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Taliban militants in Pakistan will no longer abide by a months-long ceasefire with the Pakistani government, a spokesman for the militant group said on Monday.

The Afghan Taliban have been facilitating peace talks between local militants and the government since late last year.

The end of the ceasefire comes ahead of a visit by a Pakistani delegation, led by state minister for foreign affairs Hina Rabbani Khar, to Kabul on Tuesday.

Mohammad Khurasani, a spokesman for the militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) told Reuters in a text message that its leadership had decided to end the ceasefire with Pakistan.

A TTP statement urged its fighters to resume attacks in retaliation towards a continuous military campaign against them. The Pakistani military has carried out several offensives against the militants in their strongholds in remote lawless districts bordering Afghanistan.

The TTP is an umbrella group of several Sunni militant groups who have been attacking the state for years, with the aim of overthrowing the government and governing the South Asian nation of 220 million with the Taliban's strict brand of Islamic laws.

There was no immediate response from the government.

The TTP has carried out some of the bloodiest attacks inside Pakistan since 2007. It is not directly affiliated with the Afghan Taliban, but pledges allegiance to them. (Reuters)

Thick smog engulfed India's capital New Delhi on Tuesday as air pollution worsened with the setting in of winter, shooting up concentrations of fine particles in the air three times above the acceptable limits.

The world's most polluted capital city struggles to breathe easy every winter as cold temperatures and calm winds trap pollutants closer to the ground.

"As the minimum temperature is dropping, gradual fog occurrence during early morning hours is likely to increase, leading to deterioration of air quality index (AQI)," said the federal government's System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) in a daily bulletin.

The AQI in parts of the city shot up above 400 on Tuesday, which is classified as the 'severe' category of air pollution, according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).

The level of fine particles measuring 2.5 micrograms or PM2.5 was 180 micrograms per cubic metre of air as of 10am in the Delhi National Capital Region, CPCB data showed, three times above the 24 hour acceptable limit of 60 micrograms per cubic metre of air.

Authorities have brought in several measures over the years to improve the city's air quality, including switching Delhi's fleet of public transport to cleaner fuel, spraying water from on top of towers and on roads and controlling burning of firewood and waste during cold weather.

But experts have said these measures need to be applied across northern India and in cities and towns around New Delhi that form the wider National Capital Region, which also suffer from poor air quality, to effectively control pollution. (Reuters)

Hong Kong leader John Lee said on Tuesday the central government in Beijing was "highly concerned" about the issue of foreign lawyers appearing in national security cases, with a landmark legal interpretation on the matter by Beijing expected soon.

Lee on Monday asked Beijing's legislative body to rule on a Hong Kong request to block foreign lawyers from working on national security cases, after the city's top court ruled that a British lawyer could represent jailed pro-democracy tycoon Jimmy Lai.

Lee told a news conference on Tuesday that he expected China's National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) to make a ruling on the matter "as soon as possible", but did not indicate whether the decision would come before the start of Lai's trial on Thursday.

Lee said Hong Kong authorities are seeking a delay to the start of the trial.

Hong Kong's Department of Justice has repeatedly tried and failed to prevent British barrister Timothy Owen from representing Lai, one of the most prominent Hong Kong critics of China's Communist Party leadership, in a landmark national security case.

Owen told Reuters he was unable to comment on the situation.

Hong Kong's highest court, the Court of Final Appeal, on Monday dismissed a government bid to block Owen from the trial and impose a "blanket ban" on foreign lawyers working on national security cases.

But Lee argued that Beijing's intervention, which would be only the sixth instance of China's top legislative body weighing in on legal matters in Hong Kong, was necessary in part because a foreign lawyer might divulge state secrets or be compromised by a foreign government.

Some legal experts said, however, that this would erode public confidence in Hong Kong's judicial independence, which was guaranteed under the "one country, two systems" arrangement in place since the former British colony was returned to China in 1997.

"What we've seen with interpretations is basically, 'Heads I win, tails you lose," Alvin Cheung, an assistant law professor at Queen's University in Canada, told Reuters.

Cheung was part of a group that drafted a legal analysis in May, signed by Britain's former Justice Secretary Robert Buckland and retired Australian high court judge Michael Kirby, that identified NPCSC interpretations as one of the main threats to Hong Kong's rule of law.

"The NPCSC is a political (and undemocratic) body whose proceedings take place behind closed doors, with no participation from the parties at suit. Its decisions are actuated by political considerations rather than legal evaluation and contain little to no reasoning," the legal opinion read.

Victor Dawes, chairman of the city's Bar Association, said he hoped the NPCSC's power of interpretation would be used sparingly, but said Hong Kong had enough senior talent in the local bar to handle national security cases.

"The exercise of such power will inevitably attract discussion and also criticism of our legal system," said Dawes, whose group represents Hong Kong's more than 1,600 barristers.

Speaking privately, five criminal and commercial lawyers who are members of the local bar said the move was being widely discussed among their peers, sparking concerns that it would further dent the city's rule of law traditions which had long included the use of foreign lawyers by both prosecutors and the defence.

"It is a grim moment," said one veteran Hong Kong criminal lawyer. "Some of us will be accelerating plans to leave. The message is all too clear." The lawyer declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation.

Hong Kong officials, including Lee, have said repeatedly that Hong Kong is strongly committed to the rule of law, and its independent judicial power is constitutionally protected. (Reuters)

General Asim Munir on Tuesday took charge as Pakistan's new army chief, a key change of command in an institution that plays a huge influential role in the governance of the nuclear-armed nation.

Munir, who was named as the new chief last week, takes control at a time when the army has been drawn into a political showdown between the government and former Prime Minister Imran Khan, even as the country faces an economic crisis.

"I am certain that his (Munir's) appointment will prove positive for the army and the country," outgoing chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa said at a handover ceremony at the army's General Headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

Bajwa, who served as chief for six years, has recently drawn the ire of Khan and his supporters, who claimed that the army played a part in his ouster from premiership in April in a no-confidence vote. The army has denied any role.

"General Asim Munir's first priority is to restore the relationship of respect and love between the nation and the military leadership," Asad Umar, a senior Khan aide, said on Twitter on Tuesday.

Khan, meanwhile, has said he would continue with his campaign to press the government to hold early elections. He has also threatened to dissolve provincial assemblies under his party's control, which could lead to a constitutional crisis.

Munir also faces a possible resurgence of militant activity in the country, with the Pakistani Taliban announcing a day earlier that it will no longer abide by a months-long ceasefire with the government. (reuters)