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.

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”.

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.

Legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar complained of difficulty in breathing in the early hours of yesterday, following which she was rushed to Breach Candy Hospital, in South Mumbai.

China yesterday accused Mike Pompeo of “outdated Cold War thinking” after the US Secretary of State warned against a Chinese threat to Western freedoms.

Haze shrouded India’s capital city again yesterday, with residents braving dangerous air quality to return to work after a weekend of clearer air and better weather.

Turkey said yesterday it had begun sending back foreign jihadists to their countries of origin, with an American already expelled and more than 20 Europeans including French and Germans in the process of being deported.

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.

Malaysian ex-leader Najib Razak’s first trial linked to the 1MDB scandal will proceed after a judge ruled yesterday that prosecutors had made a sufficient case, boosting efforts to bring him to justice over the mammoth fraud.

Indian police have arrested dozens of people for social media comments that allegedly threatened “communal harmony” after the Supreme Court awarded a holy site once used for a mosque to Hindus, officials said yesterday.

A Hong Kong police officer shoots at masked protesters, hitting one in the torso, as anger sparked by the recent death of a student spilled into the rush hour commute and wreaked fresh chaos.

Flight operations at Kolkata airport will be stopped from 6:00pm today till 6:00am tomorrow, or for 12 hours, over safety concerns due to Cyclone Bulbul, Home Ministry officials have said.

North Korea yesterday slammed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as an “idiot and villain” and warned he will never set foot in Pyongyang after he condemned the North’s latest weapons test.

At least 15 people are killed and another four injured in attacks by suspected Muslim rebels in Thailand's violence-wracked south, an army spokesman says, the largest death toll in years.

At least one person was killed and 17 wounded yesterday in a grenade blast at a crowded market in Indian-administered Kashmir’s main city Srinagar, police and doctors said.

An Indian construction worker died while being taken hostage with several compatriots by insurgents in Myanmar’s conflict-scarred Rakhine state, rebels and the government said yesterday.

At least 17 people, including seven children, died when a crowded bus swerved off the road and plunged into a river in central Nepal on Sunday, officials said.