Vietnam’s PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc has issued a directive to ban the Southeast Asian country’s wildlife trade with immediate effect in order to reduce the risk of new pandemics, a government statement said.

It has been almost two years since Bugra Arkin’s father Aierken was abruptly snatched from his home in China’s troubled Xinjiang region by national security agents.

Human Rights Watch has called for Japan to immediately cancel plans to donate money to Myanmar police to purchase vehicles and communications equipment, saying the force has a well-documented record of serious human rights violations, including against the Rohingya population in the country.

China orders the United States to close its consulate in the city of Chengdu, in a tit-for-tat response to being told to shut its consulate in Houston earlier, as relations between the two world powers deteriorates further.

Nepal government has given its nod to Nepal Electricity Authority to trade electricity with India and Bangladesh.

The Vietnam government has ordered police to investigate brokers from Bangladesh and ensure security for Bangladeshi workers in Vietnam, the foreign ministry said in a statement yesterday.

A Pakistani journalist, who has been a vocal critic of the powerful military and government, was released late Tuesday hours after the government confirmed he had been abducted, his family said.

A giant 23-metre (75-foot) whale briefly washed up near a beach in Indonesia but it was unclear how the enormous marine mammal died, a conservation official said Wednesday.

Hundreds of Thais protested this evening, demanding the resignation of the government and the dissolution of parliament, defying a coronavirus ban on big gatherings in one of the largest street demonstrations since a 2014 military coup.

Inland waterways development between Bangladesh and India can become a vital and cost effective way of multimodal connectivity that can improve economic wellbeing of people from both countries, policymakers and experts have said.

Even as Indian and Chinese troops pull back from the site of a deadly faceoff in Galwan Valley in Ladakh, India is understood to have decided to expedite the construction of strategic roads, bridges and tunnels in forward areas along the border with China.

Malaysian Immigration Department has circulated a notice today, seeking public information on a Bangladeshi national to be investigated under the Immigration Act, after he spoke of mistreatment of migrants during Covid-19 lockdown in an Al Jazeera documentary aired last week.

Japan warns of more heavy rain on the southwestern island of Kyushu as the death toll in flood-hit areas reaches at least 50, with more than a dozen people reported missing.

Deep floodwaters and the risk of more mudslides that left about 20 people confirmed or presumed dead hampered search and rescue operations on Sunday in southern Japan, including at elderly home facilities where more than a dozen perished and scores are still stranded.

Some 200 Vietnamese citizens stranded in Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives during the coronavirus pandemic are repatriated to Vietnam.

A landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar kills at least 126 people, with more feared dead, authorities says, after a heap of mining waste collapsed into a lake and buried many workers under mud and water.

India recorded the highest single-day death count of 507 due to coronavirus, taking the total toll to 17,400, according to health ministry data.

US-based private equity firm Carlyle Group will acquire a 25 percent stake in Airtel's wholly-owned subsidiary data centre business, Nxtra Data based in New Delhi, for $235 million (Rs 1,780 crore), the company said today.

China's parliament passes national security legislation for Hong Kong, setting the stage for the most radical changes to the former British colony's way of life since it returned to Chinese rule almost exactly 23 years ago.

Four gunmen attacked the Pakistani Stock Exchange building in the city of Karachi on Monday but security forces killed them all, police say.