He voiced concern that confusion, complacency and inconsistency in public health measures and their application are driving transmission and costing lives. Cautioning that the disease is not flu, he said young, healthy people have died from the coronavirus.
Russia and China are tight-fisted and Iran is broke and none of them has the political will or capacity to bankroll the Afghan economy, which only the US can, points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
An uneasy 72-hour ceasefire brokered by Egypt between Israel and the Palestinian militant groups began on Tuesday morning after a month of fighting, with Hamas firing a salvo of long-range rockets minutes before the truce, calling them revenge for Israel's "massacres".
'It is a testing time for our foreign policy which may involve a certain element of taking risks, assessing costs, and expecting failures,' asserts Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
'They didn't speak Hindi or English, but love is a universal language.'
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar briefed the leaders on the latest situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban captured power there last week.
The relief material consists of items required urgently by the affected people, namely rice, pulses, sugar, salt, cooking oil, tea, ready to eat noodles, biscuits, mosquito nets etc, it said.
According to a new report from the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, an estimated 2,275 individuals drowned or went missing in the Mediterranean in 2018.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will participate in the first in-person summit of the Quad leaders in Washington on September 24 that is expected to broadly focus on contemporary global challenges including ways to ensure a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific.
Australian foreign minister Marise Payne and defence minister Peter Dutton will visit India from September 10 to 12 to take part in the dialogue with their Indian counterparts.
Needling India yet again, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday said he was "obliged" to become the voice of the "oppressed" people of Kashmir and would "leave no stone unturned" to make the world understand the "plight" of the people in the Valley.
Four-nation grouping Quad on Tuesday launched a major new initiative for the Indo-Pacific that allows the partner countries to fully monitor the waters on their shores and help ensure peace and stability in the region, a move that comes amid China's increasingly intimidatory behaviour.
China, a veto-wielding member of the UNSC, has blocked the move by India and other member nations three times in the past to designate Azhar.
Mahinda Rajapaksa, along with his wife and family, fled his official residence -- Temple Trees -- and took shelter at the naval base in Trincomalee.
"If we have to recognise a government, the first thing is that we will need to wait until the government is formed," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.
'I don't sense that China wants that kind of conflict or would support that'
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 Indian Navy has a big role to play in support of our strategic objectives in the Indian Ocean. The increasing Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean is a matter of concern and need to be factored. Hence, the requirement of an Aircraft Carrier is a foregone conclusion, asserts Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
'The killings are a worrisome escalation of tensions, but little is known about the immediate causes or results of the fight in Galwan and it is not possible, at this point, to assign blame'
The External Affairs Ministry on Thursday discarded the article titled 'India's embarrassing North Korean connection' by Nilanjana Bhowmick in Al Jazeera, a Doha-based broadcaster, saying the insinuation regarding New Delhi's assistance to North Korea in United Nations proscribed activities is 'baseless and without any merit.'
The sanctioned individuals and their immediate family members are prohibited from entering the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao of China. They and companies and institutions associated with them are also restricted from doing business with China, according to the statement by the Chinese foreign ministry.
Triumphalism, premature declaration of victory meant no one checked if India had enough vaccines, oxygen, remdesivir, bringing us back to a crisis where we need foreign aid after four decades, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
The United Nations owes India $110 million (over Rs 672 crore), the second highest outstanding payment to any country, for costs relating to peacekeeping operations and troops, a top UN official said.
An outbreak of a pneumonia-like illness that started in the city of Wuhan in China has put health authorities on high alert around the world. The new coronavirus-named 2019-nCoV-is thought to have originated in the food market of the central China metropolis and has since infected more than 4,000 people worldwide.
'This was the worst phase yet in the state's human rights history.' 'Notorious interrogation centres were set up, large numbers died in firing on civilian mobs.' 'This is what today's generations might identify better as the Haider phase in Kashmir's history,' says Shekhar Gupta.
The United Nations agency assisting Palestinian refugees has said that over 100,000 internally displaced people are seeking safety in its facilities amid deteriorating security conditions in the Gaza Strip as it appealed for $60 million (Rs 361 crore) for urgent humanitarian needs.
'Clearly, Washington has all but given up hope following US Acting Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells's stormy visit to Colombo last month where she read the riot act to Sri Lankan leaders to sign the pending status of forces agreement allowing American troops to use Sri Lanka as a hub for operations in the Indian Ocean,' points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'The aim of Russian policy is to reform European security, stop NATO expansion and in a more general sense -- set up the new rules of relations between the great powers.' 'From this perspective. the invasion of Ukraine is quite pointless.'
India and Indians can ignore Pakistan, but that cannot be said of other nations in the neighbourhood, where New Delhi's 'Neighbourhood First' policy constantly reverberates. Four of the eight SAARC member-nations are Muslim -- Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. The rulers decide the nation's India or anti-India policy in the first two, and street-opinion contributes to the same in the latter two, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Noting the urgency and desire on the part of India to extradite people accused of corruption, the UK on Friday said a "legal process" is on in Vijay Mallya's matter and it has to be followed through as there cannot be any shortcut. In May last year, the fugitive businessman lost his appeals in the British Supreme Court against his extradition to India to face money laundering and fraud charges. Asked when can Mallya be extradited to India and if some kind of legal issue is still pending in the matter, new British High Commissioner to India, Alex Ellis, without pointing to any particular case, said he recognises the urgency, importance and the desire to get back people who are accused of corruption to India.
'We each have our challenges, some tougher than the others...but, get through this...WE WILL...TOGETHER!!!'
The Central Election Committee (CEC) said that Blue and White party seemed to be taking a lead over Likud after 91 per cent votes were counted.
Social integration with inclusion is is most necessary.
'India has to ensure its borders are properly sealed and there is no infiltration from PoK.
A technical advisory group of the UN health agency which met on Tuesday has sought "additional clarifications" from Bharat Biotech for Covaxin to conduct a final "risk-benefit assessment" for Emergency Use Listing of the vaccine.
Swaraj emphasised that the UN must accept it needs fundamental reform.
President Barack Obama and his cabinet colleagues reached out to key allies of the US before a possible military strike against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Three people were killed and over 20 others injured in a bomb blast outside the house of the Mumbai terror attack mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed in Lahore on Wednesday, the police said.
Trump suggested a stronger military response is imminent.
