South Asia

Thursday afternoon in Kolkata, India, fruit seller Tanvir Alam sat behind a basket of mangos on the sidewalk of a busy street, saying the nationwide ban on single-use plastic bags that goes into effect Friday, would hurt business. “I do not know now what I will use to pack my …

Delegates attending an urgent debate at the U.N. Human Rights Council on the status of women and girls in Afghanistan are urging the international community to exert maximum pressure on the Taliban. In opening Friday’s debate, U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet accused the Taliban of systematic oppression and of …

India’s top court has slammed a former spokesperson for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party for making controversial comments on the Prophet Muhammad, saying she had “set the country on fire.”   The derogatory comments made by Nupur Sharma during a television debate a month ago sparked protests in which two demonstrators …

Afghanistan’s Islamist Taliban arranged Thursday a men-only conference of about 3,500 mostly clerics and tribal elders from across the country in an apparent bid to demonstrate their hold on power and domestic legitimacy.     The three-day, closed-door conference began in Kabul amid tight security in the wake of a recent …

For Breshna Salaam, the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan last year meant a return to the same extreme poverty she and her mother had experienced under the Taliban’s first time in control of the country.   In 1996, the Taliban fired Salaam’s mother from a public service job, denying …

A Britain-based group says its latest study of worldwide free expression rights shows only 15% of the global population lives where people can receive or share information freely. In its 2022 Global Expression Report, Article19, an international human rights organization, said that in authoritarian nations such as China, Myanmar and …

US official tells VOA: ‘We are advancing these interests through engagement’

Fears that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would spur China to take a similar approach to Taiwan do not appear to be playing out, at least not yet, according to the top U.S. intelligence official.  Chinese President Xi Jinping “quite clearly sees reunification of Taiwan as a goal,” Director of National …

Internet services have been suspended in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, while in the city of Udaipur, a curfew is in place over fears of retaliatory communal violence following the killing of a Hindu tailor, allegedly by two Muslim men. Following their arrests, the suspects reportedly said that they …

Afghanistan’s Islamist Taliban have invited about 3,000 religious scholars and tribal elders from across the country to a meeting Thursday in Kabul, where officials said national unity would be discussed.     The men-only session in the Afghan capital is the first of its kind and is seen as an …