South Asia

Mohammad Shafi Dar, 55, picks up a piece of willow, called a cleft, and places it on a vertical bandsaw to cut out a V-joint from the wooden block before passing it on to one of his colleagues, Mohammad Yousuf Bhat, 45, for further modification on a mechanical planer. Both …

Batool Haidari used to be a prominent professor of sexology at a Kabul university before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. She taught mixed classes of male and female students and helped patients struggling with gender identity issues. Her husband owned a carpet factory, and together they did their best to …

The plight of a city in Kazakhstan left without heat for more than a week in temperatures that dropped to minus 30 degrees Celsius has sparked anger and highlighted the deplorable state of the country’s Soviet-era infrastructure. This month, the northeastern city of Ekibastuz, with a population of around 150,000 …

Pakistan said Saturday its security forces had intercepted and killed four Islamic State operatives in a remote mountainous district near the Afghanistan border. The provincial counterterrorism department said the slain men were linked to Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K), a regional affiliate of the self-proclaimed Islamic State group, and had …

This month, the Taliban acting minister of higher education in Afghanistan announced some changes to the country’s education policy. Former teachers are criticizing the changes, saying Afghanistan’s educational legacy is being damaged. VOA’s Ahmad Shikib has more in this report narrated by Shaista Lami.

A cyclonic storm killed at least four people in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu on Saturday, the top state official said, as heavy rain and strong winds buffeted several districts damaging property and causing power outages. Cyclone Mandous, which made landfall late Friday night, damaged 185 houses and …

Tens of thousands of opposition supporters rallied in Bangladesh’s capital on Saturday to demand the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resign and install a caretaker before next general elections expected to be held in early 2024. The supporters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, headed by former Prime Minister Khaleda …

A team set up by the Pakistani government to probe the killing of a well-known Pakistani journalist in Nairobi said it found several contradictions in the version given by Kenyan authorities, and believes it was a case of pre-meditated murder. TV journalist Arshad Sharif, who had fled Pakistan citing threats …

Bangladesh’s next general election will be held during the first week of January 2024, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told a public rally Wednesday. Hasina was reelected for a record third term in 2018, but her party’s landslide win was tainted by violence and allegations of vote-rigging. During her speech in …

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has won an overwhelming victory in a state assembly vote in his home state of Gujarat, putting it in a strong position ahead of the 2024 general elections.     The BJP, however, lost to the main opposition Congress Party in the …