Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Typhoon Yagi: scores dead from flooding in Myanmar

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At least 320,000 people have been displaced and 64 were still missing after the strongest storm to hit Asia this year

Myanmar’s death toll from floods rose to at least 113, the country’s military government said, following heavy rains brought on by Typhoon Yagi that has caused havoc across parts of Southeast Asia.

At least 320,000 people have been displaced and 64 were still missing, government spokesperson Zaw Min Tun said, according to a late-night bulletin on state-run MRTV.

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Indian opposition leader Arvind Kejriwal released on bail

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Delhi chief minister had been in jail since being arrested in March in corruption case he says is politically motivated

One of India’s most prominent opposition leaders has been granted bail after spending almost six months in jail for a corruption case he alleged was politically motivated.

On Friday, India’s supreme court ruled that, Arvind Kejriwal, who is the chief minister of Delhi, should be immediately released from jail in Delhi, where he has been held since his arrest in March.

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Afghan women meet in Albania in ‘act of defiance’ against Taliban crackdown

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Organisers of international summit hope to create pressure to reverse laws including a ban on women speaking in public

More than 130 Afghan women have gathered in Albania at an All Afghan Women summit, in an attempt to develop a united voice representing the women and girls of Afghanistan in the fight against the ongoing assault on human rights by the Taliban.

Some women who attempted to reach the summit from inside Afghanistan were prevented from travelling, pulled off flights in Pakistan or stopped at borders. Other women have travelled from countries including Iran, Canada, the UK and the US where they are living as refugees.

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Religious groups ‘spending billions to counter gender-equality education’

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Report reveals how US Christians, Catholic schools and Islamists fight sex education, LGBTQ+ and equal rights

Extreme religious groups and political parties are targeting schools around the world as part of a coordinated and well-funded attack on gender equality, according to a new report.

Well-known conservative organisations aim to restrict girls’ access to education, change what is on the curriculum, and influence educational laws and policies, according to Whose Hands on our Education, a report by the Overseas Development Institute.

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Weather tracker: Heat to ease in central and eastern Europe

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Cooler temperatures expected to replace record highs in Estonia, while China braces for Super Typhoon Yagi

Since the start of September, swaths of central and eastern Europe have experienced temperatures well above average, with some places up to 10C (50F) above the seasonal norm.

A date temperature record was set in Estonia on Wednesday, where it hit 29.8C in Haapsalu. The September peak in the country is 30.3C, reached on 1 September 1992.

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Afghan women sing in defiance of Taliban laws silencing their voices

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Women push back at law stating they must not sing or read aloud in public by posting videos of themselves singing

Afghan women, both inside and outside the country, have posted videos of themselves singing in protest against the Taliban’s laws banning women’s voices in public.

Late last month the Taliban published new restrictions aimed, it said, at combating vice and promoting virtue. The 35-article document, which includes a raft of draconian laws, deems women’s voices to be potential instruments of vice and stipulates that women must not sing or read aloud in public, nor let their voices carry beyond the walls of their homes.

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‘Frightening’ Taliban law bans women from speaking in public

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New vice and virtue restrictions offer ‘a distressing vision of Afghanistan’s future’, says UN

New Taliban laws that prohibit women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes have been condemned by the UN and met with horror by human rights groups.

The Taliban published a host of new “vice and virtue” laws last week, approved by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid leading men into temptation and vice.

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Bangladeshis taking refuge in emergency shelters after heavy flooding

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Nearly 300,000 people forced to flee after monsoon rains, which have killed 42 people in India and Bangladesh

Nearly 300,000 Bangladeshis are taking refuge in emergency shelters from floods that inundated vast areas of the country, disaster officials said.

The floods were triggered by heavy monsoon rains and have killed at least 42 people in Bangladesh and India since the start of the week, many in landslides.

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Modi tells Zelenskiy he is ready to work ‘as a friend’ to bring about peace deal

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Indian PM says he respects and supports ‘sovereignty and territorial integrity’ of Ukraine during historic visit

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, made a historic visit to Kyiv on Friday and told Volodymyr Zelenskiy he was ready to work “as a friend” to bring about a peace deal that would end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Modi said he respected and supported Ukraine’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity”. “It is our highest priority,” he said, adding that he had told Vladimir Putin during their meeting in July that “problems cannot be resolved on the battlefield”. The war could only end through “dialogue and diplomacy”, he stressed.

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India should consider ban on microbeads in personal care products, researchers say

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Type of microplastics used in skin exfoliators and banned in UK and US found in 45% of Indian products studied

India should consider a ban on microbeads in personal care products, in line with many other countries in the world, say researchers.

Microbeads are a type of microplastic used in cosmetic products to exfoliate the skin. After a public uproar when the plastics were highlighted in Europe a decade ago, they were banned in the Netherlands in 2014, with many other countries following, including the US in 2015 and the UK in 2018.

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Weather tracker: 10 dead and 34,000 displaced in north-east India floods

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Schools and university shut down in Tripura state after persistent heavy rain, and situation expected to worsen

Incessant rain across Tripura, a state in north-east India, has created what has been described as the state’s worst flood situation in the last three decades. Persistent heavy rain from Monday to Wednesday resulted in several rivers exceeding danger and extreme danger marks, leading to widespread flooding that has caused the deaths of 10 people as well as displacing more than 34,000.

The southern Tripura districts had the worst of the floods and the 34,000 displaced people were being sheltered in the north of the region. There were 24-hour rainfall totals on Wednesday of 375.8mm recorded in Bagafa and 324.4mm in Belonia. The flooding and heavy rain led schools to shut down on Wednesday and Thursday, while Tripura University suspended all regular classes on Wednesday. The heavy rain was caused by a low pressure system situated over Bangladesh that is slowly moving westwards into north-east India. The situation is therefore only expected to worsen, with a further 100-150mm falling through Thursday and Friday as rivers continue to remain at breaking point.

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Bandits kill at least 11 Pakistani police officers in ambush in Punjab province

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Attack on patrol in the Rahim Yar Khan district that was targeting robbers also left seven wounded

Gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades have ambushed a police convoy in eastern Punjab province, killing at least 11 officers and wounding seven others, authorities said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on Thursday in the Rahim Yar Khan district. The officers were ambushed while on patrol in a deserted area in search of robbers who operate in the region.

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Thousands flee after Myanmar rebels use drones to bomb Rohingya villagers

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Arakan Army targeting Muslim minority as Myanmar’s military are driven out of Rakhine, UN official says

Thousands of Rohingya are being forced to flee from their homes in Myanmar and escape on dangerous boat journeys after being targeted by armed rebels, activists and officials say.

Having seized control of much of Myanmar’s Rakhine state from the military, the rebel Arakan Army has turned on the Rohingya minority in areas it controls, shelling villages, forcing them to leave their homes and reportedly rounding up groups of men.

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Man charged in Pakistan for alleged role in spreading false claims before UK riots

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Web developer in Lahore charged with cyberterrorism, after riots thought to have been fuelled by false reports online

Police in Pakistan have charged a man with cyberterrorism for his alleged role in spreading misinformation thought to have led to widespread rioting in the UK, a senior investigator has said.

The suspect was identified as Farhan Asif, 32, a freelance web developer, said Imran Kishwar, the deputy inspector general of investigations in Lahore.

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Pakistan businesses reeling from slow internet blame testing for firewall

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Government denies new cybersecurity measures responsible for up to 40% drop in internet speeds across the country

For the free online tech skill classes advertised, there were hundreds of Facebook “likes” and in the end 1,500 people signed up. But on the first day last week, only a handful of those registered managed to log in to the live session. The internet was working at a snail’s speed.

“We received hundreds of complaints,” says the course tutor, Wardah Noor, founder of the IT training firm XWave, based in Layyah, in the Pakistani province of Punjab.

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Murdered Indian doctor’s father speaks out: ‘All I can do now is get her justice’

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The rape-murder of a trainee doctor in a Kolkata hospital has caused outrage across India. Here, her father recalls her urge to help others and their struggle to support her studies

The father of the trainee doctor murdered during a rest break at a Kolkata hospital has spoken of his daughter’s love of medicine and the way her family had worked to support her vocation.

“We are a poor family and we raised her with a lot of hardship. She worked extremely hard to become a doctor. All she did was study, study, study,” he told the Guardian by telephone.

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Hospitals in India hit as doctors begin nationwide strike over trainee’s rape and murder

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Non-essential medical services paralysed as more than a million doctors expected to join 24-hour protest amid rising anger at violence against women

Hospitals and clinics across India have begun turning away patients except for emergency cases as medical professionals started a 24-hour shutdown in protest against the rape and murder of a doctor in the eastern city of Kolkata.

More than 1 million doctors were expected to join Saturday’s strike, paralysing medical services across the world’s most populous nation. Hospitals said faculty staff from medical colleges had been pressed into service for emergency cases.

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Indian medics step up strike in protest at doctor’s rape and murder

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All hospital services except for emergency care to be shut down on Saturday amid outrage over Kolkata attack

All hospital services in India except for emergency care will shut down on Saturday as doctors escalate their protest over the rape and murder of a colleague by calling for a nationwide strike.

A strike that doctors started on Monday was more limited, affecting only government hospitals and elective surgeries. The one on Saturday, called by the Indian Medical Association, will cause massive disruption for 24 hours. All outpatient services and treatment in government and private hospitals will be cancelled.

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Protesters attack supporters of ousted Bangladesh PM in Dhaka

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Hundreds of students and activists prevent Sheikh Hasina followers from visiting her father’s former house

Hundreds of student protesters and political activists armed with bamboo sticks, iron rods and pipes have assaulted supporters of the ousted Bangladeshi prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, and prevented them from reaching the former house of her father, the assassinated independence leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in Dhaka.

The house in the Dhanmondi area of the capital was turned into a museum to showcase narratives and other objects about a military coup on 15 August 1975, when Rahman was killed along with most of his family members. The house, now called Bangabandhu Memorial Museum, was torched by the protesters hours after Hasina’s downfall on 5 August following an uprising during which more than 300 people were killed.

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Indian women march to ‘reclaim the night’ after doctor’s rape and murder

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Protests reflect anger at 31-year-old’s killing, as well as a failure to address the daily struggles faced by many women

At the stroke of midnight, thousands of women holding flaming torches and blowing conch shells began to march through dark streets across the state of West Bengal.

The processions in the early hours of the morning on Thursday 15 August, India’s Independence Day, were part of several days of protest against the brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor inside a hospital in the state capital, Kolkata, last week.

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