Sri Lanka's Acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday imposed emergency giving him sweeping powers ahead of the key election on July 20 to pick a new President as he urged the political parties to put aside differences and form an all-party government, with the Opposition dubbing his decision as an 'undemocratic draconian act'.
The mini truck and passenger vehicle, which together crossed the 1-million sales mark in August, are already present in 24 countries.
Latest data available shows that India's exports to the 10-member bloc of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) declined by 18.6 per cent to $19.17 billion in the first eight months of this financial year.
The 25th anniversary of ASEAN-India Dialogue Relations is being marked. And invitations were sent by the Indian government to all ASEAN leaders for the Republic Day function.
The memorandum of understanding on mutual logistics support is the first such major agreement that Vietnam has signed with any country.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao on Monday reiterated that bilateral relations were in a good state. Dr Singh and Wen, who met at Phnom Penh on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit, reviewed the ties during a meeting that may well be their last, as the Chinese leader would be demitting office in March.
Officials from India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations would resume their talks to widen of the scope of a Free Trade Agreement with the 10-nation trading bloc to cover services and investment.
India and the 10-country trading bloc poised to ratify pact on trade in services soon
Factbox on the Miami Heat, who won the National Basketball Association (NBA) championship on Thursday by beating Oklahoma City Thunder 4-1 in the best-of-seven final series.
Two years ago, Myanmar was to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) what Bihar was to India: Dogged in its isolation, a region with low development indices and one the West loved to hate -- a state perpetually on the defensive. However, Myanmar's growth has also been as rapid as that seen by Bihar.
Coming ahead of the transition of power from Donald Trump's administration to President-elect Joe Biden's administration after the November 3 US presidential election, the detailed policy document highlights that China is undermining the security, autonomy and economic interests of many nations in the region.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday embarked on a four-day visit to Indonesia and Singapore with an aim of bolstering partnership with East Asia at a time when the United States and Europe are going through economic crisis.
In fact, India stands to gain in sectors such as textiles, handicrafts, chemicals and pharmaceutical from its trade with the Asean economies.
India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations signed an FTA in goods in August last year and are engaged in intense negotiations to expand this pact to include services and investments.
Although two-way trade has grown 10-fold since 2000 and is expected to exceed $3 billion this year, according to the Ministry of External Affairs, India's flagship foreign direct investment project in Vietnam -- Tata Steel's proposed $5 billion facility -- remains stalled, largely owing to pending governmental approvals.
After more than a year since the free trade agreement (FTA) between India and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) became operational, it is now approaching consolidation.
"President Biden has had warm and productive early conversations with his counterparts in Australia, India, and Japan, and looks forward to engaging even more directly with our partners in the Indo-Pacific as soon as possible," a senior administration official told PTI.
On the eve of the 15th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation to be held in Colombo August 2-3, the US has said it does not believe SAARC is ineffectual and irrelevant and a farce as some in the West and in the region itself contend--who dismiss it as nothing but a group photo-op every few years--and is confident it can grow to be as powerful and influential as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have decided to enhance cooperation in the economic, commercial, investment, educational, cultural and media fields.
Hina Rabbani Khar, on Tuesday, became the youngest and first woman foreign minister of Pakistan. The swearing-in ceremony was held at Islamabad where Farooq H A Naik, chairman senate and caretaker president presided over the ceremony in the absence of President Asif Ali Zardari, who is in Kabul for a day-long visit.
Food delivery apps Zomato and Swiggy reported a nationwide outage on Wednesday. Both the platforms witnessed technical glitches and were unresponsive for almost an hour. Downdetector, a platform that collects status reports from a series of sources, recorded about 3,619 reports of outage against Zomato at 2:05 PM and about 771 reports of outage against Swiggy at around 2:21 PM. According to the sources, the outage was caused by Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud-services platform, which runs both platforms. Though Swiggy and Zomato are working now, some customers reported that the issue has not been solved completely and they are not able to place orders and there are payment related issues.
The upcoming round of talks, slated for October 11-12, is expected to be a stormy one.
Countries that have signed the RCEP agreement can start negotiations with India for joining the pact once New Delhi submits a written request stating its intention for the same, according to a declaration. On November 4 last year, India walked out of mega free trade agreement RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) as negotiations failed to address New Delhi's outstanding issues and concerns. The remaining 15 member countries have signed RCEP agreement and have stated that the pact would remain open to India.
India will not be signing the ambitious Free Trade Agreement with the 10-nation economic bloc, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, at the 4th East Asia summit to be held in Thailand on April 11 and 12. Commerce Minister Kamal Nath will be attending the summit, where the seventh India-Asean meeting is also scheduled at the same venue.
The Asean secretariat hopes the meet may be able to iron out existing wrinkles raised by India. Since there had been no significant progress on the matter over the past two years on most issues, New Delhi is yet to decide on the invite.
The 13th report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team cites a UN Member State as saying that Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), a Deobandi group ideologically closer to the Taliban "maintains eight training camps in Nangarhar, three of which are directly under Taliban control."
Conservative Member of Parliament Deepak Obhrai, who's also Parliamentary Secretary to Minister for Foreign Affairs Lawrence Canon, was on an official visit to Lanka from July 5 to July 7 to visit refugee camps and ensure that Canadian aid is reaching the Tamil refugees there.
With most of the South East Asian countries hit by terrorism, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday said countries in the region have agreed to exchange of information and intelligence among them to combat the menace.
In the midst of a war of words between the two countries, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Wednesday expressed his desire to meet his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh.The Chinese leader's remarks come a day after Beijing raked up its claim over Arunachal Pradesh, questioning Prime Minister Singh's visit there on October 3. India hit back on Wednesday, reacting strongly to Chinese plans to get involved in projects in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir.
The two leaders are expected to make brief remarks at the top of the meeting.
Describing the boundary question with China as a "complex issue", Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday said it cannot be "wished away" and both sides have an obligation to maintain peace and tranquility pending a solution.
A few glimpses of the event that was a reminiscent of 'Howdy, Modi' that was held in Houston in September.
He said that if there are issues that need to be talked about, it is between India and Pakistan.
The IMD has also issued a red-coded warning alert to the Odisha and West Bengal coasts.
Consumers can expect duty-free imports of a range of products like capital goods, some textiles, electronic goods and chemicals from next year after India successfully concluded negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement for goods with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Singapore on Thursday.
Pakistan's Senate has unanimously adopted a resolution asking the government to prepare a dossier on "Indian interference" in the country and send it to other nations and international institutions.
Protests were held outside the Uttar Pradesh Bhawan, Rajghat, India Gate, Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), Assam Bhawan and Delhi University where people voiced their opposition to the controversial changes introduced in the law.
Pakistan and Association of Southeast Asian Nations have agreed to begin talks for a Free Trade Agreement to boost Islamabad's efforts towards achieving full dialogue partner status with the ten-member regional economic grouping.
Wen has postponed an official visit to the Philippines, which was originally scheduled for December 13-14, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang announced in Beijing on Sunday.
The announcement to admit Pakistan in ASEM was made at Helsinki on Monday following the sixth Summit of the organisation.
