Police have arrested several hundred people across Bangladesh capital Dhaka for going outside "without emergency need" during the nationwide lockdown imposed to curb a resurgence in COVID-19 cases and deaths

The 2021 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report released Thursday by the United States Department of State has placed Sri Lanka in the Tier 2 Watch List, saying the island nation’s government does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking although it is making significant efforts to do so

Pakistan’s military and intelligence leaders have called for avoiding divisive politics on issues of national interest as they cautioned that strategic challenges and related policy shifts in external relations could have repercussions for the country

The US has added Pakistan and Turkey to its Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) list, a designation that could lead to strict sanctions on military assistance and listed countries’ participation in peacekeeping programs

Last week the Nepal government issued guidelines for establishing and operating oxygen cylinders in districts, mandating a stock of oxygen concentrators sufficient for 20 percent of the hospital beds in each district

Mohammed Nasheed, the Maldives’ first democratically elected president, has urged the country’s opposition parties to stop spreading “hatred” and “hostility” towards India

Amid the continued Taliban’s offensive in northern Afghanistan, hundreds of troops have been deployed to protect Hairatan, a border town along the Uzbekistan border, in the northern province of Balkh

Bagram airfield, the biggest airbase of US forces in Afghanistan and the epicenter of its 20-year-long military campaign in the country, was handed over to Afghan security forces, media reports say

A university in the Maldives has been fired a lecturer who has repeatedly and publicly supported female genital mutilation  (FGM) after his controversial tweets outraged many, including human rights activists and Islamic scholars

Over 6600 people have been killed in Afghanistan last month, making June the deadliest month in the two decades of the conflict, according to an estimate by local media

In a boost to intra-South Asian cooperation, Nepal on Thursday received 45,000 metric tonnes of urea from Bangladesh as part of a government-to-government agreement that the two nations had signed in December last year for 50,000 metric tonnes of fertilizer

In what comes as big relief for the small Buddhist kingdom, that had been staring at a potential vaccine shortage, Bhutan will receive around 250,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from Denmark in the coming weeks, the Danish foreign ministry said

Army personnel patrolled nearly empty streets and shops and markets remained closed in Dhaka as a seven-day "strict lockdown" began across Bangladesh on Thursday morning as a measure against the spike in Covid 19 cases

Bangladesh has banned fishing activities in all rivers and canals of the Sunderbans – the world’s largest mangrove forest in the delta formed between three rivers - as the breeding season kicks in, reported The Daily Star

Pakistan’s Foreign Office has dismissed as “irresponsible” Indian allegations about Islamabad’s role in a drone attack in Jammu and Kashmir