Sri Lanka's new president and scourge of the Tamil Tigers Gotabaya Rajapaksa urges minorities unnerved by his election victory to work with him, as he is sworn in at a ceremony steeped in symbolism for his core supporters.

The US and South Korea will postpone joint air drills in an “act of goodwill” towards the nuclear-armed North, US Defence Secretary Mark Esper said yesterday, after months of deadlocked diplomacy with Pyongyang.

A rare and huge leak of Chinese government documents has shed new light on a security crackdown on Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region, where President Xi Jinping ordered officials to act with “absolutely no mercy” against separatism and extremism, The New York Times reported.

Hong Kong protesters shot bows and arrows and hurled petrol bombs from a barricaded university campus yesterday, as police charged and charged again, firing tear gas and blue liquid from water cannon after fiery clashes overnight.

Gunmen fired on buses carrying minority Muslim voters in northwest Sri Lanka on Saturday, police say, as an election official admitted failures to protect vulnerable communities ahead of presidential polls.

Bangladesh thanks all the UN member states as a resolution on the situation of human rights of the Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar has been adopted at the Unites Nations (UN).

The Chinese and Hong Kong governments condemns an attack by a "violent mob" on the city's justice secretary in London, the first direct altercation between demonstrators and a government minister during months of often violent protests.

Indonesia issues a tsunami alert after a powerful earthquake struck in the sea near the Moluccas, prompting panicked islanders to flee to higher ground, according to residents and a media report.

Bangladesh has been identified as the highest risky country in terms of bribery threats in South Asia, says a latest international report.

The office of the Chief Justice of India (CJI) is a public authority under the Right to Information (RTI) Act and is liable to provide information sought in public interest, a five-judge Constitution Bench led by CJI Ranjan Gogoi declared yesterday.

Uighur activists said Tuesday they have documented nearly 500 camps and prisons run by China to detain members of the ethnic group, alleging that Beijing could be holding far more than the commonly cited figure of one million people.

At least 72 per cent urban Indians believe that India is headed in the right direction compared to 61 per cent global citizens who feel their country is on the wrong track, says a survey by market research firm Ipsos.

Police stepped up security across Sri Lanka yesterday over fears of violence on the final day of campaigning for the fiercely contested presidential election, officials said.

Pro-democracy protesters yesterday stepped up a “blossom everywhere” campaign of road blocks and vandalism across Hong Kong that has crippled the international financial hub this week and ignited some of the worst violence in five months of unrest.

Indian State of Maharashtra was placed under president’s rule yesterday amid a stalemate over government formation after the assembly polls last month.

More than 50 people, mostly children, were injured by a man who broke into a kindergarten in southwest China and sprayed them with corrosive liquid, local authorities said yesterday.

A communications blockade imposed by the Indian government in disputed Jammu and Kashmir became 100 days old yesterday, the longest in the insurgency-ridden region.

Huge slabs of pink Rajasthan stone, carved pillars and bricks from across India are already waiting to form a Hindu temple to be built on the site of a demolished mosque at the centre of decades of deadly turbulence.

Hong Kong police yesterday fired tear gas in the Central financial district, over the harbour in Mong Kok and at universities to break up pro-democracy protests which they said were leading the city to the “brink of total breakdown”.

In a setback, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party has decided not to form the government in the western state of Maharashtra - the country’s richest - leaving opposition groups scrambling yesterday to cobble together an alliance.