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The East Asia and Pacific region's recovery has been undermined by the spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant, which is likely slowing economic growth and increasing inequality in the region, the World Bank said on Monday.

Economic activity began to slow in the second quarter of 2021, and growth forecasts have been downgraded for most countries in the region, according to the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific Fall 2021 Economic Update.

While China's economy is projected to expand by 8.5%, the rest of the region is forecast to grow at 2.5%, nearly 2 percentage points less than forecast in April 2021, the World Bank said.

"The economic recovery of developing East Asia and Pacific faces a reversal of fortune," said Manuela Ferro, World Bank Vice President for East Asia and Pacific.

"Whereas in 2020 the region contained COVID-19 while other regions of the world struggled, the rise in COVID-19 cases in 2021 has decreased growth prospects for 2021."

The economies of several Pacific island countries and Myanmar have been hit the hardest, with Myanmar expected to contract by 18% while the Pacific island countries as a group are anticipated to shrink 2.9%, the World Bank said.

Myanmar will see the biggest contraction in employment in the region and the number of poor people in the country will rise, it added.

"There is no doubt the military takeover (in Myanmar) has led to a disruption of economic activity combined with the civil disobedience movement which means fewer people are going to work," said World Bank East Asia and Pacific Chief Economist Aaditya Mattoo.

The report estimates most countries in the region, including Indonesia and the Philippines, can vaccinate more than 60% of their populations by the first half of 2022. While that would not eliminate coronavirus infections, it would significantly reduce mortality, allowing a resumption of economic activity.

The damage done by the resurgence and persistence of COVID-19 is likely to hurt growth and increase inequality over the longer-term, the World Bank said.

"Accelerated vaccination and testing to control COVID-19 infections could revive economic activity in struggling countries as early as the first half of 2022, and double their growth rate next year," Mattoo said.

"But in the longer term, only deeper reforms can prevent slower growth and increasing inequality, an impoverishing combination the region has not seen this century."

The World Bank said the region will need to make a serious effort on four fronts to deal with the rise in coronavirus: addressing vaccine hesitancy and limitations to distribution capacity; enhancing testing and tracing; increasing regional production of vaccines; and strengthening local health systems. (Reuters)

When the Taliban won back control of the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar last month, they set out to settle a score with an old foe.

As they searched for prominent local politician Ajmal Omar - who had helped drive the militants out of a Nangarhar district a year earlier and tried to dissuade young Afghans from joining them - Taliban members detonated explosives at his ancestral home.

They also looted gold and cars, and detained and whipped several of his relatives to try and establish his whereabouts.

The events were recounted by two relatives who say they were targeted in the reprisals, 10 locals officials and residents who witnessed or were familiar with the incidents and a former Afghan intelligence official.

Images from the sources, which Reuters could not independently verify, show a badly damaged property and family members with injuries they say were from Taliban beatings.

Omar, 37, has gone into hiding. He declined to comment for this story, citing security concerns.

Soon after the Taliban seized power on Aug. 15, the Islamist movement sought to reassure the international community and its former opponents by saying there would be no reprisals.

Omar's family said their experience contradicted that commitment.

"None of us had imagined we would be targeted like this," said one of Omar's relatives, requesting anonymity. "The Taliban said they will not punish anyone who had worked with the previous regime but they did the exact opposite in our case."

Taliban spokespeople did not respond to questions about events described by Omar's family and local residents or about his efforts to help defeat them.

A Taliban cabinet minister told Reuters that commanders across the country had raided former government officials' homes and offices to seize weapons and armoured vehicles, but he was not aware of punishment meted out to Omar's family.

The group's defence minister, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, issued a rebuke last week over the conduct of some fighters following the Taliban's victory. He did not go into specifics.

"Miscreants and notorious former soldiers" had joined Taliban ranks and committed offences ranging from occupying ministries and government offices to two to three incidents of reported killings, he said.

"You all are aware of the general amnesty announced in Afghanistan; no mujahid has the right to take revenge on someone."

SOCIAL MEDIA

The Taliban brutally enforced their version of Islamic law during their previous rule from 1996-2001, carrying out public stonings and amputations and banning women from work and girls from school.

They have said they would respect people's rights this time around and not go after enemies, yet tens of thousands of people, fearing for their safety and future, fled the country in a chaotic evacuation from Kabul. Many more are in hiding.

Hundreds of social media posts have been shared featuring grainy mobile phone footage purportedly of armed men searching houses, beating people in the streets and bundling them into cars.

Several former officials, military personnel and others close to the fallen government have alleged retributions took place. Reuters has not been able to verify their accounts; some interviewed by Reuters said they were too afraid to share their experiences publicly.

Omar's story is one of the most detailed accounts so far of Taliban revenge against those who worked with the Western-backed government, and in particular who fought to eradicate the group from Afghanistan.

ON THE RUN

According to residents, the Taliban have long targeted Kodi Khel, a remote village in a valley dotted with apple and lemon orchards in the mountainous east of the country.

After they were ousted from power in 2001, the village and the surrounding Sherzad district were struck by rockets as the Taliban tried to wrest back control of the strategic route into Pakistan, the residents said.

Omar was a prominent local landowner whose family had a sprawling 22-room walled villa there.

As deputy head of the provincial council, he spearheaded strategic efforts to drive the Taliban out of the district last year. Several militants were wounded in the fighting as were some Afghan soldiers.

Before then, since his election in 2014, Omar had spent much of his time going from village to village trying to persuade young adults to join U.S.-backed forces fighting the insurgents, according to residents.

In a province that has long been a hotbed of Taliban activity, it could be a dangerous job.

Three Nangarhar council members have been killed in different attacks in the past five years.

Last year, Omar was on his way to a rally to celebrate the Afghan army's local victory when a convoy of cars he was travelling in was attacked by Taliban fighters, killing two people, a former council member said.

On Aug. 13, when the Taliban re-took Kodi Khel in a lightning offensive across the country, residents said they were ordered to stay indoors as the fighters searched for Omar.

Taliban militants found Omar's residence empty apart from some domestic staff who were ordered to leave.

Cars and other valuables were taken, and several explosives detonated, collapsing parts of the surrounding wall and turning rooms to rubble, according to interviews with family members and locals who heard the blasts and saw the aftermath.

Omar, who was in a crisis meeting of the provincial council in Nangarhar's capital Jalalabad where he and others were discussing how to repel the Taliban's advance, soon learned of the search.

He fled to the capital Kabul, then still under control of the previous administration, and remains in hiding, according to two of his relatives.

Nangarhar province fell to the Taliban a few days later.

On Sept. 3, armed Taliban fighters in army fatigues raided Omar's official residence in Jalalabad, two family members who were present said.

They took his three sons, five nephews and a brother into custody, and confiscated gold, cash, cars and an armoured vehicle and some guns he used for protection. The relatives have all since been released.

One relative said he and others were beaten with whips and thrown into a room with no window. He shared pictures of injuries showing limbs heavily bandaged and bruised skin.

Another relative said he was locked in a room for three days and tortured. Reuters could not independently confirm his account. He sees no future for himself and his family in Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

Omar's wife, children, four brothers, five sisters and their families all live in Afghanistan and are maintaining a low profile.

Omar is currently growing his hair and beard, the relatives said, moving from house to house to try and evade the Taliban and hoping to find a way to leave the country. (Reuters)

North Korea fired a missile towards the sea off its east coast on Tuesday, South Korea's military said, as Pyongyang called on the United States and South Korea to scrap their "double standards" on weapons programmes to restart talks.

The missile was launched from the central north province of Jagang at around 6:40 a.m. (2140 GMT), the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said. Japan's defence ministry said it appeared to be a ballistic missile, without elaborating.

The latest test underscored the steady development of North Korea's weapons systems, raising the stakes for stalled talks aimed at dismantling its nuclear and ballistic missile arsenals in return for U.S. sanctions relief.

The launch came just before North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations urged the United States to give up its hostile policy towards Pyongyang and said no one could deny his country's right to self defence and to test weapons.

South Korea's President Moon Jae-in ordered aides to conduct a detailed analysis of the North's recent moves.

"We regret that the missile was fired at a time when it was very important to stabilise the situation of the Korean peninsula," defence ministry spokesman Boo Seung-chan told a briefing.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said the launch highlighted "the destabilising impact" of the North's illicit weapons programmes, while the U.S. State Department also condemned the test.

'DOUBLE STANDARDS'

At the U.N. General Assembly, North Korea's U.N. envoy, Kim Song, said the country was shoring up its self-defence and if the United States dropped its hostile policy and "double standards," it would respond "willingly at any time" to offers to talks.

"But it is our judgment that there is no prospect at the present stage for the U.S. to really withdraw its hostile policy," Kim said.

Referring to a call by Moon last week for a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War, Kim said Washington needed to permanently stop joint military exercises with South Korea and remove "all kinds of strategic weapons" on and around the peninsula.

The United States stations various cutting edge military assets including nuclear bombers and fighter jets in South Korea, Guam and Japan as part of efforts to keep not only North Korea but also an increasingly assertive China in check.

Kim's speech was in line with Pyongyang's recent criticism that Seoul and Washington denounce its weapons development while continuing their own military activities.

Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has said the North is willing to improve inter-Korean ties and consider another summit if Seoul abandons its double standards and hostile policy toward Pyongyang.

"The conditions she suggested were essentially to demand that the North be accepted as a nuclear weapons state," said Shin Beom-chul, a senior fellow at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy in Seoul.

"Their goal is to achieve that prestige and drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington, taking advantage of Moon's craving for diplomatic legacy as his term is running out."

Moon, a liberal who has prioritised inter-Korean ties, sees declaring an end to the Korean War, even without a peace treaty to replace an armistice, as a way to revive denuclearisation negotiations between the North and the United States.

However, Moon, who has been in office for a single term, faces sagging popularity ahead of a presidential election in March.

Hopes for ending the war were raised after a historic summit between Kim Jong Un and then U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore in 2018. But that possibility, and the momentum for talks came to nothing, with talks stalled since 2019. (Reuters)

President Joe Biden's top military leaders are expected to face some of the most contentious hearings in memory this week over the chaotic end to the war in Afghanistan, which cost the lives of U.S. troops and civilians and left the Taliban back in power.

The Senate and House committees overseeing the U.S. military will hold hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, where Republicans are hoping to zero in on mistakes that Biden's administration made toward the end of the two-decade-old war.

That will follow similar questioning two weeks ago that saw U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken staunchly defending the administration, even as he faced calls for his resignation.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is expected to praise American personnel who helped airlift 124,000 Afghans out of the country, an operation that also cost the lives of 13 U.S. troops and scores of Afghans in a suicide bombing outside the Kabul airport.

Austin is expected to "be frank about the things we could have done better," a U.S. official told Reuters.

That will also certainly include the U.S. military's last drone strike before withdrawing, which the Pentagon acknowledges killed 10 civilians, most of them children - and not the Islamic State militants it thought it was attacking.

"We lost lives and we took likes in this evacuation," the official said.

Ahead of the hearing, Senator James Inhofe, the Senate Armed Services Committee's top Republican, wrote to Austin with a long list of requests for information, including on the Aug. 26 airport bombing, equipment left behind and the administration's future counter-terrorism plans.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, said lawmakers would also press about "a lack of coordination and a real plan for how we were going to get all the Afghans who helped us out of the country."

"I don't know if we'll get answers. But questions will be raised again about why we got to the point that we did in Afghanistan," she told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Many of the hardest questions may fall to the two senior U.S. military commanders testifying: Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Marine General Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command.

McKenzie called the drone strike a "tragic mistake," one that critics say raises hard questions about America's ability to properly identify counter-terrorism targets in Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal.

But McKenzie and other U.S. officials will be under pressure to defend the Biden administration's plans to address future counter-terrorism threats from groups like al Qaeda and Islamic State by flying in drones or commandos from overseas.

Republicans have accused the Biden administration of downplaying the risks associated with that so-called "over the horizon" capability.

Separately, Milley could face intense questioning over an account in a new book alleging he bypassed civilian leaders to place secret calls to his Chinese counterpart over concerns about former President Donald Trump.

Milley's office pushed back against the report in the book, saying the calls he made were coordinated within the Pentagon and across the U.S. government.

Senator Marco Rubio has called for his resignation. Senator Rand Paul said he should be prosecuted if the account in the book was true. But some of the greatest concern has come from lawmakers in the House, where Milley will testify on Wednesday. (Reuters)