Asia

3 days agoShareSaveYogita LimayeSouth Asia and Afghanistan correspondentShareSaveMore than 80 Afghan women studying in Oman on US-funded scholarships – terminated last month due to Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to foreign aid – have received a temporary reprieve.
A US State Department spokesperson has told the BBC that funding will continue until 30 June, 2025.
“This is great news, and we are very grateful,” one student told the BBC, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals. “But I hope there will be a permanent solution.”
The women fled Taliban ruled Afghanistan to continue their studies abroad, but the abrupt freeze on US Agency for International Development (USAID) funds put them at risk of being sent back.
Since regaining power in Afghanistan nearly four years ago, the Taliban has imposed draconian restrictions on women, including banning them from universities.
The students in Oman were pursuing graduate and post-graduate degrees under the Women’s Scholarship Endowment (..

3 days agoShareSaveSoutik BiswasIndia correspondent•@soutikBBCShareSaveIndia has usually turned to economic reforms in times of distress, with the most famous example being 1991, when the country embraced liberalisation in the face of a deep financial crisis.
Now, with US President Donald Trump’s tit-for-tat tariff wars and the global trade upheaval that has followed, many believe that India finds itself at another crossroad.
Could this be a major opportunity for the world’s fifth largest economy to shed its protectionism and further open up its economy? Will India seize the moment, just as it did more than three decades ago, or will it retreat further?
Trump has repeatedly branded India a “tariff king” and a “big abuser” of trade ties. The problem is that India’s trade-weighted import duties – the average duty rate per imported product – are among the highest in the world. The US average tariff is 2.2%, China’s is 3% and Japan’s is 1.7%. India’s stands at a whopping 12%, according to ..

2 days agoShareSaveSaiyed Moziz ImamBBC HindiShareSaveA court in India has sentenced three men to death for the 1981 murder of 24 people from the Dalit (formerly untouchable) community.
The men were part of a gang of bandits who shot the victims, including women and children, in Dehuli village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
The special court said on Tuesday that the killings fell into the “rarest of the rare” category, which justifies capital punishment in India.
The men, who insist they are innocent, can appeal against the sentence in a higher court.
All the victims were from the Dalit community, which sits at the bottom of India’s rigid caste hierarchy.
Relatives of the victims have welcomed the sentence but say the decision should have come earlier.
“Justice came very late to us. The accused have lived their lives,” said Sanjay Chaudhry, whose cousin was killed in the firing.
Thirteen of the 17 men accused in the case have died in the 44 years since the crime was committed…

4 days agoShareSaveKoh EweBBC NewsShareSaveA former engineer at a Chinese research institute has been sentenced to death for selling classified material to foreign spy agencies, Chinese authorities said.
After he resigned from the institute, the researcher, identified by his surname Liu, came up with a “carefully designed” plan to sell intelligence to foreign agencies, according to an article published on Wednesday by China’s Ministry of State Security.
The ministry did not name Liu’s former employer or the foreign groups that allegedly bought his material.
The announcement comes amid increasing warnings from China that its citizens are being co-opted by foreign entities to serve as spies.
“Desperadoes who want to take shortcuts to heaven will all suffer consequences,” the ministry said in Wednesday’s article.
Believing that he had been treated unfairly at the institute, Liu saved a large amount of classified material before he left, intending to use it for revenge and blackmail, the m..

4 days agoShareSaveKoh EweBBC NewsShareSaveDon’t judge a blob by its cover.
Once dubbed the world’s ugliest animal for its soft, lumpy appearance, the blobfish has made a stunning comeback: it was crowned this week as Fish of the Year by a New Zealand environmental group.
The annual competition, held by the Mountain to Sea Conservation Trust, aims to raise awareness for New Zealand’s freshwater and marine life.
This year, the blobfish took home the coveted accolade with nearly 1,300 out of more than 5,500 votes cast.
It’s an underdog victory for the blobfish, which burst into mainstream notoriety as the mascot for the Ugly Animal Preservation Society in 2013.
The gelatinous fish lives on the sea bed and grows to about 12in (30cm) in length. They’re mainly found off the coast of Australia, where they live at depths of 2,000-4,000 ft (600-1,200m).
Why do we love ugly animals?While the blobfish is known for its misshapen silhouette, in its natural deep-sea habitat it actually resembles a ..

4 days agoShareSaveNikhil Inamdar and Jaltson ACBBC News•@Nik_inamdarReporting fromKeralaShareSaveIt took Arun George half a working life to scrape together £15,000 ($19,460) in savings, which he used to secure a care worker job for his wife in the UK.
But in barely a few months, he lost it all.
Mr George – not his real name as his wife doesn’t want to be identified within their small community for the shame associated with having returned without a job – paid the money in late 2023 to the managers of Alchita Care.
The BBC has seen evidence of the payment to Alchita Care, the private domiciliary care home in Bradford that sponsored his family’s visa. He did it at the behest of a local agent in his town in the southern Indian state of Kerala.
It was the promise of a better life for their child who has special needs that prodded the couple to dip into their savings and take such a risk. But when they got to the UK there was no work.
“We kept chasing the care home, but they made up..

4 days agoShareSaveNeyaz FarooqueeBBC News, DelhiShareSaveA curfew has been imposed in parts of a city in India’s western state of Maharashtra after Hindu groups demanded the removal of the tomb of Aurangzeb, a 17th-Century Mughal emperor, sparking violence on Monday night.
Vehicles were set on fire and stones were thrown in the Mahal area of ​​Nagpur city.
Police say the situation is now under control and are appealing to people to keep the peace.
The tomb of Aurangzeb, who died more than 300 years ago, has in recent years become a political flashpoint amid growing calls for its removal by hardline Hindu groups.
It is located about 500km (311 miles) from Nagpur in the state’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district, which was earlier called Aurangabad after the emperor.
Monday’s violence broke out after two Hindu organisations, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, burnt the emperor’s effigy and chanted slogans demanding the removal of his tomb, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadna..

4 days agoShareSaveSimon AtkinsonBBC NewsReporting fromCairnsShareSaveA jury in the trial of a former nurse accused of murdering a woman on a remote Australian beach has been discharged, after they could not reach a verdict.
Toyah Cordingley wasstabbed at least 26 times while out walking her dog in October 2018.
The 24-year-old’s body was discovered by her father, half-buried in sand dunes on Wangetti beach between the popular tourist hotspots of Cairns and Port Douglas.
Rajwinder Singh, 40, who travelled to India the day after Ms Cordingley’s body was found, was charged with murder. He was arrested and then extradited to Australia in 2023.
But jurors at Cairns Supreme Court said they were deadlocked, and unable to reach a unanimous decision on his guilt after two-and-half days of deliberations. The judge thanked the jury for their “diligence”.
Under Queensland law, jury verdicts in murder cases must be unanimous. So Mr Singh will face another trial.
Originally from Buttar Kalan in..

2 days agoShareSaveMeryl SebastianBBC News, KochiShareSaveIndian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become one of the few world leaders to join Truth Social, the social media platform owned by US President Donald Trump.
In his first post on Monday, Modi shared a photo with Trump taken in Houston, Texas, during his 2019 US visit and said he was “delighted” to be on the platform.
Trump launched Truth Social in February 2022 after he lost the presidential election to Joe Biden and was temporarily banned from major social networks like Twitter and Facebook, which accused him of inciting violence.
As of 03:30 GMT, Modi had 21,500 followers and was following Trump and US Vice President JD Vance.
On Monday, Trump shared a link to an interview which Modi did with podcaster Lex Fridman where the Indian prime minister spoke on a range of topics, including his life journey, the Gujarat riots of 2002 and India’s relationship with China.
Much of Truth Social’s functionality is identical to X, former..

4 days agoShareSaveKelly NgBBC NewsReporting fromSingapore ShareSaveChinese state media has welcomed Donald Trump’s move to cut public funding for news outlets Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which have long reported on authoritarian regimes.
The decision affects thousands of employees -some 1,300 staff have been put on paid leave at Voice Of America (VOA) alone since Friday’s executive order.
Critics have called the move a setback for democracy but Beijing’s state newspaper Global Times denounced VOA for its “appalling track record” in reporting on China and said it has “now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag”.
The White House defended the move, saying it will “ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda”.
Trump’s cuts target the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which is supported by Congress and funds the affected news outlets, such as VOA, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Radio Free Europe.
They have won acclaim and international recog..