International banks can transfer money to Afghanistan for humanitarian purposes, and aid groups are allowed to pay teachers and healthcare workers at state-run institutions without fear of breaching sanctions on the Taliban, the United States said on Wednesday.

The UN Security Council called Wednesday (Feb 2) for an "immediate cessation of all forms of violence" in Myanmar and expressed hope that a special envoy would be allowed to travel there to mediate the crisis.

Myanmar’s shadow government, set up after last year’s military coup, said it accepts the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to hear allegations that the country committed genocide against its Rohingya minority.

Afghanistan’s public universities opened yesterday for the first time since the Taliban took over the country last year, with female students joining their male counterparts heading back to campus.

Some public universities opened in Afghanistan on Wednesday for the first time since the Taliban seized power in August, with a trickle of women attending classes that officials said would be segregated by sex.

Sri Lanka’s navy yesterday said it had arrested 21 Indian fishermen after a confrontation with two trawlers poaching in the island’s territorial waters.

The Taliban have arrested two Afghan journalists working for a local news channel, rights groups and the United Nations said yesterday, weeks after two women activists went missing.

India today announced Rs 300 crore annual budgetary financial assistance to Bangladesh in the coming 2022-23 (April-March) financial year, up from Rs 200 crore in the outgoing fiscal 2021-22.

Pakistani police on Monday called for the wildly popular Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) game to be banned after a teenager confessed to killing four members of his family in a rage after bingeing for days playing online.

A UN report seen by Reuters says the Taliban and its allies are believed to have killed scores of former Afghan officials, security force members and people who worked with the international military contingent since the U.S.-led pullout.

Gunmen shot dead a Christian priest and wounded his colleague in an ambush in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar on Sunday, police said.

Foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will meet next month to discuss humanitarian aid for Myanmar, the current chair of the grouping, Cambodia, said yesterday. Cambodia’s foreign minister, and Asean special envoy, Prak Sokhonn, is a preparing for his first visit to Myanmar, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The United Nations yesterday urged the world to ramp up the pressure on Myanmar’s junta to cease violence against the country’s own people and quickly restore civilian rule.

Pakistan today gave a visa to an Indian man who recently had a tearful reunion with his brother from Pakistan 74 years after the Indian subcontinent’s partition separated them.

Separatist insurgents have claimed responsibility for an attack on a Pakistani army post near a southwestern port in which China is investing, and the army said 10 soldiers were killed.

Japan will contribute UD$ 2 million in emergency grant aid for supporting the displaced Rohingyas living at Bhasan Char in Bangladesh.

The Taliban must uphold the fundamental human rights of women and children, the United Nations chief said Wednesday, urging the international community to release frozen Afghan aid to prevent families from selling their babies to buy food.

India recently at a programme of the United Nations Security Council, raised the issue of genocide carried out by Pakistan army during Bangladesh’s 1971 liberation war.

Justice Ayesha Malik was sworn in as the first female judge of the Pakistani Supreme Court yesterday, a landmark occasion in a nation where activists say the law is often wielded against women.

Expressing confidence that people would never take to the streets against him, especially on the call of the ‘tainted’ opposition, Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday warned his opponents that if he was forced out of office, he would become even more dangerous for them.