'After living in a country with hazy skies and a billion people, it is breathtaking when the sky is blue, the air crisply clean and there is drinking water in the taps. And, joy of joys, hardly any people.'
Anyone within range of China's expanding navy will have to build capabilities faster and/or work more closely with the US, as Australia has just announced, asserts T N Ninan.
The US said it has strong evidence that China has deployed anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missile systems and electronic jammers to contested features in the Spratly Islands region of the South China Sea.
The first priority for the new Tibetan administration in Dharamsala should be to look at Tibetan recruitment in the PLA, suggests Claude Arpi.
Manasi Joshi and Rohit Roy celebrate their only child's 17th birthday in the Maldives.
Though India's airlines are certainly bleeding, they haven't yet faced the ignominy of shutting down.
From Sri Lanka's most popular political family to its most despised -- going by the voices on the streets calling for the Rajapaksas' ouster -- what went wrong for the clan? Veteran Sri Lanka watcher N Sathiya Moorthy offers an insight.
L Eswar Rao said it took him three days to complete the art.
The Centre has taken the controversial stand that Katchatheevu in the Palk Strait off Rameswaram coast in Tamil Nadu was never part of India, but a senior geologist and remote sensing expert says remote sensing satellite data shows that the islet was geologically linked to Indian land mass.
Biden on Friday opened the first Quad Leaders' Summit held virtually and attended by Prime Minister Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.
Having punched above their weight, Afghanistan now face England in the Super League semifinals of the U-19 World Cup
'We will stand with friends, partners and allies to advance our shared prosperity, security and values in the Indo-Pacific region'
Netherlands' Kingma gets four-match suspension for ball-tampering.
The tearing hurry to form theatre commands has to be replaced by a balanced and deliberate approach. We need to accept that this process will take time if executed correctly and in the best interests of the Indian armed forces, argues Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
'In the second wave, probably due to the mutants, probably due to COVID-19-inappropriate behaviour, we are seeing it coming in the younger population, say from ages 30 to 50.' 'Also, we've seen that sometimes they deteriorate pretty rapidly and therefore we may need to keep a closer watch on the symptoms and on the oxygen levels at home.'
Since arraignment under money laundering is a tougher offence, the CBDT hopes it will also overcome its dismal score sheet to prove satisfactorily to the courts that these cases were genuine ones of tax evasion.
US President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced that the US will allocate 75 per cent - nearly 1.9 crore of the first tranche of 2.5 crore doses - of unused COVID-19 vaccines from its stockpile through the UN-backed COVAX global vaccine sharing programme to countries in South and Southeast Asia as well as Africa.
The Statue of Liberty, one of the most visited monuments in the United States, and the island it sits on were evacuated on Friday because of a suspicious package, police said.
Taiwan reopened baseball games to a limited number of fans on Friday for the first time since controls were imposed to limit the spread of the coronavirus, part of government efforts to slowly allow normal life to resume. Taiwan has been relatively successful at controlling the virus, with 440 cases to date and 6 deaths, with only 85 active infections, thanks to early prevention and detection efforts.
'Very thankful to #IndianNavy & all who rescued me,' Tomy was quoted as saying in the Indian Navy spokesman's tweet.
'In terms of sheer incompetence, this government has rivaled the Rajiv Gandhi-led government that was derisively called the 'Baba-log' government for its naive handling of many issues,' notes Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Bengaluru made just one change from their previous encounter as Deshorn Brown came in to replace Erik Paartalu while Mumbai coach Sergio Lobera named an unchanged XI from the 2-0 win over Kerala Blasters.
Mahinda Rajapaksa completed 50 years of parliamentary politics in July this year. He was elected as a Member of Parliament at the young age of 24 in 1970. He has since been elected president twice and has been appointed prime minister thrice.
These natural wonders are all under threat.
'It is hard (to leave Anderson out), he is a class act, you'll have to wait and see... But I'm not reluctant to change the winning team,' Chris Silverwood said on Wednesday.
Readers share impressions of their favourite beaches.
"It was a direct hit and grand success," defence sources said after the test launch.
We have our own problems for sure and they are not trivial, but for now, our economy is in not too bad a shape, our politics is as personality-driven and authoritarian as that of most countries in the world. We must make the best of what we have and not be excessively unhappy looking at the grass on the other side of the septic tank which may not be greener after all!, observes Shreekant Sambrani.
'Even if there is no full-scale war, Galwan-like skirmishes cannot be ruled out.'
Lausanne-based FINA had to move the championships because the 2021 slot of July 16 to August 1 clashed with the new date for the Tokyo Games, which were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Is it even an official disaster if you don't document it on social media? That seems to be the problem in Hawaii as officials are frustrated with people risking their lives all for a selfie. Hawaii's Kilauea volcano has been spewing lava ever since it started erupting on May 3. More than 1,700 local residents have been evacuated from the volcano's East Rift Zone on the Big Island of Hawaii, where lava from 20 fissure vents has destroyed 26 homes. And even now, people can't stop taking selfies with the dangerous volcano and posting them on social media.
The agreement would divert China's attention and keep them busy in the Pacific theatre, probably resulting in a reduction in threat perception in our area of interest in the Indian Ocean, notes Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
The game plan is to pressure India and China to come back and commit to further emissions cuts by next year's UN meeting. Neither China nor India has 2030 targets anywhere near in line with a 1.5 degree centigrade pathway, and so will be on the target list of nations under pressure to return next year with more ambition, predicts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The missile has a strike range of 2000 km, the sources said soon after it blasted off from a mobile launcher at the Launch Complex-4 of the Integrated Test Range, the sources said.
Irma, expected to landfall in Florida on Sunday, is likely to cause devastation across Florida.
'Whenever an achiever writes a book, writing a book is not a commercial enterprise.'
The PLA Air Force has conducted a combat air patrol in the South China Sea recently, which will become "a regular practice" in the future
'It is the most prone month for the development of cyclones in the pre-monsoon period.'
A state of emergency has been declared in Washington, DC and five states as 30 inches of snow and high winds may shut down up to a third of the country.
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