Kurt Campbell, White House Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs, has indicated that Washington is keen to see India diversify away from its “reliance” on Russian military supplies, while another State Department official highlighted the potential threat to the subcontinent posed by China.
Economic sanctions and corporate boycotts have not caused the rapid collapse of the Russian economy, as some Western commentators had hoped. Sanctions are, however, pressuring economic lifelines for the Russian people and forcing Moscow to embrace Eurasian ties.
Residents across Banbhoolpura region of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand are holding candlelight marches, sit-ins, and collective prayers to resist a High Court order authorizing the demolition of over 4,500 homes, ostensibly to make room for a railway. Behind this legal battle, some critics believe there lay political motives aimed at sweeping away the Muslim minority.
The US House of Representatives passed a mammoth US$858 billion military spending bill, putting the US budget for weapons and war-making higher than the next nine countries combined. Also attached to the bill was unprecedented US taxpayer funding for Taiwan’s military.
Human Rights Watch issued a report earlier this month urging world leaders to move forward with a ban on autonomous weapons systems. This latest plea comes nearly a decade after the organization co-founded the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and as advanced military drones are operating in the skies over Ukraine.
In September 2021, Samah Ameen, her husband, and three children arrived in India after fleeing the Yemen civil war with the hopes for a better future. But more than a year later, they continue to struggle and haven’t been recognized as refugees.
Japan has reluctantly agreed to help Sri Lanka overcome its economic crisis–worse than any other the South Asian island nation has faced in its seventy-year history–in part because of Tokyo’s concerns about Chinese political influence.
The latest report of the Housing and Land Rights Network on forced evictions in India has pointed to the new disturbing trend of “demolitions as a punitive measure” by various state governments.
India Prime Minister Narendra Modi has told Russia President Vladimir Putin that this is not a time for war, with food, fertilizer, and fuel security among the major concerns of the world at present.
Cheetahs are returning to India for the first time in seventy years, arriving from South Africa and Namibia. Never before have these striking big cats been allowed to repopulate a region from which they had once disappeared.
