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Protests that toppled Nepal’s government last week echo uprisings across parts of Asia, where angry, unemployed young people are rising against entrenched elites.From Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic revolt to Bangladesh’s student-led 2024 uprising, Nepal’s turmoil reflects a generational rebellion by tech-savvy jobless youths mobilised through social media.All share a “youth bulge” population — where the young vastly outnumber older generations — with disenchanted protesters comparing their bleak prospects to the opulent lifestyles of longstanding ruling classes.- Nepal -Youth demonstrations began September 8 under the “Gen Z” banner — referring to those under age 28 — initially sparked by a social media ban but fuelled by frustration with the economy and corruption.In Nepal, a fifth of people aged 15-24 are unemployed, with GDP per capita at just $1,447 — underscoring the economic desperation driving protests.Protesters borrowed imagery from Indonesia, waving a pirate flag from Japanese anime series “One Piece” — a symbol adopted by anti-establishment youth movements in Jakarta.Clashes escalated after deadly police crackdowns, forcing the veteran prime minister KP Sharma Oli to quit as parliament and government buildings were torched.”There have been uprisings in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh,” said 23-year-old protester Amrita Ban. “We exist within this geopolitical sphere, so it is obvious there will be an effect.”Youth activist Nimesh Shrestha pointed to TikTok videos showing the lavish lifestyles of politicians’ children.”That made many realise the scale of corruption,” he said.Thousands later used group-chat app Discord to name 73-year-old former chief justice Sushila Karki as their choice of leader — now interim prime minister until March 2026 elections.- Bangladesh -In Dhaka, where student-led protests toppled prime minister Sheikh Hasina in 2024, parallels with Nepal were quickly drawn.Bangladesh’s protests were sparked by government job quota reforms, but anger was rooted in “severe unemployment, discrimination, and nepotism,” said Umama Fatema, who took part in the demonstrations.”Students — mostly Gen Z in both countries — led the revolutions,” she said. “In Bangladesh, political parties had long been protesting against Hasina’s rule and joined the students. In Nepal, Gen Z was entirely opposed to the political parties.”- Sri Lanka -Sri Lanka’s 2022 protests forced president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign after an economic crash.The “hashtag generation” toppled Rajapaksa without mass casualties, though politicians’ homes were torched.Former minister Dayasiri Jayasekara said Nepal’s violence showed how much worse things could have become.”What happened in Nepal and Bangladesh showed that we too could have gone down a path of death and destruction,” he told AFP.Rajapaksa’s successor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, said Nepali authorities could have acted sooner.”Everyone was focused on day-to-day politics… without finding solutions to the acute problems. That caused great frustration among the younger generation.”- Indonesia -Deadly August protests over unemployment and lawmakers’ perks offered lessons for the region.”Jobs are obvious challenges, both in Nepal and Indonesia,” said Human Rights Watch’s Andreas Harsono.Amnesty International Indonesia’s Usman Hamid told AFP that economic despair was the common thread. “With increasing frustration, they have no choice but to push back against a system they believe has failed.”- East Timor -The generational fury reached East Timor as well, with university students rallying in the capital Dili on September 15 and 16 against government plans to buy SUVs for dozens of lawmakers in a nation that ranks among Southeast Asia’s poorest.The demonstrators burned tyres, a government vehicle near the parliament building and hurled rocks towards police officers, who responded with tear gas.Undeterred, the protesters vow the rallies will continue until the plan is scrapped altogether.But President Jose Ramos-Horta told reporters Tuesday that there would be “no tolerance” for violence.- India -Events in Nepal caused jitters among some in India, with opposition politicians calling it a warning.Youth unemployment still hovers around 10 percent despite being the world’s fastest-growing major economy.Opposition Congress party politician Shashi Tharoor called Nepal’s unrest a “blaring siren for New Delhi, a reminder of the fragility in our immediate neighbourhood.”In Mumbai, Shiv Sena lawmaker Sanjay Raut reposted images of Kathmandu’s protests, saying: “This can happen in any country. Be cautious.”burs-pjm/abs/mtp

An Afghan man was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for a jihadist stabbing spree in Germany last year that killed a police officer and left five people wounded.The 26-year-old, only partially named as Sulaiman A. and found to be a supporter of the Islamic State group, committed the knife attack in May 2024 in the western city of Mannheim.The court convicted him of murder, attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm and judged his crimes to be especially grave, which virtually rules out early release.Sulaiman A. used a large hunting knife in the attack which targeted a rally by Pax Europa, a group that campaigns against radical Islam.He initially attacked a speaker and other demonstrators, then stabbed a police officer who rushed in to help before being shot and wounded by police himself. The critically wounded police officer, 29-year-old Rouven L., died two days later of his injuries.Many Germans were especially shocked as a video of the attack circulating online showed the officer being repeatedly stabbed in the back of the head.- ‘Greatest possible harm’ -Presiding Judge Herbert Anderer said that the attacker wanted to cause “the greatest possible harm in the form of as many deaths as possible”.He also wanted to kill police officers as representatives of the German state and planned to die a “martyr’s death” and “to enter paradise”, the judge said.Sulaiman A. arrived in Germany in 2013 aged just 14, together with his brother but without their parents.They were denied asylum but, as unaccompanied minors, granted stays of deportation and permanent residency, and initially placed in care facilities, media reports said.During the trial, the defendant confessed to the crime and, in his final statement, apologised to the relatives of the slain police officer. He claimed to have been manipulated through social media and radicalised following Israel’s war in Gaza sparked by the October 2023 attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.The judge turned to the police officer’s family and told them: “Your son stood for the rule of law — as horrible as it is, he died for it.”- String of attacks -The stabbing was one of several bloody attacks that have inflamed a heated debate about the influx of several million refugees and migrants to Germany over the past decade.Fears about immigration and public safety have fuelled the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) which won its best-ever result of over 20 percent in February’s general election.The election winners, the conservative CDU/CSU alliance of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, have made a tougher migration policy one of their top priorities.Merz’s government has tightened border controls and announced plans to regularly deport criminals to countries of origin previously considered unsafe, including Taliban-run Afghanistan. Last week, a Syrian man was sentenced to life in prison for another high-profile Islamist knife attack, which left three people dead in the western city of Solingen last year.Last month, an Afghan man identified only as Farhad N. was charged over a car-ramming attack in February in Munich that killed a two-year-old girl and her mother, with prosecutors saying he also acted out of Islamist motivations.The deadliest recent attack occurred in Magdeburg in December, when a rented SUV driven at high speed into a crowded Christmas market killed six people and injured hundreds more.A Saudi psychiatrist, Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen, faces six charges of murder and 338 charges of attempted murder in the attack, which authorities believe was committed with a more complex motive.In January, then interior minister Nancy Faeser described Abdulmohsen as “massively Islamophobic and close to right-wing extremist ideologies” and influenced by “incoherent conspiracy theories”.

Nepal is assessing the multi-million dollar damage from last week’s violent protests, when parliament, government offices and a newly opened Hilton Hotel were set ablaze.At least 72 people were killed in two days of anti-corruption protests, with scores more badly injured, according to official figures.”So much has been destroyed,” police spokesman Binod Ghimire told AFP, adding that it would take time to calculate the full extent of the damage, including outside the capital.Nepal’s new interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki, speaking as she began work on Sunday, described the “widespread loss of lives and property”.At the Supreme Court, officials are working under tents outside the charred building, alongside rows of burned-out vehicles, trying to salvage water-soaked documents.AFP photographers who visited the gutted parliament building said entire halls had been reduced to blackened ruins by fires that burned uncontrolled for hours on September 9.The Hotel Association of Nepal reported more than 20 hotels damaged, including the Hilton fire. Others were looted.Losses were estimated at 25 billion Nepali rupees ($177 million), with more than 2,000 workers affected. Damage to the Hilton alone was put as high as $56 million.Tourism is a key employer, the country’s fourth largest, providing jobs to more than 371,000 people, according to government figures, with more than a million visitors every year.Fire also ripped through Singha Durbar, the sprawling palace that housed the prime minister’s office and ministries.The historic building is in ruins, its white pillars streaked black.As well as government offices, police stations were attacked, and courts were burned.”All our records, evidence, files of the Supreme Court have been all destroyed,” Karki said. “Extremely important bodies of the state were targeted and attacked.”- ‘Time and resources’ -More than 12,500 prisoners who escaped during the chaos remain on the run, presenting a major security challenge.Protesters targeted symbols of the ruling elite or the wealthy. They torched the homes of politicians, car showrooms, and private offices.Even media outlets were stormed and set ablaze.The Kantipur Media Group’s building was badly damaged, although the broadcaster has returned to air from a makeshift studio and its newspaper has resumed online.Durga Khanal, 45, from the Department of Roads, said her office had been badly damaged.”I support the change they are striving for, but I cannot agree with the destruction of physical infrastructure,” she said.New minister Kulman Ghising, who has the energy, infrastructure, transport and urban development portfolios, has ordered a rapid damage assessment and a reconstruction roadmap within a week.Nepal’s chambers of commerce and industry federation said it was still collating information.”No type of infrastructure has been spared. The government, private sector, media have all endured losses,” economist Chandra Mani Adhikari told AFP.”It will take a lot of time and resources to recover and rebuild everything.”

Indian sport is battling to shake off its reputation for being one of the world’s worst doping offenders as the country pushes an ambitious bid to host the 2036 Olympics.The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has raised concerns about the number of Indian competitors taking performance-enhancing drugs and so too has the country’s best-known athlete.The 2021 Olympic javelin champion Neeraj Chopra made a blunt admission earlier this year.”Doping is a big problem in India among our athletes,” he told local media, saying they instead should “eat well, rest well and work hard”.The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) last month formed a new anti-doping panel after the IOC flagged India’s poor record.The government has passed a new national anti-doping bill aiming to tighten enforcement, expand testing facilities and “ensure the highest standards of integrity” in sports.”Obviously the IOC would want to make sure that in awarding the Games to a country, the host has a robust doping policy and governance,” Michael Payne, former IOC marketing director, told AFP.The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) lists India among the worst offenders among nations submitting more than 1,000 samples.India’s national anti-doping agency, NADA, insists the figures reflect more aggressive testing in the nation of 1.4 billion people.From 5,606 samples collected in 2023, 213 came back positive.The synthetic steroid stanozolol is the most widely used banned substance taken by Indian athletes, experts say.                                      – Careers at stake -Despite its vast population India has won only 10 Olympic golds in its history. Experts say desperation to add to that and escape poverty is one reason why some Indian athletes are prepared to risk doping.Success in sports can be a ticket to coveted government jobs, often with the police or armed forces.That provides life-long financial security after their sporting careers end.”Athletes know that they can be punished but still put their careers at stake,” lawyer Saurabh Mishra, who has defended athletes in doping scandals, said.”(They know that) getting a medal will help them clinch a government job.”Athletics leads India’s doping violations, followed by wrestling, where 19 athletes were recently banned.In July under-23 wrestling champion and Paris Olympics quarter-finalist Reetika Hooda tested positive and was provisionally suspended.Mishra said some athletes are victims of ignorance, consuming banned substances through supplements or medicines, but others take risks knowingly.Sometimes they are encouraged by their coaches to dope.Sports medicine expert Saranjeet Singh, who has written extensively on doping in India, said a recent surge in violations was only partly due to stricter testing.”They cannot achieve the level of performance that they want at international level and use banned drugs for a short cut,” Singh told AFP.- Bigger hurdles -India now faces a race to prove its credibility, as it competes with the likes of Indonesia, Turkey, Chile and Qatar for the 2036 Games.The former IOC marketing director Payne noted that many past Olympic hosts had chequered doping histories.While doping is an issue, India’s greater obstacle to staging an Olympics lies elsewhere, he said.”The bigger issue is confidence in the overall operational delivery capabilities of the host, and there India has a lot of work to do,” Payne said.He was referring to the corruption-riddled 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, memories of which still linger. “That is the biggest hurdle facing India’s bid,” Payne said.

The fields are full but the paddy brown and wilted, and the air thick with the stench of rotting crops and livestock — the aftermath of record monsoon rains that have devastated India’s breadbasket.In Punjab, often dubbed the country’s granary, the damage is unprecedented: floods have swallowed farmlands almost the size of London and New York City combined.India’s agriculture minister said in a recent visit to the state that “the crops have been destroyed and ruined”, and Punjab’s chief minister called the deluge “one of the worst flood disasters in decades”.Old-timers agree.”The last time we saw such an all-consuming flood was in 1988,” said 70-year-old Balkar Singh in the village of Shehzada, 30 kilometres (19 miles) north of the holy Sikh city of Amritsar.The gushing waters have reduced Singh’s paddy field to marshland and opened ominous cracks in the walls of his house. Floods and landslides are common during the June-September monsoon season on the subcontinent, but experts say climate change, coupled with poorly planned development, is increasing their frequency, severity and impact.Punjab saw rainfall surge by almost two-thirds compared with the average rate for August, according to the national weather department, killing at least 52 people and affecting over 400,000.Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a relief package worth around $180 million for Punjab.- ’10 feet high’ -The village of Toor, sandwiched between the Ravi river and Pakistan, is in tatters — strewn with collapsing crops, livestock carcasses and destroyed homes.”The water came past midnight on August 26,” said farm worker Surjan Lal. “It rose up to at least 10 feet (three metres) in a matter of minutes.”Lal said the village in Punjab’s worst-affected Gurdaspur district was marooned for nearly a week. “We were all on rooftops,” he said. “We could do nothing as the water carried away everything from our animals and beds.”In adjacent Lassia, the last Indian village before the frontier, farmer Rakesh Kumar counted his losses. “In addition to the land I own, I had taken some more on lease this year,” said the 37-year-old. “All my investment has just gone down the drain.”To make things worse, Kumar said, the future looked bleak.He said he feared his fields would not be ready in time to sow wheat, the winter crop of choice in Punjab.”All the muck has to first dry up and only then can the big machines clear up the silt,” he said.Even at the best of times, bringing heavy earth-movers into the area is a tall order, as a pontoon bridge connecting it to the mainland only operates in the lean months.For landless labourers like 50-year-old Mandeep Kaur, the uncertainty is even greater. “We used to earn a living by working in the big landlords’ fields but now they are all gone,” said Kaur.Her house was washed away by the water, forcing her to sleep in the courtyard under a tarpaulin sheet — an arrangement fraught with danger as snakes slither all over the damp land.- Basmati blues -Punjab is the largest supplier of rice and wheat to India’s food security programme, which provides subsidised grain to more than 800 million people.Analysts say this year’s losses are unlikely to threaten domestic supplies thanks to large buffer stocks, but exports of premium basmati rice are expected to suffer.”The main effect will be on basmati rice production, prices and exports because of lower output in Indian and Pakistan Punjab,” said Avinash Kishore of the International Food Policy Research Institute in New Delhi.Punishing US tariffs have already made Indian basmati less competitive, and the floods risk worsening that squeeze.The road to recovery for Punjab’s embattled farmers, analysts say, will be particularly steep because the state opted out of the federal government’s insurance scheme, citing high costs and a low-risk profile because of its robust irrigation network.Singh, the septuagenarian farmer, said the water on his farm was “still knee-deep”.”I don’t know what the future holds for us,” he said.

After youth protests over corruption and joblessness toppled Nepal’s parliament and left dozens dead, villagers like Santosh Sunar see their own struggles reflected in the nation’s turmoil.The 31-year-old is jobless and desperately seeking work, yet he dreads the day he finds it — knowing it will likely mean splitting his family further, leaving his daughter with his mother, with his wife already abroad. “There are no opportunities even after education,” said Santosh, who lives in the rural settlement of Pharping, on the outskirts of the capital Kathmandu.He is far from alone. A “staggering” 82 percent of Nepal’s workforce is in informal employment, one in five Nepalis aged 15–24 are jobless, according to the World Bank.With few prospects at home, where GDP per capita is only $1,447, millions of Nepalis look abroad.Remittances now account for a third of GDP, the world’s fourth-highest rate. In Pharping, nearly every second household has a relative overseas.- ‘What can we do?’ -Santosh’s wife Amrita, 22, is a waitress in Dubai. “We really miss each other,” Santosh told AFP, who has previously worked in India’s tech-hub of Bengaluru. “It’s tough being away from your wife — and tougher knowing I’d also have to leave my mother and young daughter when I find work,” he said. “But what can we do?”More than 839,000 Nepalis left the country of 30 million to work abroad last year, according to government data.Tackling endemic corruption and unemployment tops the agenda for Nepal’s new leader, 73-year-old former chief justice Sushila Karki, who was sworn in as interim prime minister on Friday.Her predecessor quit on September 9, as protesters set parliament and key government buildings on fire.Protests began a day earlier, sparked by a ban on social media, but fuelled by long-standing economic woes.At least 72 people were killed in two days of protests, with 191 still recovering in hospital, according to government figures.Santosh didn’t take part, but said he backed what the protesters had done.His mother, Maiya Sunar, 48, dreams of a time when the young don’t have to choose between food and family. “We miss living like a family,” she said. “But I also understand that the young have no choice.”- ‘No option’ -Her neighbour, Kamala Sunar, 40, also faces the prospect of living without her children nearby. Her younger daughter Diksha, 24, works as a housekeeper in Dubai.Now her older daughter, Rakshya, 27, a single mother to a two-year-old, hopes to follow in her sister’s footsteps, leaving her daughter behind.”She has repeatedly warned me against the idea, as the hours are long and the living conditions tough,” Rakshya told AFP.”But what life would I be able to give my daughter here? There is nothing here. If I toil for a few years, and save some money for her education, maybe my daughter would have a bright future.”Sitting outside their one-room house, with unplastered brick walls painted red and white, Kamala said the thought of her daughter leaving fills her with sadness. “Most of our people our age have no option but to leave,” Kamala said. Shyam Bahadur Khatri, 69, an elected village official, said that Nepal is creating ageing villages where subsistence agriculture was the only option. “There will be no young person left even to carry the dead,” he said, warning of the future.

Pakistan lodged a complaint on Monday with cricket’s governing body about the match referee in their Asia Cup clash with India after simmering tensions between the countries spilled over into sport.India beat their arch-rivals by seven wickets on Sunday in Dubai as the neighbours met for the first time in cricket since their military conflict in May.Tensions simmered after the match as India’s players left the field without shaking hands.Pakistan blamed the India side and also allege match referee Andy Pycroft of Zimbabwe told captain Salman Agha not to shake the hand of India skipper Suryakumar Yadav before the game. There was no handshake between the captains.”The PCB has lodged a complaint with the ICC regarding violations by the match referee of the ICC code of conduct and the MCC laws pertaining to the spirit of cricket,” Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Mohsin Naqvi wrote on social media.The PCB demanded the immediate removal of Pycroft from the remainder of the regional T20 tournament.The International Cricket Council has been contacted for comment.In his post-match press conference, Suryakumar said his team acted on the advice of the Indian government and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).”We are aligned with the Indian government and the BCCI,” said Suryakumar when asked why his team did not shake hands with the Pakistan players.As a protest, Pakistan did not send their captain Agha to post-match duties.The two teams are likely to meet again in a Super Four match in Dubai on Sunday, provided Pakistan win their last group game against the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday.They can also meet for a third time in the September 28 final in Dubai if results go their way.India and Pakistan were playing for the first time since cross-border hostilities in May left more than 70 people dead in missile, drone and artillery exchanges, before a ceasefire.The conflict was triggered by an April 22 attack on civilians in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir that New Delhi accused Pakistan of backing, a charge Islamabad denies.

Nepal’s new interim prime minister unveiled her first ministers Monday, as the Himalayan nation seeks to restore order after deadly youth-led anti-corruption protests that ousted the previous government.Under an outdoor awning and against the backdrop of the fire-damaged presidential office, President Ram Chandra Paudel gave the oath of office to three key ministers in a ceremony broadcast on television.Protests, sparked by a ban on social media and feeding into long-standing economic woes, began on September 8 and quickly escalated, with parliament and key government buildings set ablaze.It was the worst unrest since the end of a decade-long civil war and the abolition of the monarchy in 2008. At least 72 people were killed in two days of protests, with 191 still recovering in hospital, according to government figures.Prime Minister Sushila Karki, the 73-year-old former chief justice, has been tasked with addressing protester demands for a corruption-free future ahead of elections in March.Om Prakash Aryal, an advocate known for his cases tackling corruption, governance and human rights, takes the critical home minister post, as well as law, justice and parliamentary affairs.- Reluctant leader -Kulman Ghising, the former director of the Nepal Electricity Authority — who is widely credited with ending the country’s long-standing load-shedding problem — has the energy, infrastructure, transport and urban development portfolios.Rameshwor Khanal, a former finance secretary and a respected economist, was handed the key finance post, a challenging task to tackle the unemployment woes that drove the uprising.A fifth of people in Nepal aged 15-24 are unemployed, according to the World Bank, with GDP per capita standing at just $1,447.The appointment of Karki, known for her independence, came after intense negotiations by army chief General Ashok Raj Sigdel and Paudel, including with representatives of “Gen Z”, the loose umbrella title of the youth protest movement.Thousands of young activists used the Discord app to name Karki as their choice of leader.Karki said Sunday that she had “not wished” to take the post, but that her “name was brought from the streets”.She said her government would work “according to the thinking of the Gen Z generation”, saying that they were wanting “the end of corruption, good governance and economic equality”.

Myanmar’s junta acknowledged Monday its long-promised election would not be held in about one in seven national parliament constituencies, as it battles myriad rebel forces opposed to the poll.A civil war has consumed Myanmar since the military snatched power in a 2021 coup, jailing democratic figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi and deposing her civilian government.The military has touted elections — due to start in phases on December 28 — as a path to reconciliation.However monitors are slating the poll as a ploy to legitimise continuing military rule, while it is set to be boycotted by many ousted lawmakers and blocked by armed opposition groups in enclaves they control.A notice by Myanmar’s Union Election Commission shared in state media said elections would not be held in 56 lower house constituencies and nine upper house constituencies.The notice did not provide a specific reason for the cancellation but said “these constituencies have been deemed not conducive to holding free and fair elections”.However, many of the territories are known battlegrounds or areas where the military has lost control to an array of pro-democracy guerrillas and powerful ethnic minority armed organisations defying its writ.There are a total of 440 constituencies for Myanmar’s upper and lower houses, with the 65 cancelled accounting for nearly 15 percent of the total.They include the rebel-held ruby mining hub of Mogok, a majority of constituencies in western Rakhine state where the military has lost ground, and numerous areas the junta has been hammering with air strikes.Myanmar’s junta lost swaths of territory when scattered opposition groups committed to a combined offensive starting in late 2023, but it has recently clawed back some ground with several victories.Nonetheless, there have been other signs the poll will be limited in scope.A census held last year in preparation for the election estimated it failed to collect data from 19 million of the country’s 51 million people, according to provisional findings.”Significant security constraints” were cited as one reason for the shortfall.