By the time COVID-19 reached South Asia, it had already penetrated most other regions of the world. Pakistan was one of the first in the region to be hit. In late February, Shia pilgrims who had come in contact with Chinese pilgrims while visiting holy sites in Iran brought it home with them. Not long after, Indian expatriates visiting from the United States (US) carried the virus to India.

China freed 10 Indian soldiers seized in a deadly high-altitude border clash in the Himalayas ahead of fresh talks Friday to ease tensions between the world's two most populous nations, officials said.Two majors were among the troops held prisoner after a battle with nail studded batons, rocks and fists on Monday that left 20 Indians dead as well as an unknown number of Chinese casualties.It was the most serious incident in more than four decades on the bitterly disputed unofficial borde

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is “not in a good mood,” United States (US) President Donald Trump recently declared, as he offered to mediate India’s resurgent border conflict with China. After years of bending over backward to appease China, Modi has received yet another Chinese encroachment on Indian territory.

The global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic climbed past 400,000 on Sunday with fatalities accelerating in the epicentre of Latin America even as Europe emerges from its virus lockdown with infections there increasingly under control.Almost seven million infections have been registered since the COVID-19 virus emerged in China late last year, forcing much of the globe into lockdown and pushing the world economy towards its worst downturn since the Great Depression.However, fears of a

According to local newspapers in the subcontinent, India sent a formal request on 14 May, 2020 to the Malaysian government for the extradition of the controversial Islamic televangelist, Dr Zakir Naik, who has been living in the ASEAN member state since 2017 after he was granted permanent resident status there.The Indian government's latest move came after the change of guard at Putrajaya, Malaysia's administrative capital, in the hope that the United Malays National Organisation (U

The king of the Konyak tribe sleeps in Myanmar, but eats in India - his house, village and people divided by a mountain border which serves as a vulnerable lifeline now severed by a coronavirus lockdown.The Konyak are just one of dozens of Naga tribes, a people yearning to reunite the 3 million living in India with their 400,000 estranged - and much poorer - cousins in Myanmar’s isolated far north.Many from Myanmar cross the border to attend school, sell vegetables or visit a hospital, as it

Sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor of a crumbling, windowless room, prisoners in Indonesia fear an outbreak of the deadly coronavirus inside its walls is a "disaster waiting to happen"."It will be a breeding ground for the virus, should it get into any prison," said Brett Savage, locked inside Kerobokan prison known as "Hotel K" - on the Indonesian island of Bali, where 1,500 prisoners occupy blocks built for 350 people.Overcrowding, poor ventilation and

The number of confirmed coronavirus deaths accelerated past 50,000 on Friday as the United States (US), Spain and Britain grappled with their highest tolls yet and the world economy took a massive hit.The threat posed by the pandemic has never been starker.

Coronavirus deaths soared across Europe and the United States (US) on Sunday despite heightened restrictions, as Germany banned gatherings of more than two people and Chancellor Angela Merkel went into quarantine.In the US, President Donald Trump ordered emergency medical stations for hotspots, hospitals scrambled to find ventilators, and a trillion-dollar proposal to rescue America's reeling economy crashed to defeat.Germany and Greece became the latest countries to tighten curtailments

With malaria and tuberculosis (TB) screening out front and sacrifices to jungle gods out back, health worker Htan Pi and her shaman mother are an unlikely double-act in their isolated Myanmar village.Their family have been the local healers for generations in the northern community of Satpalaw Shaung near the Indian border. This is Naga territory, a tribal region of former headhunters with myriad languages and customs still largely based on animist beliefs.But trainee Htan Pi, 24, is