A red carpet, gala dinner and a greeting at the presidential palace by guards on horseback – a privilege usually reserved for monarchs and popes – marked Chinese President Xi Jinping’s arrival in Italy last month for a landmark moment in his signature project to revitalise the ancient Silk Road.
Read Here – South China Morning Post
The Trump administration’s announcement Monday that it is ending waivers allowing several countries to keep importing Iranian crude is likely to push up oil prices and sour relations with U.S. friends and rivals alike that rely on Iranian energy, all while stoking more tensions in the waters around the Persian Gulf.
There’s a famous saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that measure, Washington has tested the limits of sanity with its strategy in Afghanistan: For seventeen years, it pursued the same policy while hoping in vain that it would produce the desired outcome. Recent months, however, have brought a much-needed course correction.
The admiration of India’s attempt to engage China through the Modi-Xi Wuhan informal meeting has faded away in recent months, prompting some to ask: Did the Wuhan Summit provide India with any tangible outcome? A cursory response to the question seems a no if recent developments are taken into consideration.
The general sense is that with Modi at the helm of affairs, war and conflict will mark the tone of relations between the two countries. However, this would be beneficial for Pakistan’s nationalist project that gets strengthened with every news of mob lynching of Muslims and other minorities, from India. This is not to argue that the state of minorities in Pakistan is any better: But New Delhi no longer represents a secular ideal. For Islamabad, a non-secular India is easier to contest.
India passed on specific intelligence earlier this month to Sri Lankan authorities that a terrorist attack was imminent there. However, Sri Lanka’s guard was clearly down, with the country shut down since April 12 for the Sinhala-Tamil new year, Good Friday and Easter. It speaks of how much Sri Lanka has got used to its peace of the last decade that the warnings were not considered actionable by the security apparatus.
Read Here – The Indian Express
Also Read: What’s Behind The Terrorist Attacks In Sri Lanka?
Over 200 people were killed and at least 450 injured in bomb blasts that ripped through churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, the first major attack on the Indian Ocean island since the end of a civil war 10 years ago. Seven people were arrested and three police officers were killed during a security forces raid on a house in the Sri Lankan capital several hours after the rash of attacks, some of which officials said were suicide bombs.
Also Read: Why Sri Lanka Risks Return To Violence
The world’s fourth most populous country is a pluralist, multiparty democracy that officially extends civic and religious freedoms to everyone living across a staggeringly diverse archipelago. But by the time anyone even showed up at the polls, both the structure of this young political system and Jokowi’s turns toward the religious right meant that many issues were already decided.
The warning by the former commerce minister Chen Deming that China should not assume it will overtake the United States to become the world’s top superpower should serve as a wake-up call to those harbouring illusions about China’s place in the world, while ignoring the challenges ahead.
