Iran said it is shutting its vast borders with neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan to increase security after the twin bombing that killed at least 89 people in the southeastern city of Kerman on January 3.
Minsk has recalled its ambassador to Sweden over the appointment of Sweden’s former ambassador to Belarus to serve as Stockholm’s representative to the Belarusian democratic community abroad.
Azerbaijan has appointed its ecology and natural resources minister to serve as president of the United Nations COP29 climate talks to be held in Baku in November.
Russia's Central Election Commission has registered two candidates to run against Vladimir Putin in a presidential election in March.
Several suspects have been detained in Iran in connection with the Islamic State-claimed deadly suicide bombings this week that killed at least 84 people during commemorations for a former Iranian commander.
The remote town of Andarak, located in southern Kyrgyzstan near the Tajik border, has seen a disturbing increase in the number of suicides among young, married women. In just one year at least 11 women have attempted suicide, resulting in six deaths and leaving several young children without mothers. What all the cases appear to have in common are young women taking desperate action to escape a life of grinding poverty and domestic violence.
Afghan journalists have endured a tightening of the Taliban's censorship amid growing persecution during the past year. Afghan media watchdogs say the hard-line Islamist group has tortured, detained, and threatened Afghan journalists as it actively denies them access to information.
A jailed member of the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) died in a prison outside Dushanbe late on January 4, his family said.
A shop owner in Iran has been sentenced to two years in prison after publishing photos without a hijab, or head scarf, the U.S.-based human rights network HRANA said on January 5.
Kosovo's government has decided to cancel a decision to put stickers on vehicles with Serbian license plates to hide their origin following a move by Belgrade last month to allow vehicles with Kosovar license plates to move freely in its territory from the beginning of this week.
Pakistan's Senate approved a resolution on January 5 to further delay national elections, which had been scheduled to take place on February 8, the chairman of the Senate said.
Eccentric Kyrgyz opposition politician Arstanbek Abdyldaev has died while in a pretrial detention facility, his lawyer said on January 5.
The media landscape in Tajikistan is in its "worst state” since the Central Asian nation’s civil war in the 1990s as the country’s authoritarian president, Emomali Rahmon, establishes himself as an “absolute power with no tolerance for dissent,” a media watchdog said.
The United States has put Azerbaijan and three other countries on a watch list for engaging in or tolerating “severe violations of religious freedom” after Baku took over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
