At least 10 Covid-19 patients died as a major fire swept the ICU ward of a hospital in western Indian state Maharashtra's Ahmednagar town today, officials said.

It was a split second decision. Mirza Ali Ahmadi and his wife Suraya found themselves and their five children on Aug. 19 in a chaotic crowd outside the gates of the Kabul airport in Afghanistan when a US soldier, from over the tall fence, asked if they needed help.

At a recent election rally, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the scion of India’s Nehru-Gandhi family that dominates the opposition Congress party, strode on stage and asked the crowd to repeat after her: “I’m a woman, I can fight.” 

More than 500 civil rights groups have called for a United Nations Security Council meeting to stop escalating violence in Myanmar’s Chin state, a volatile border region that has become a forefront of resistance against military rule. 

China yesterday vowed to punish “diehard” Taiwan politicians, saying it would ban several from visiting the mainland, as tensions between Beijing and Taipei spiked to their highest level in years. 

Highways and school playgrounds in Beijing were closed yesterday due to heavy pollution, as China ramps up coal production and faces scrutiny of its environmental record at make-or-break international climate talks. 

From Bangladesh to Britain to Nigeria, many young campaigners on the frontlines of the global fight for climate justice now face a new problem: the impact the crisis is having on their mental health. 

The supreme leader of the Taliban yesterday warned against the danger of turncoats and infiltrators in the movement that has taken charge of Afghanistan.

China’s online censors Thursday scrubbed out a tennis star’s reported allegations that a powerful politician sexually assaulted her, the first time that the #MeToo movement has reached the highest echelons of the ruling Communist Party.

Myanmar’s ruling military yesterday stood by its decision to deny a Southeast Asian envoy access to detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, resisting growing international pressure to comply with a regional peace plan agreed in April.

The World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday said it had approved Indian drugmaker Bharat Biotech’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, paving the way for the homegrown shot to be accepted as a valid vaccine in many poor countries.

On the winding road up to India’s Himalayan frontier is a postcard view of gushing streams and tranquil lakes -- punctuated occasionally by the sight of artillery barrels and military bunkers.

A Taliban military commander was killed when his men responded to an Islamic State suicide bomb and gun attack on a hospital in the Afghan capital, officials said Wednesday.

Concerned over a high number of dengue cases in nine states and federally-ruled territories across India, the country’s health ministry sent high level teams of experts to those places to support local authorities.

India’s National Investigation Agency has arrested a suspected terrorist of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh from West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district, an official said today.

At least 25 people were killed and more than 50 wounded yesterday in an attack on Afghanistan’s biggest military hospital which saw two heavy blasts followed up by gunmen assaulting the site in central Kabul, officials said.

Researchers in Indonesia have found a way to fight disease-bearing mosquitoes by breeding a species of the insect which carries a kind of bacteria that prevents viruses like dengue from growing inside them.

West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress yesterday swept all the four bypolls in assembly seats in the state wresting two of them from Bharatiya Janata Party which also suffered setbacks in bye-elections in two northern Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Haryana.

At least 25 people were killed and more than 50 wounded when gunmen attacked Afghanistan's biggest military hospital after two heavy explosions at the site in central Kabul, officials said.

An explosion rocked Afghanistan’s capital Tuesday apparently targeting civilians in front of a military hospital, a Taliban spokesman said.