Sharif also called for a stable Afghanistan, saying it is essential to fully realizing trade opportunities for the SCO member states.

Three coast guard ships along with a commercial vessel searched for more people in the area, the agency said.

Indian authorities briefly curbed visas for Canadians and forced Ottawa to withdraw several diplomats.

More than a million copies of books by Han Kang, the first South Korean to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, have sold locally since the honour was announced, bookstores said Wednesday.

Strikes hit south Beirut on Wednesday, an AFP journalist saw, less than an hour after the Israeli military ordered residents to leave part of the Lebanese capital

The move suggests Israel may seek to strike Hezbollah for the first time from further east along Lebanon's border, at the same time creating a secure area from which it can freely reconnoitre the armed group and prevent infiltration, the sources said.

Two Singapore air force F-15SG jets scrambled and escorted Air India flight AXB684 away from populated areas after the airline received an email that there was a bomb on board its plane, Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said in a Facebook post.

Pacific islands such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean-trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia.

The North blew up the roads and railways on Tuesday, Seoul's military said, adding it had conducted a "counter-fire" operation in response.

Three weeks ahead of the US election, Harris's campaign has begun to focus aggressively on Trump's health and mental stability, and was quick to weigh in, saying the ex-president appeared "lost, confused, and frozen on stage."

The further deterioration in Myanmar, a Beijing ally where the military seized power in 2021, marks the first time in a decade that any country has matched China for a low score in the Freedom on the Net report.

Israeli military strikes killed at least 50 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces tightened their squeeze around Jabalia in the north of the enclave yesterday, amid fierce battles with Hamas-led fighters.

At least two TV channels in a northern Afghan province stopped showing images of living beings during their broadcasts, journalists told AFP yesterday, in line with orders from morality police.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar arrived in Pakistan yesterday in the first such visit in almost a decade for a meeting of governments of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), with the capital city under tight lockdown.

The Maldives president has sacked more than 225 political appointees, including ministers, in a bid to reduce the cash-strapped Indian Ocean nation’s expenditure, his office said yesterday.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday accused India of making a “fundamental error,” as an escalating row over the killing of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil last year saw both countries expel each other’s ambassadors.

India yesterday signed a deal with the US State Department to buy 31 armed MQ-9B SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) drones, the South Asian nation’s defence ministry said.

Fighters from a Myanmar ethnic armed group have seized another town along a strategic highway to China, the group and a resident said, in the latest setback for the embattled junta.

Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general Naim Qassem said yesterday his group has adopted “a new calculation” to inflict pain on Israel, even as he called for a ceasefire.

The operation has raised concerns among Palestinians and U.N. agencies that Israel wants to clear residents from the north of the crowded enclave, a charge it has denied.