Written by Yubaraj Ghimire “Will the Nepal government start recruiting Madhesis into the army?” An Indian journalist had asked the visiting Nepali Prime Minister, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, in June 1990. “Why don’t you ask your Prime Minister if he would start recruiting Madhesis from Nepal into the Indian Gorkha regiment,” he replied, pointing towards his Indian counterpart, V P Singh,… Read more »
By: Express News Service INDIA is yet to receive a response from Pakistan to a letter from Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar to his Pakistani counterpart, which was handed over last week, suggesting ways to expedite the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks case trial, according to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). Noting that the trial was “happening at a snail’s pace”,… Read more »
After a long struggle, Sri Lanka, the large island nation southeast of India, was declared free of malaria last week by the World Health Organization. It has been more than three years since the last case. “This is a big success story,” said Dr. Pedro L. Alonso, the director of the W.H.O.’s global malaria program. “And it’s an example for… Read more »
From a suspected Israeli airstrike in Sudan to cyber warfare in the Gulf and a drone shot down over Israel, the largely hidden war between Iran and its foes seems heating up and spreading. Despite months of speculation, most experts and governments believe the risk of a direct Israeli strike on Tehran’s nuclear program stirring regional conflict has eased, at… Read more »
Faith has been growing as a force in the country ever since independence. Proposed legislation that would extend lunch breaks from one to two hours to allow time for Muslim prayers have highlighted tensions between secularism and religion in Kyrgyzstan. The bill proved so controversial that President Almazbek Atambaev himself warned that attempts to “violate” the secular nature of the… Read more »
Vladimir Putin has proposed setting up a Nato-style joint task force of post-Soviet states to secure the borders of Central Asia amid fears of Taliban “spillover” from Afghanistan. A fresh sign of the Russian president’s new military assertiveness, the deployment raises the possibility of Russian and allied troops being deployed along Tajikistan’s 800-mile border with Afghanistan, and Moscow tightening its… Read more »
India on Tuesday said it had held ‘substantive’ talks with China on its bid to become a fully fledged member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a club of nations that trades in civil nuclear technology. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is campaigning to join the NSG to back a multi-billion-dollar drive to build nuclear power plants in partnership with Russia,… Read more »
So, you thought the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan? Then you were mistaken because, the fact is, America has never left the war-torn Asian nation. And it won’t be heading out anytime soon. Following a request by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, President Barack Obama said that U.S. forces will remain in Afghanistan at their current levels of 9,800 troops… Read more »
While its recent attack on a military school in Peshawar, Pakistan brought international outrage, the Pakistani Taliban has long taken credit for an extensive list of assaults on civilians and the military in the country’s largely-ungoverned tribal areas along the Afghan border — and further afield. The banned Islamist group, which has intimate links to the Afghan Taliban and al… Read more »
US troops in Afghanistan are in a train-and-advise role, but increasingly they’re having to get more into combat situations, and they are not equipped for that, Michael Maloof, former Pentagon official told RT America’s Simone Del Rosario. The war in Afghanistan has cost the US hundreds of lives and billions of taxpayers’ dollars all with promises to bring peace to… Read more »