Pakistan’s eastern towns of Chiniot and Hafizabad face a risk of catastrophic floods if an irrigation barrage crumbles on a major river upstream after heavy rains swelled it beyond capacity, officials warned yesterday.

The Maldives, a luxury holiday destination and top diving spot in the Indian Ocean, will lift a decades-old ban on shark fishing, the president’s office said yesterday.

India's high commission in Islamabad shared the warning yesterday

The military-led government announced this week that polls would be held in phases, starting on December 28, pushing the vote as a salve for a war that has consumed the country since the generals seized power in a 2021 coup

Week-long downpours leave 400+ dead, villages swept away

Myanmar's civil war has killed thousands, left more than half the nation in poverty, and more than 3.5 million people living displaced

Rescuers were struggling to retrieve bodies from debris after flash floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains across northern Pakistan killed at least 344 people in the past 48 hours, authorities said yesterday.

Most were killed in flash floods and collapsing houses

Says disaster authority; majority of the deaths, 150, were recorded in mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province

'An MI-17 helicopter of the provincial government, carrying relief goods for rain-affected areas of Bajaur, crashed in the Pandiyali area of Mohmand district due to bad weather'

The Arakan Army (AA) has emerged as a key challenger to Myanmar's ruling generals since a 2021 military coup sparked war and today controls nearly all of western Rakhine state

Pakistani security forces killed 33 militants trying to cross from Afghanistan overnight, the military said yesterday, describing them as “Indian-sponsored”.

Pakistan has suspended cell phone data services for three weeks in the restive southwestern province of Balochistan in a bid to block communications among separatist insurgents behind a surge in recent attacks, an official and the government said.

A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Thursday sentenced more than 100 members of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan's party to prison terms on charges related to riots that targeted military sites in 2023, a court order said.

Militants in Pakistan have started using commercially acquired quadcopter drones to drop bombs on security forces in the country’s northwest, police said, a potentially dangerous development in the volatile region.

Over 500 injured across Pakistan since rains began

Sri Lanka’s independent regulator has sacked a senior police officer for failing to prevent the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, which killed 279 people including 45 foreigners.

Heavy monsoon rains across Pakistan’s Punjab province killed at least 63 people and injured nearly 300 in the past 24 hours, provincial officials said yesterday, bringing the nationwide death toll from the rains to at least 159 since late June.

Pakistan said yesterday it was creating a national paramilitary force, prompting concern among opposition parties and human rights groups that it could be used as a tool of political repression.

Myanmar has been consumed by civil war since the military ousted a democratic government in 2021