Dozens of children have been killed and hundreds arbitrarily detained in Myanmar since a coup more than five months ago, UN rights experts warned yesterday.

China launched its long-awaited emissions trading system yesterday, a key tool in its quest to drive down climate change-causing greenhouse gases and go carbon neutral by 2060. 

1973 - A military coup in Afghanistan led by former prime minister Sardar Muhammad Daoud Khan overthrew King Mohammed Zahir Shah; a republic was proclaimed with Daoud as president.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi today noted with concern the fast-rising number of Covid-19 cases in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand and many other countries and said “this should alert us and the world.”

Danish Siddiqui, the chief photographer of Reuters was killed in Afghanistan while covering clashes in Spin Boldak district in Kandahar.

Indonesia is now fighting a “worst-case scenario” epidemic, a senior minister said yesterday, adding the government was preparing for a further spike in coronavirus cases as the more virulent Delta variant spreads.

Hong Kong’s press freedoms are “in tatters” as China remoulds the once outspoken business hub in its own authoritarian image, the city’s main journalist union said yesterday, adding it feared “fake news” laws were on their way. 

Myanmar’s junta rejected on Wednesday a UN Human Rights Council resolution calling for reconciliation with the persecuted Rohingya minority, slamming “one-sided allegations” over its treatment of the stateless community. 

An Israeli-Canadian lobbyist hired by Myanmar’s ruling military leaders to represent them in Washington and other capitals said on Wednesday he has stopped his work with the generals because sanctions prevented him from being paid.

Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar made no assurance of supplying vaccine from India any time soon during his meeting with Bangladesh counterpart AK Abdul Momen in Uzbekistan today.

Struggling with rising coronavirus cases and a deeply unpopular Olympics, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is at risk of becoming the next in a long line of short-term leaders.

One more suspected Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) operative was arrested from Barasat near Kolkata, Indian police said today.

Myanmar's junta rejected on Wednesday a UN Human Rights Council resolution calling for reconciliation with the persecuted Rohingya minority, slamming "one-sided allegations" over its treatment of the stateless community.

Singapore yesterday unveiled one of the world’s biggest floating solar power farms, covering an area the size of 45 football pitches, as part of the city-state’s push to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Nine more people have been confirmed dead in the collapse of a budget hotel in eastern China, bringing the final toll to 17, as state media yesterday announced the end of search and recovery efforts.

About 100 opponents of military rule in Myanmar marched through the centre of its biggest city of Yangon yesterday, as the United States called on Southeast Asian nations to take action to restore democracy and end violence in their neighbour. 

Malaysian cabinet ministers yesterday unanimously pledged their support for Muhyiddin Yassin to continue as prime minister, amid a new round of political uncertainty after the premier lost the backing of the country’s biggest party.

Beijing said nine Chinese workers were among 12 people killed yesterday morning by a bomb attack on a bus in northwestern Pakistan and called for severe punishment, but Islamabad blamed the explosion on a “gas leak”.

A shadow government is breaking taboos in Buddhist-majority Myanmar by welcoming Rohingya into its anti-junta coalition, but many in the long-persecuted Muslim minority are wary after living through decades of discrimination and deadly violence. 

The Biden administration is set to begin evacuations of Afghan interpreters and translators who aided the U.S. military effort in the nearly 20-year war, an administration official said.