Taiwan will extend compulsory military service to one year from four months from 2024 due to the rising threat the democratically governed island faces from its giant neighbour China, President Tsai Ing-wen said yesterday.

At least 180 ethnic Rohingya stranded at sea for weeks after leaving Bangladesh in November are feared dead, as their rickety boat is thought to have sunk this month, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said.

Marwa was just a few months away from becoming the first woman in her Afghan family to go to university -- instead, she will watch achingly as her brother goes without her.

Afghanistan's Taliban-run administration on Saturday ordered all local and foreign non-governmental organisations (NGO) to stop female employees from coming to work, according to an economy ministry letter, in the latest crackdown on women's freedoms.

Charles Sobhraj, a convicted killer who police say is responsible for a string of murders in the 1970s and 1980s, was released from a Nepal prison yesterday after nearly two decades behind bars.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned the Taliban that the United States will impose “costs” on the group if it does not reverse its recent ban on women attending university in Afghanistan.

A policeman was killed and at least six people — including four police officers and two civilians — were injured in a suicide blast in Islamabad's I-10/4 sector on Friday, police officials said.

A small group of Afghan women yesterday staged a defiant protest in Kabul against a Taliban order banning them from universities, an activist said, adding that some were arrested.

Hundreds of young women were stopped by armed guards yesterday from entering Afghan university campuses, a day after the nation’s Taliban rulers banned them from higher education in another assault on human rights.

Says a student in Kabul, asking not to be identified, as hundreds of young women are stopped by armed guards from entering Afghan university campuses

The Taliban authorities on Tuesday ordered a nationwide ban on university education for females, as the hardline Islamists continue to crush Afghan women’s right to education and freedom.

All 33 suspected militant prisoners who seized a Pakistan police station over the weekend were killed and their hostages freed in a clearance operation by special forces yesterday, the defence minister said.

The Taliban authorities yesterday ordered a nationwide ban on university education for females, as the hardline Islamists continue to crush Afghan women’s right to education and freedom.

All 33 suspected militant prisoners who seized a Pakistan police station over the weekend were killed and their hostages freed in a clearance operation by special forces today, the defence minister said.

Indicating it is closely following reports that militants have seized control of a counterterrorism centre in Bannu, the United States on Monday offered unconditional support to Pakistan in its battle against the TTP and similar groups, saying that defeating terrorism was a shared goal of both countries.

At least 13 people were injured in a blast near the Umar Farooq Chowk in Balochistan's Khuzdar district in Pakistan last night, police officials said.

Thai military frigates and helicopters were yesterday searching for 31 sailors after a naval vessel sank, with dozens of others having been hauled from choppy waters.

Pakistani authorities yesterday opened talks to try to resolve a stand-off with Islamist militants who were holding several security personnel hostage after seizing control of a counter-terrorism facility in the country’s northwest a day earlier.

Following repeated appeals of the distressed Rohingyas to save their lives, Sri Lankan Navy yesterday rescued 104 Myanmar nationals, who have been adrift in the Andaman Sea for about two weeks with little or no food and water.

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.