel motor for a new weapons system.

Rescue workers scoured muddy terrain for survivors and bodies on Saturday as the death toll from a landslide at a Malaysian campsite rose to 23, including six children, authorities said.

Toxic hooch has killed at least 37 people in the eastern Indian state of Bihar where alcohol is banned, officials said yesterday, with unconfirmed reports putting the death toll at over 70.

China's abrupt lifting of stringent Covid-19 restrictions could result in an explosion of cases and over a million deaths through 2023, according to new projections from the US-based Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

India on Friday denounced Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari for his uncivilised personal remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying his comments were a new low even for his country.

India’s foreign minister accused Pakistan of being the “epicentre of terrorism” while his counterpart hit back that Narendra Modi was the “Butcher of Gujarat” in a war of words at the United Nations.

Japan yesterday unveiled its biggest military build-up since World War Two with a $320 billion plan that will buy missiles capable of striking China and ready it for sustained conflict, as regional tensions and Russia’s Ukraine invasion stoke war fears.

A landslide killed at least 21 people, including children, while they slept in their tents at an unlicensed campsite in Malaysia yesterday, officials

Two veteran Chinese state media journalists have died from Covid-19 in the capital Beijing in recent days, media said yesterday, among the first reported deaths since the government abandoned its strict “zero-Covid” policy of curbs and lockdowns.

At least 16 people were killed when a landslide struck a campsite at a Malaysian farm on Friday, officials said, with rescuers scouring the muddy terrain for nearly 20 people still missing.

The death of a young medical student in China ignited concern yesterday over the strain on the country’s healthcare system as staff battle a nationwide surge in coronavirus cases.

Japan is expected to announce its biggest defence overhaul in decades this week, hiking spending, reshaping its military command and acquiring new missiles to tackle the threat from China.

Pakistan will take a dossier to the United Nations alleging its neighbour India has backed incidents of terrorism, the foreign ministry said

China’s top health body said yesterday the true scale of coronavirus infections in the country is now “impossible” to track, with officials warning

Pakistan’s interior minister yesterday accused India of being behind a bombing in 2021 near the house of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of a militant Islamist group blamed for a deadly 2008 attack in Mumbai.