Nearly 200 people were feared to have been buried alive in Sri Lanka after a devastating landslide triggered by rains destroyed the homes of mostly Indian-origin plantation workers, as heavy machinery was deployed on Thursday in rescue operations involving the army.
Dramatic visuals showed fidgety people inside the cable cars that hung in air against the backdrop of a rocky hill cliff that overlooked a densely-forested valley.
After the Ladakh fiasco where Xi Jinping did not expect the Indian Army to resist his land-grabbing tactics, he has to save face before his colleagues in the Communist party.' To bring the threat of a mega-dam to the northern Indian border is a clever move, observes Claude Arpi.
The Battle of Pratapgad can be termed the turning point in Indian history as it interrupted the continuous chain of Muslim successes on the battlefield.
Seeking their "promised dues", ex-servicemen across the country began their relay-hunger strike on Sunday demanding that the government announce a date for the introduction of the 'One Rank One Pension' policy.
'I believe Modi mentioned Balochistan only to embarrass Pakistan and also divert attention toward the situation in Kashmir.' 'I think from now on, India intends to raise Balochistan whenever Pakistan brings up Kashmir or upsets them on the issue of terrorism.' 'Balochistan is the least developed of Pakistan's four provinces. It is the least educated and least economically developed. People are agitated that a region so rich in mineral resources and a sea-port is still so poor.' Baloch political analyst Malik Siraj Akbar on why the province wants freedom from Pakistan.
'There is a consensus within the Indian security establishment -- at least among those who draw their conclusions from data instead of speaking from nationalist sentiment -- that India lacks the offensive capability to defeat Pakistan in a short war.'
A high-level committee set up to examine the gaps in the country's security system in the wake of the Kargil War in 1999 had called for appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff as a single-point military adviser to the defence minister.
The CAG had taken a strong objection to the long delays by the BRO in constructing 61 strategically important roads.
Should India engage Pakistan's generals directly, bypassing Imran? Ambassador G Parthasarathy, India's former high commissioner to Pakistan, ponders Delhi's diplomatic dilemma.
'Under General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Xi Jinping, Beijing has stepped up its aggressive foreign policy toward New Delhi. Since 2013, China has engaged in five major altercations with India along the Line of Actual Control (LAC),' said a brief issued by US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
'Offensive operations to capture objectives across the LoC to eliminate terrorist launch pads and deny the use of the most dangerous routes of infiltration, are likely to be limited to brigade-level attacks.' 'These limited operations are unlikely to escalate to war across the international boundary,' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
'The Pakistan army feels it can inflict a similar defeat on India in Kashmir and make it "India's Bangladesh".' 'But comparing Bangladesh of 1971 with the Kashmir valley of 2017 is like equating chalk and cheese!'
Let us hope that what happened in 1962 will never happened again, prays Claude Arpi
Defence Minister Parrikar was in favour of granting OROP to ex-servicemen but pressure was exerted on him by his cabinet colleagues on the issue, Ram Jethmalani claimed.
'We know how to kill a terrorist, but we do not know how to stop an innocent boy getting radicalised.'
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