Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said yesterday he’s sleeping soundly after becoming the first premier in nine years to inhabit the official residence, which is reputedly haunted by ghosts.

The South Korean city of Busan has green-lit plans for an ambitious new ocean settlement, with work on the first neighborhood set to begin next year.

A citizen of Myanmar on Friday pleaded guilty in a plot to attack or kill the country’s pro-democracy UN ambassador, who has refused junta orders to quit, US officials said.

Taliban militants in Pakistan declared an end to a month-long ceasefire arranged with the aid of the Afghan Taliban, accusing the government of breaching terms including a prisoner release agreement and the formation of negotiating committees.

Up to 120 people have been arrested in Pakistan after a Sri Lankan factory manager was beaten to death and set ablaze by a mob who accused him of blasphemy, officials said yesterday.

The Taliban yesterday issued a decree in the name of their supreme leader instructing Afghan ministries “to take serious action” on women’s rights, but failed to mention girls’ access to schools.

A court in military-ruled Myanmar yesterday deferred the first verdicts in the trial of ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to Dec. 6, a source familiar with the proceedings said.

The Taliban co-founder and now prime minister of Afghanistan Mullah Mohammad Hassan Akhund pledged late Saturday that his government will “not interfere” in other countries’ internal affairs, and urged international charities to continue offering aid to the war-ravaged country.

The widow of a South Korean dictator who brutally crushed opponents until mass demonstrations forced him from power apologised yesterday for the “pains and wounds” of her husband’s rule.

Pakistan has “welcomed” a second round of talks between the United States and the Taliban since the latter’s takeover of Afghanistan earlier this year, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) spokesperson said.

Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities late Sunday issued a new ‘’religious guideline’’ that called on the country’s television channels to stop showing dramas and soap operas featuring women actors.

Myanmar security forces have arrested a former lawmaker and prominent hip-hop artist accused of masterminding a string of attacks targeting regime forces and officials, the junta said yesterday.

When the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan, Zahra Joya dressed as a boy and called herself Mohammad, allowing her to circumvent the Islamist group’s ban on girls going to school.

US journalist Danny Fenster was “pardoned” before being deported from Myanmar where he had been sentenced to 11 years in jail and was to face further terror and sedition charges, the junta said yesterday.

The Taliban have launched a crackdown on suspected Islamic State hideouts in southern Afghanistan, officials said yesterday, following an increase in bloody attacks by the group in recent weeks.

Sara Duterte, the daughter of outgoing Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, will run for vice president in the 2022 elections, the government's election monitor said Saturday, after months of speculation she would seek the top job.

Pakistan has removed far-right leader Saad Rizvi from its terrorism watchlist, paving the way for his release from detention under a deal to end weeks of deadly protests by his followers over alleged blasphemy.

In Taliban’s first news briefing since their return to power in Kabul, the group’s spokesperson said the new regime would be “positively different” from their 1996-2001 stint, which was infamous for deaths by stoning, girls being banned from school and women from working in contact with men.

The head of the United Nations body investigating the most serious crimes in Myanmar has said that preliminary evidence collected since the military seized power on February 1 shows a widespread and systematic attack on civilians “amounting to crimes against humanity”.

Four women have been killed in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Taliban government said yesterday, as local sources identified at least one of the victims as a rights activist.