US President Donald Trump is serious about getting out of Afghanistan, the Taliban told AFP yesterday, outlining the "Islamic system" comprising "all Afghans" that the group says it hopes to establish under any peace deal.

India's Foreign Secretary Vijay K Gokhale summoned Pakistan High Commissioner to India Sohail Mahmood late on Wednesday night and lodged a strong protest against Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi's phone call to a moderate Kashmir separatist leader saying such action tantamount to a “direct interference” in India's internal affairs.

Asia Bibi, the Christian woman whose acquittal was upheld this week in a blasphemy saga which has made her a prime target for vigilantes, is still in Pakistan, the foreign ministry said yesterday.

The head of Love Commandos, an organisation which offers shelter to runaway lovers, has been arrested in Delhi for extortion and abuse of desperate couples, officials said yesterday.

India's National Investigation Agency arrested two key members of Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) involved in the Burdwan blast of October 2014 from West Bengal on Monday.

A swine flu outbreak in one of India's biggest tourist hubs, Rajasthan state in the west of the country, has killed 76 people this year, government officials said yesterday. Colder weather has worsened the seasonal outbreak of H1N1 virus, with Rajasthan recording more than a third of all swine flu deaths in India.

A call by Pakistani religious hardliners for protests fell flat yesterday as Asia Bibi, the Christian woman at the centre of a years-long blasphemy row, was expected to leave the country having cleared a last legal hurdle.

Negotiations in Afghanistan are going well, US President Donald Trump said yesterday, after US officials earlier this week said there had been significant progress in talks to end 17 years of war in the country.

The captain of the US-Bangla plane “seemed to have an emotional breakdown” before the crash in Kathmandu airport last March, Nepali investigators said in the final report published yesterday.

Taliban officials said US negotiators on Saturday agreed on a draft peace pact setting out the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan within 18 months, potentially ending the United States' longest war.

Talks between US and Taliban officials in Qatar entered a fourth day yesterday, with the two sides trying to establish a mechanism for a ceasefire in the 17-year Afghan war and open dialogue between the insurgents and the Afghan government.

The United Nations yesterday cautioned Nepal that it risked failing war crimes victims as a deadline for investigating atrocities during its decade-long Maoist conflict draws near without a single case being resolved.

Sri Lanka's opposition leader Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday slammed the efforts being made to formulate a new Constitution, saying Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's government does not have political moral to introduce it and should therefore hold fresh polls.

Railways Minister Nurul Islam Sujan yesterday vowed to make the sector more service-oriented and pro-people.

A former warlord accused of historic war crimes entered Afghanistan's presidential race yesterday in a new challenge to President Ashraf Ghani who allowed him to return from exile two decades he was forced out by the Taliban.

Pakistan's new chief justice was sworn yesterday, pledging reform of a Supreme Court whose controversial decisions include ousting a prime minister and freeing a Christian accused of blasphemy.

Prime Minister Imran Khan yesterday lashed out at the opposition for disrupting National Assembly proceedings by staging regular walkouts.

The newly appointed Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen termed the Rohingya influx “a very serious issue” and said there is no easy solution to the humanitarian crisis.

The Rakhine State government has banned all humanitarian assistance groups from villages in northern Rakhine State where renewed violence recently has sparked security concerns, reports Myanmar Times.

Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh is convicted in the murder case of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati.