Hong Kong authorities yesterday detained multiple people as they pounced on any attempt at public commemoration of the 33rd anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, as China vies to remove all reminders of the deadly event.

At least 10 people were killed and 22 injured in a chemicals explosion at an electronics factory in northern India's Hapur district on Saturday, a police official said.

One person has been arrested in connection with the gang-rape of a 17-year-old girl inside a car last week in Hyderabad, NDTV reports quoting Indian police.

China will launch a spacecraft on Sunday carrying three astronauts to the core module of the unfinished Chinese space station, where they will work and live for six months as construction enters advanced stages.

The Pakistani Taliban on Thursday declared an indefinite ceasefire with Islamabad, saying “substantial progress” had been made in peace talks in the Afghan capital. The TTP is a home-grown movement but shares roots with the Afghan Taliban, who Pakistan has claimed lets its fighters to stage assaults from Afghan soil.

India yesterday defended its record on religious tolerance and rebuked the United States for its own rights issues after a report accused Indian officials of supporting attacks on minority worshippers.

Turkey has told the United Nations that, at the behest of its president, it wishes from now on to be called “Turkiye” in all languages, the UN announced Thursday.

Cash-strapped Sri Lanka is seeking urgent United Nations help to build a stockpile of essential foods, the prime minister’s office said yesterday, after authorities warned of looming starvation.

A 10-year-old Bangladeshi boy, undergoing treatment at an Indian hospital for injuries from a stun grenade hurled by the Indian Border Security Force (BSF), has made desperate pleas to return to his parents in Bangladesh.

Turkey’s annual inflation rate jumped to a 24-year high of 73.5% in May, fueled by the war in Ukraine, rising energy prices and a tumbling lira — though the figure was slightly lower than economists had feared.

Japan recorded a record low number of births in 2021, prompting the biggest ever natural decline in the population, government data showed on Friday.

India has allowed wheat shipments of 469,202 tonnes since banning most exports last month, but at least 1.7 million tonnes is lying at ports and could be damaged by looming monsoon rains, government and industry officials told Reuters.

Pakistan’s ousted prime minister and the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has warned that the country would descend into a civil war if elections were not announced.

Suspected rebels yesterday shot dead a bank manager in Indian-administered Kashmir, police said, the seventh in a spate of targeted killings in the disputed territory.

Flights in Nepal will be cleared to fly only if there is favourable weather forecast throughout their route, according to new

China has insisted it has “no intention to compete” for influence in the South Pacific as foreign minister Wang Yi and his Australian counterpart Penny Wong again jetted around the region yesterday on duelling diplomatic charm offensives.

A ruling party spokeswoman whose remarks on Islam embroiled India in a diplomatic row and sparked huge protests should apologise for having “set the country on fire”, New Delhi’s top court said yesterday. 

India imposed a ban on many single-use plastics yesterday in a bid to tackle waste choking rivers and poisoning wildlife, but experts say it faces severe headwinds from unprepared manufacturers and consumers unwilling to pay more.

Dialogue between Myanmar’s junta and ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to end the bloody crisis unleashed by the toppling of her government last year is “not impossible”, a junta spokesman told AFP yesterday.

President Xi Jinping hailed China’s rule over Hong Kong on Friday as he led 25th anniversary celebrations of the city’s handover from Britain, insisting that democracy was flourishing despite a years-long political crackdown that has silenced dissent.