Asia

China has made an appeal to the World Trade Organization (WTO) over historic duties introduced by Australia concerning three Chinese products as part of a crackdown on unfair trade practices, including dumping.

Poland will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan at the end of June, President Andrzej Duda said on Thursday, bringing its two-decade presence in the country to an end.

Turkey will not send additional troops to Afghanistan as part of a plan to run and secure Kabul’s airport following the U.S. and NATO pullout from the country, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said on Wednesday.

A bomb attack in a residential area of Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore killed four people on Wednesday, including a child, and wounded 14, police said, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Nepal’s Supreme Court delivered a fresh blow to embattled communist Prime Minister K.P.Sharma Oli by removing 20 recently appointed ministers, pending a ruling on whether a caretaker premier can make such sweeping cabinet changes.

Suspected Taliban fighters fired a rocket into a hospital in Afghanistan on Wednesday, sparking a blaze that caused extensive damage and destroyed COVID-19 vaccines though there were no reports of casualties, government officials said.

The variant, first identified in Europe, now found in India’s Maharashtra, Kerala, and Madhya Pradesh states, the health ministry says.

Hong Kong police arrested on Wednesday a columnist for pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily on suspicion of conspiring to collude with a foreign country or foreign forces, in another hit to the besieged newspaper.

China condemned the United States on Wednesday as the region’s greatest security “risk creator” after a U.S. warship again sailed through the sensitive waterway that separates Taiwan from China.

Some security forces abandon their posts and flee across the frontier as the Taliban seizes Shir Khan Bandar’s crossing.

ByteDance Ltd. founder Zhang Yiming donated 500 million yuan ($77.3 million) of his personal wealth to an education fund in his hometown, joining other Chinese internet moguls in giving back to social causes as Beijing cracks down on big tech.

The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Tuesday that Washington had “wrong” expectations for dialogue with Pyongyang and was facing “greater disappointment,” state media reported.

Taliban fighters took control of a key district in Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province Monday and encircled the provincial capital, police said, as the insurgent group added to its recent battlefield victories while peace talks have stalemated.

The philippine president also threatens to use ‘shots for pigs’ on Filipinos who refuse to get inoculated amid reports of low turnouts in some vaccine sites.

India gave out a record 7.5 million vaccine doses on Monday under a federal campaign to inoculate all adults for free after weeks of criticism that a chaotic rollout had worsened a second wave that killed hundreds of thousands.

Myanmar security forces backed by armoured vehicles clashed on Tuesday with a newly formed militia group in the second-biggest city of Mandalay, according to social media posts from the group and media reports.

Karzai says US and NATO troops set to fully withdraw from Afghanistan after 20 years are leaving behind a disaster.

Unidentified hackers have attacked one of South Korea’s largest shipbuilders, the government has confirmed. Media reports earlier said that cybercriminals from Pyongyang were hunting for information on navy submarines.

The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday began no-cost COVID-19 vaccinations for all citizens over 18 years old — about 940 million people. It also took over vaccine procurement from the states, which had been struggling to arrange doses for their own vaccination programs.

Myanmar’s junta leader has flown out of the country to attend a conference in Moscow, state media reported on Sunday, his second trip abroad since seizing power in February.