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The toll in deadly flooding and landslides across parts of Asia climbed past 1,100 on Monday as hardest-hit Sri Lanka and Indonesia deployed military personnel to help survivors. Separate weather systems brought torrential, extended rainfall to the entire island of Sri Lanka and large parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia last week. Much of the region is currently in its monsoon season but climate change is producing more extreme rain events and turbocharging storms. The relentless rains left residents clinging to rooftops awaiting rescue by boat or helicopter, and cut entire villages off from assistance. People salvage their belongings from a flooded house along the banks of Kelani River, following Cyclone Ditwah in Peliyagoda, Sri Lanka on December 1. - Reuters Arriving in North Sumatra on Monday, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said, “the worst has passed, hopefully”. The government’s “priority now is how to immediately send the necessa...

Saudi Arabia quietly facilitated a round of direct talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan aimed at easing tensions over cross-border terrorism, but the discussions wrapped up late on Sunday without any breakthrough, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. The closed-door session in Riyadh ended with both sides holding firm to their longstanding positions and showing little willingness to compromise, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the talks were not publicly acknowledged. The sources added that another Saudi-hosted round remains possible in the near future. The Riyadh engagement, which took place as a separate track co-mediated by Turkiye and Qatar remains stalled. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had earlier announced plans to dispatch a delegation to Pakistan, but the visit has yet to materialise. The Turkiye-Qatar initiative produced a fragile ceasefire after clashes in early October, though Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir And...