The last surviving senior Khmer Rouge leader denied responsibility for genocide committed more than 40 years in Cambodia during his closing remarks Thursday to an international tribunal. 

China yesterday marked the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region on the roof of the world, with a call to accept the rule of the Communist Party.

At least three people were killed and 50 others wounded when a bomb explosion ripped through a Shia Muslim procession in central Pakistan yesterday, officials said.

Former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob moved closer yesterday to forming the next government after securing a parliamentary majority from the same coalition that collapsed earlier this week. 

Thousands of Afghans were packed yesterday between Taliban checkpoints and a US-imposed ring of steel around Kabul’s main airport, desperate to get aboard any flight out following the return of the hardline Islamist group. 

The Taliban must decide whether it wants to be recognized by the international community, US President Joe Biden said in an ABC interview aired yesterday, adding that he did not think the group had changed its fundamental beliefs. 

“On ideology, and beliefs, there is no difference,” longtime Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in his first press conference. “(But) based on experience, maturity, and insight, no doubt there are many differences.

At least two people were killed and 59 injured — two of them critically — in an explosion targeting an Ashura procession in Bahawalnagar on Thursday, Punjab Home Minister Raja Basharat said.

At least 218 Rohingyas died or went missing at sea in 2020, as they desperately sought refuge in Southeast Asian countries -- either from Myanmar’s Rakhine state or Bangladesh’s Rohingya camps, a new UN report says.

Several people were killed on Thursday in the Afghan city of Asadabad when Taliban fighters fired on people waving the national flag at an Independence Day rally, a witness said, a day after three people were killed in a similar protest.

Former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob looked set to form the next government after gaining a parliamentary majority from the same coalition that collapsed earlier this week, media and lawmakers said on Thursday.

As the United States and other Western powers pressed on with the evacuation of their nationals and some Afghans on Thursday, the rest of Afghanistan waited to see whether the nation's Independence Day would stir more anti-Taliban protests.

The International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday that Afghanistan will not be able to access IMF resources, including a new allocation of Special Drawing Rights reserves, due to a lack of clarity over the recognition of its government after the Taliban seized control of Kabul.

Sahraa Karimi had been waiting in line for nearly three hours to withdraw money from a bank in Kabul on Sunday when the bank manager came over and urged her to leave, with the sound of gunfire echoing in the distance.

At least three people were killed in anti-Taliban protests in the Afghan city of Jalalabad yesterday, witnesses said, as the Islamist group moved to set up a government and Western countries ramped up evacuations from a chaotic Kabul airport. 

Myanmar’s security forces have killed more than 1,000 civilians since the military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi from power six months ago, an advocacy group said yesterday.

Afghan women and girls who have won freedoms they could not have dreamt of under the last Taliban rule that ended 20 years ago are desperate not to lose them now the Islamist militant movement is back in power. 

Four student leaders from Hong Kong’s top university were arrested yesterday for “advocating terrorism”, police said.

Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai on Tuesday wrote “I fear for my Afghan sisters” in an op-ed published in The New York Times in the wake of the Taliban’s stunning takeover.

Haibatullah Akhundzada was appointed leader of the Taliban in a swift power transition after a US drone strike killed his predecessor, Mullah Mansour Akhtar, in 2016.