Myanmar's former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has called for unity among her people, according to a source familiar with her legal proceedings, in rare remarks since her overthrow in a military coup last year.

Families of detained Myanmar protesters had their hopes dashed yesterday after political prisoners were not included in some 1,600 people released by the junta to mark the Buddhist new year.

Pakistan said yesterday incidents of its security forces being targeted in cross-border attacks from Afghanistan had risen significantly, and called on Taliban authorities to act against militants, a day after purported air strikes by Pakistan.

Kim Jong Un supervised the test-firing of a new guided weapons system to improve North Korea’s “tactical nukes”, state media said yesterday, capping days of celebrations surrounding the birthday of the country’s founding leader.

At least five children and a woman were killed in an eastern Afghan province when Pakistani military forces fired rockets along the border in a pre-dawn assault yesterday.

Pakistan’s new ruling alliance took control of the lower house of parliament yesterday with the election of a new speaker, cementing control of the assembly after former premier Imran Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong yesterday said that Finance Minister Lawrence Wong would succeed him as the city-state’s leader.

The Taliban prohibition on girls’ education shows the movement’s ultra-conservatives retain tight control of the Islamist group, and exposes a power struggle that puts at risk crucial aid for Afghanistan’s desperate population, experts say.

A meeting of Pakistan Army officials yesterday took note of the recent criticism directed at the institution on social media and expressed complete confidence in the leadership’s “well-considered stance to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law”.

Shehbaz Sharif, who became Pakistan’s new prime minister yesterday after leading the opposition alliance that ousted Imran Khan, is a tough administrator with a penchant for quoting revolutionary poetry.

Over a month after the no-confidence motion was tabled against Prime Minister Imran Khan on March 8, members of the National Assembly finally cast their votes to make Imran Khan the first prime minister in the country’s history to be ousted through a vote of no confidence.

Sri Lanka’s doctors warned yesterday they were nearly out of life-saving medicines and said the island nation’s economic crisis threatened a worse death toll than the coronavirus pandemic.

The young woman from Myanmar and her family now live amid the tall grasses of a riverbank on the Thai border, trapped between a country that does not want them and a country whose military could kill them.

Tens of thousands marched on beleaguered Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s office yesterday, in the biggest protest to date over the country’s dire economic and political crisis.

North Korea will use its nuclear weapons to “eliminate” South Korea’s army in the event they launch a pre-emptive strike, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un said yesterday. 

Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam announced yesterday that she will step down in June, ending a divisive term that saw democracy protests squashed and strict pandemic curbs plunge the business hub into international isolation.

China has offered the European Union assurances that it would seek peace in Ukraine but said this would be on its own terms, deflecting pressure for a tougher stance towards Russia.

The deportation of a 36-year-old Rohingya woman by Indian authorities and fresh detention of Rohingya refugees in Indian-administered Kashmir has been criticised by human rights groups, who called New Delhi’s forcible return of refugees a “cruel disregard for human life and international law”.

At least five people were killed and 20 more wounded when two bombs exploded in quick succession in the western Afghan city of Herat on Friday, officials said.

Pakistan’s parliament took up a no-confidence motion moved by opposition lawmakers yesterday in a bid to remove Prime Minister Imran Khan, pushing the South Asian nation closer to political turmoil.