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The International Monetary Fund said Friday that its board has approved $206 million in emergency financing for Sri Lanka, to help in the country’s recovery from the devastating Cyclone Ditwah.The natural disaster killed more than 640 people, and affected more than 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s population. Floods and landslides caused by the cyclone left extensive damage throughout the South Asian island nation.”The disaster has created urgent humanitarian and reconstruction needs, generating significant fiscal pressures and balance-of-payments needs,” IMF deputy managing director Kenji Okamura said in a statement.The IMF’s emergency aid — which comes under the Washington-based lender’s rapid financing instrument — is meant to help address these pressures, he added.The announcement comes a day after Sri Lanka’s government unveiled plans for $1.6 billion in additional spending next year to fund cyclone recovery.While it is still early for a firm assessment, the fund’s mission chief for Sri Lanka, Evan Papageorgiou, flagged a likely hit to economic activity in the short-term.”Agriculture and tourism are key sectors in Sri Lanka’s growth and are being hit the hardest,” he told reporters in a briefing.”Inflation is likely to rise due to supply disruptions, and the current account deficit will likely widen over the next year,” he added.The government had also secured a World Bank agreement to repurpose $120 million from an ongoing project for disaster recovery spending.Separately, it got a $200 million loan from the Asian Development Bank to finance water management, the first such funding since the cyclone.The IMF said Friday that Sri Lankan authorities are still committed to their economic reform program aided by support of around $3 billion.A further tranche of this rescue package known as the Extended Fund Facility was coming up when the cyclone hit.The IMF said it has deferred the fifth review of the package, with a team set to visit Sri Lanka in early 2026 to resume discussions. It noted this deferment took place due to the time needed to assess the cyclone’s economic impact and examine how an IMF-supported program can best support Sri Lanka’s recovery and reconstruction efforts — while preserving policy priorities.

Protesters rallied across Bangladesh on Friday for a second straight day calling for the arrest of the gunmen who shot and killed a key figure in last year’s pro-democracy uprising.As news spread that 32-year-old student leader Sharif Osman Hadi died in hospital in Singapore on Thursday, crowds took to the streets in an outpouring of mourning and anger.Several buildings were vandalised including the offices of media outlets deemed to favour India — an old ally of Bangladesh’s ousted leadership.Hadi, a staunch critic of India, was shot by masked gunmen while leaving a mosque in the capital Dhaka last week. He was initially wounded and flown to Singapore for treatment, but eventually succumbed to his wounds.UN rights chief Volker Turk called on Friday for a “prompt, impartial, thorough and transparent” investigation.In Dhaka, protester Sajid Al Adeeb told AFP that “people have gathered here demanding the swift arrest of those who killed Hadi.”The 20-year-old student said the killers were “currently in India” — a claim which New Delhi has not commented on.”I urge the government to take immediate and appropriate steps to arrest those responsible,” he added.”Above all, I want Hadi’s ideals to live on.”Protests were also held in the cities of Gazipur, Sylhet and Chattogram on Friday.Hadi’s remains were brought to Dhaka on Friday evening ahead of a funeral planned for the following day.- ‘Justice’ -The customary funeral prayer will be performed on Saturday in front of the parliament building, the government said.Hadi’s body will then be placed at the central mosque of Dhaka University to allow people to pay their last respects before his burial there.Amir Hossain, Hadi’s brother-in-law, told AFP that the family wanted justice.”We don’t need anything except justice. The perpetrators must be punished,” Hossain said.The UN’s Turk said in a statement that “he was deeply troubled” by Hadi’s killing.”Retaliation and revenge will only deepen divisions and undermine the rights of all,” he said.”I urge the authorities to conduct a prompt, impartial, thorough and transparent investigation into the attack that led to Hadi’s death, and to ensure due process and accountability for those responsible.”Ahead of the funeral, security has been beefed up in the capital with strict restriction on flying drones around the parliament building.The US embassy in Dhaka urged its citizens to remain vigilant and “remember that gatherings intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational and escalate into violence”.Late Thursday, people set fire to several buildings in Dhaka including the offices of leading newspapers Prothom Alo and the Daily Star.Critics accuse the publications of favouring neighbouring India, where Bangladesh’s ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina has taken refuge since fleeing Dhaka in the wake of the 2024 uprising.- ‘Can’t breathe’ -Staff trapped in the Daily Star newsroom said the building quickly filled with smoke.”I can’t breathe anymore… You are killing me,” reporter Zyma Islam wrote on Facebook, before firefighters managed to bring the blaze under control and rescue the employees.Sajjad Sharif, executive editor at Prothom Alo, called it “an attack on freedom of the press, expression, dissent and diversity of opinion”.The interim government, led by the 85-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, spoke to the editors of the two newspapers on Friday and condemned the vandalism.The government also urged citizens to resist all forms of mob violence which it said was committed by a few “fringe elements”.”This is a critical moment in our nation’s history when we are making a historic democratic transition,” a government statement said.”We cannot and must not allow it to be derailed by those few who thrive on chaos and reject peace.”On Wednesday, before Hadi’s death, protesters demanding Hasina be returned to Bangladesh marched toward the Indian High Commission in Dhaka, in the latest sign of strained ties between the neighbours since the fall of her autocratic government.Hadi, a leader of the student protest group Inqilab Mancha, was running for a parliament seat in the February 2026 national election.Bangladeshi police said they had launched a manhunt for his killers.sa-rtm-abh-bb/ami

Firefighters pulled journalists from their burning newsroom on Friday after the building was set ablaze during violent demonstrations in Bangladesh’s capital.Thousands of protesters were brought to the streets by the assassination of a youth leader running for parliament in upcoming national elections. A key figure in last year’s uprising, Sharif Osman Hadi, 32, was shot by masked gunmen while leaving a mosque in Dhaka last week.After he died in hospital on Thursday, his supporters gathered in Dhaka demanding the killers be brought to justice.  Several buildings, including those housing leading newspapers Prothom Alo and the Daily Star, were set on fire and vandalised, according to authorities.Staff trapped in the Daily Star newsroom described being unable to escape as the building filled with smoke.”I can’t breathe anymore. There’s too much smoke. I am inside. You are killing me,” reporter Zyma Islam wrote on her Facebook page.Firefighters managed to bring the blaze under control at 1:40 am (1940 GMT on Thursday), with 27 employees rescued from the smouldering building. “For the first time in the newspaper’s history, the publication had to be halted,” consulting editor Kamal Ahmed told AFP.At the Prothom Alo, executive editor Sajjad Sharif said he was “deeply saddened” that the newspaper could not be published due to vandalism and arson.”This attack is not merely an attack on Prothom Alo and the Daily Star, it’s an attack on freedom of the press, expression, dissent and diversity of opinion,” he said.Critics of the papers, the largest in the South Asian country, accuse them of favouring neighbouring India, where Bangladesh’s ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina has taken refuge since quitting in 2024.The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was alarmed by the violence against the press.”CPJ is monitoring the situation and urges Bangladeshi authorities to ensure the safety of news outlets and journalists, and to hold those responsible accountable,” it said in a statement.Hadi, a leader of the student protest group Inqilab Mancha, was also an outspoken critic of India.After he was shot in Dhaka on December 12, he was airlifted to Singapore, where authorities later announced he had succumbed to his wounds.Inqilab Mancha distanced itself from the violence that erupted at the Dhaka protests, blaming opportunists for trying to derail the demonstrations.”They essentially want to turn Bangladesh into a dysfunctional state through vandalism and arson,” the group said in a statement posted to social media.”They want to endanger the independence and sovereignty of this country.”Bangladeshi police have launched a manhunt for Hadi’s shooters, releasing photographs of two key suspects and offering a reward of five million taka (about $42,000) for information leading to their arrest.

A renowned Kabul cinema that for decades attracted the city’s film fans is being demolished to make way for a shopping mall, AFP journalists saw Thursday.Built in the 1960s, the Ariana was pillaged and destroyed in Afghanistan’s civil war of 1992-1996, before a French-led restoration effort that saw it reopen in 2004. But with the return in 2021 of Taliban authorities and their ban of films, music and other entertainment under their strict interpretation of Islamic law, the cinema was given over to the occasional propaganda film before being shut for good. On Thursday, a bulldozer smashed walls amid piles of rubble at the site. A banner stated that a “standard modern market is going to be built”.”It shattered my heart, the news of the demolition of the Ariana Cinema. We had a lot of good memories from the cinema,” a 65-year-old Kabul resident, who declined to give her name for security reasons, told AFP. In the 1970s it used to screen “Indian, Iranian movies in the early years; later on, they also started to screen Russian, English, French, and European movies as well”, the woman said. “They used to screen revolutionary movies, movies that showed the struggle of the people, and people used to watch them with a lot of passion.”The restoration work in 2004 was overseen by the French architects Frederic Namur and Jean-Marc Lalo, and financed by an association led by French director Claude Lelouch, who won the Palme d’Or top prize at Cannes in 1966 for “A Man and a Woman”.French-Afghan writer and filmmaker Atiq Rahimi, whose first movie was shown at the Ariana in 2004, was heartbroken at the news.”The Ariana cinema was not a ruin to be demolished, but a memory to be revived. It was already destroyed once by the civil war. This time, it’s worse: it’s being erased in the name of ‘modernity’. A soulless modernity, without images, without shared silence in the dark,” Rahimi told AFP from exile. When his movie was playing at the Ariana, “we believed, for a moment, that culture could survive barbarism. Razing a cinema is not building the future.”Another Kabul movie house, Park Cinema, has already been demolished, also to be replaced by a mall. 

Bangladesh police on Thursday stopped protesters from marching towards an Indian diplomatic mission, a day after India’s foreign ministry conveyed its concerns over the “deteriorating” security environment in the country. Ties between the two countries have been frosty since former prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India following a student-led uprising last year. Dhaka has repeatedly asked for her extradition so that she could stand trial for her alleged crimes, with Delhi responding that it was examining the requests.On Thursday, dozens of demonstrators began marching towards the assistant Indian high commissioner office in Rajshahi district which borders India.Miftahul Jannat, one of the protesters, said the plan was to carry out a sit-in, demanding the “repatriation of all the killers including Sheikh Hasina”. The protest was stalled by the police, who said they “listened to their demands and promised to forward them to the authorities”. “We are not aware of any further plans (for demonstrations) and hope the issue will be resolved peacefully,” Nashid Farhad, a senior officer with the Rajshahi Metropolitan Police, told AFP.On Wednesday, a group of protesters tried to march towards the Indian High Commission in Dhaka. India’s foreign ministry on Wednesday summoned Bangladesh’s top diplomat in New Delhi to convey its concerns about the actions of some “extremist elements”.In a statement, the ministry also said it expected the interim government under Muhammad Yunus to “ensure the safety of missions and posts in Bangladesh in keeping with its diplomatic obligations”. Hasina, 78, was sentenced to death in absentia by a Bangladesh court last month for crimes against humanity. The country of 170 million people goes to the polls on February 12, with Hasina’s former ruling party, the Awami League, banned from running. 

Members of ousted Nepali prime minister KP Sharma Oli’s political party voted for him to retain leadership of the organisation on Thursday, meaning he will oversee its preparations for national elections next year.Members of the Communist Party of Nepal – Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) cast their ballots during a two-day general convention in the capital Kathmandu, which Oli won by a landslide. The 73-year-old political veteran’s success comes after he stepped down as prime minister during a September youth-led uprising that toppled his government. Nepal will hold elections in March with a caretaker administration running the country in the meantime. Oli bagged nearly three times more votes than his nearest competitor, Ishwar Pokhrel, securing 1,663 votes compared to Pokhrel’s 564, Rajendra Gautam, the head of the party’s publicity department, told AFP.Oli, often known by his initials “KP”, has carefully crafted an image as his party’s supreme leader, with life-size cutouts and banners of “KP Ba (father), we love you” seen at some of his rallies.”I am happy he won,” Tara Maya Thapa Magar, 45, who came from Gandaki province in western Nepal to participate in the convention, told AFP.”He is the need of the hour for the nation.” – ‘Make the country prosperous’ -The four-time prime minister quit office shortly after angry protesters set fire to his house and hundreds of other buildings, including the parliament and courts, during the September protests.Oli wrote in his resignation letter that he hoped him stepping down would help “towards a political solution and resolution of the problems”.At least 77 people were killed during the unrest that was triggered by anger over a brief government ban on social media, building on public frustration after years of economic stagnation and allegations of entrenched political corruption.”The incident that occurred is due to international interference. It is only through Oli’s leadership that we can overcome this setback and make the country prosperous,” said Magar.After Oli’s ouster, 73-year-old former chief justice Sushila Karki was appointed interim prime minister to lead the Himalayan nation until the March 5 elections. The government has imposed a travel ban on Oli, as well as several other former top officials, as a government commission investigates his role in the deadly crackdown on protesters. Nepal’s political future remains uncertain, with deep public distrust of established parties posing a major challenge to holding credible elections.Karki has promised to create a “fair and fear-free” environment for the polls.

Sri Lanka’s government announced plans on Thursday for $1.6 billion in extra spending in 2026 to fund the country’s recovery from Cyclone Ditwah, which killed more than 640 people.The natural disaster affected 2.3 million people, more than 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s population, and floods and landslides caused by the cyclone left extensive damage throughout the country.The government convened parliament on Thursday, interrupting a month-long recess, to discuss what President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has described as the most challenging natural disaster to hit the island.Dissanayake presented a request for an additional 500 billion rupees ($1.66 billion) for rebuilding devastated homes, roads, bridges and railways, as well as for cash handouts to help people regain lost livelihoods.”We need to allocate an additional 500 billion rupees for disaster relief and reconstruction over and above the money allocated for government spending in calendar 2026,” Dissanayake told parliament.The national assembly, where his party holds a more than two-thirds majority, is expected to approve the mini-budget on Friday.However, Dissanayake said the government does not intend to raise its borrowing limit to meet the additional expenditure.He previously said he was banking heavily on foreign grants, and the finance ministry on Wednesday announced that it would call an international donor conference early next month.The government has already asked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for $200 million from a rapid relief fund and has secured World Bank agreement to repurpose $120 million from an ongoing project for disaster recovery spending.On Tuesday, Sri Lanka also secured a $200 million loan from the Asian Development Bank to finance water management, the first such funding since the cyclone.The finance ministry said the funds would be used to complete a canal network in the North-Central Province (NCP), which was among the worst affected by flooding last month.”The objective of the project is to enhance agricultural productivity, farmer incomes and climate resilience in the NCP,” the ministry said in a statement.The World Bank has said it is in the process of assessing the damage caused by the cyclone, while Colombo has said preliminary estimates suggest it may need up to $7 billion to rebuild.The cyclone struck as the country was emerging from its worst ever economic meltdown in 2022, when it ran out of foreign exchange reserves to pay for essential imports such as food, fuel and medicines.Following a $2.9 billion bailout from the IMF approved in early 2023, the country’s economy has stabilised.

The fourth T20 international between India and South Africa was abandoned without a ball being bowled due to dense fog in the northern Indian city of Lucknow on Wednesday.The toss was scheduled for 6:30pm local time (1300 GMT) but never took place despite several pitch inspections at the Ekana Stadium. The umpires eventually called off the match at 9:30pm.T20 world champions India lead the five-match series 2-1 ahead of the final match on Friday in Ahmedabad.The series is part of the build-up for the T20 World Cup which starts in February in India and Sri Lanka.A statement said, the match “has been abandoned due to excessive fog, making playing conditions unsafe”.Indian all-rounder Hardik Pandya was seen wearing a mask to trigger online discussions on deteriorating pollution levels.Levels of cancer-causing PM 2.5 microparticles hit 78 micrograms per cubic metre in parts of Lucknow, according to monitoring organisation IQAir, more than five times the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum.But recently pollution levels have been found to be much worse in northern India, including in capital Delhi where the PM 2.5 microparticles rose to more than 20 times the WHO levels during football star Lionel Messi’s visit on Monday.Acrid smog blankets parts of northern India, when cooler air traps pollutants close to the ground, creating a deadly mix of emissions from crop burning, factories and heavy traffic.Players first went through their drills at the ground before moving indoors for most of the inspections as disappointed fans made their way out of the venue.

Nepal launched on Tuesday nationwide tiger census, a key step in conservation efforts to aid the recovery of the big cats that once faced near extinction in the Himalayan nation.The survey will be conducted in four national parks in Nepal’s forested southern plains, covering more than 8,000 square kilometres (3,000 square miles) of protected areas and adjoining forests, officials said.More than 2,300 motion-sensitive camera traps will be deployed, with over 250 conservation staff mobilised for the operation covering the Chitwan, Banke, Bardiya and Shuklaphanta national parks.Results are expected by July 2026.Ecologist Haribhadra Acharya, coordinator of the National Tiger Census Technical Committee, said cameras helped scientists isolate individual animals with their unique stripe patterns, identifying them to prevent double counting.”We have adopted capture and recapture methodology with camera traps,” Acharya told AFP.Around 800 cameras will be installed in Chitwan National Park from Thursday, according to Abinash Thapa Magar of the park authority.”The survey is aimed at tracking the status of the tiger — their habitat and status of prey availability, and conflict with humans,” Magar told AFP.Deforestation, habitat encroachment and poaching have devastated tiger populations across Asia, but Nepal has been widely praised for its conservation efforts.A 2022 survey found that the country’s tiger population had tripled to 355 since 2010, while numbers of one-horned rhinoceros have risen from around 100 in the 1960s to 752 in 2021.Conservation success has extended beyond tigers. A first nationwide survey released in April estimated nearly 400 snow leopards.