Asia

KUALA LUMPUR: Social media companies should step up oversight of their networks and cooperate more closely with authorities, Indonesian child rights advocates said after police busted a human trafficking ring offering babies for sale on Instagram. Police arrested four people last week in the city of Surabaya who were connected to ...

THIMPU: Bhutan’s voters gave an overwhelming victory to a new party headed by a surgeon in only the third democratic election held by the Himalayan kingdom, according to provisional results. The result means the country of 800,000 people, wedged between giant neighbours China and India, will have chosen a different ...

BEIJING: China and Southeast Asian states will hold their first joint maritime exercises next week, officials said Friday, in a move aimed at easing tensions but which may spark US alarm. Beijing’s expansive claims to the South China Sea have long been a source of friction with rival claimants in ...

WASHINGTON: The United States will continue to apply pressure until Pakistan changes its policy towards regional peace and stability in Afghanistan. The US State Department’s acting deputy assistant secretary, Henry Ensher, said this while speaking at the Wilson Centre in Washington DC. He said efforts to bring peace and stability ...

LONDON: Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa has met UK Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Sir Nicholson Carter, where upon arrival he was also presented guard of honour. General Bajwa said that the country is ready to take its bilateral relationship with the United Kingdom to the ...

Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia’s cabinet has agreed to abolish the death penalty, a senior minister said Thursday, in a decision hailed by rights groups. Capital punishment in Malaysia is currently mandatory for murder, kidnapping, possession of firearms and drug trafficking, among other crimes. The penalty is exclusively carried out by hanging in ...

Five South Korean climbers and their four Nepali guides have been killed after their base camp in the Himalayas was ravaged by a storm, local police and hiking officials said on Sunday. The disaster, which claimed the life of record-breaking Korean climber Kim Chang-ho, is the worst climbing accident to ...

LONDON: After large quantities of unlicenced medicines sourced from India were recentlyseized in the United Kingdom, authorities of the two countries have enhanced intelligence-sharing and are focusing on regions suspected of sending such consignments to the Britain and Europe. India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) recently seized 350,000 tablets of ...

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s president signed on Monday a digital security act into law on Monday despite protests by journalists and rights groups that it will severely curb media freedom. “The digital security bill has been signed by the president today,” President Abdul Hamid’s spokesman Joynal Abedin told AFP. Top editors and ...

NEW DELHI – India’s belated #MeToo movement snowballed Tuesday after several female journalists accused a minister in Narendra Modi’s government of sexual harassment and a producer alleged she was raped by a veteran Bollywood actor. Women journalists took to Twitter to allege how M.J. Akbar, a well-known former editor and ...