New Union minister L Murugan's declaration of Kongu Nadu as his native place, instead of Tamil Nadu, may be part of a grand BJP strategy to create new states out of existing ones, particularly those that have anti-BJP governments, mulls N Sathiya Moorthy.
Once Mazar-i-Sharif falls, some isolate pockets of resistance may remain, which the Taliban would tackle through political work or coercion, asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
New Delhi must indicate to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that it has a long-term strategy for his country. It should point out that Pakistan's present Afgan policy will destabilise Afghanistan and help Islamic State, says Gautam Sen.
CIA Director William J. Burns held a secret meeting in Kabul on Monday with Baradar in the highest-level face-to-face encounter between the Taliban and the Biden administration since the militants seized the Afghan capital, the Washington Post reported, citing unnamed US officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity,
The details of the attackers and their relatives linked to the bombings was released by the police on Wednesday.
A 55-year-old from Hubei province could have been the first person to have contracted the viral infection on November 17 last year and cases rapidly began piling up since then, it said, without revealing the gender of the individual.
China has smothered most outbreaks within its borders, keeping new case numbers low.
United States polls, coronavirus lockdowns and protests... Here's a look at the best images from October.
Held on the first day of Spring by the Chinese calendar, it began with a performance by dancers waving glowing green stalks to convey the vitality of the season, followed by an explosion of white and green fireworks that spelled the word "Spring".
'The poetry of the earth is never dead,' John Keats once wrote. But when Keats wrote these lines, man had no way of reaching up to the hem of the sky and gaze down upon earth.
Many in the US establishment must hope that the crisis would put the brakes on China's growing military might. Well, it ain't gonna happen, says T T Ram Mohan, who was appointed a member of the prime minister's economic advisory council on Wednesday, October 28, 2021.
A suicide bomber on Monday struck a political gathering of North Western Frontier Province's ruling Awami National Party to celebrate the renaming of the Pushtun dominated province as Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa, killing 25 people and leaving nearly 100 others injured in Timergara in Lower Dir.The bomber detonated his lethal explosives at an open air gathering in the main town of insurgency-infested Lower Dir. Twenty five people were killed and nearly 100 others were injured.
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.
The unrest in Pakistan's south-western Balochistan province threatens to dent the military operation against the Taliban militants and its economy, a news report has said.
This was the first phone call between the two leaders after Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on January 20.
The capture of Baghouz comes almost three months (December 2018) after US President Trump declared that IS had been defeated in Syria.
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.
'What would we feel if we found the world behaving the way it has?' 'Forced to fight our own prolonged battle; nobody from outside really demanding that the war end or actively working to make it end, and above all, a completely toothless United Nations reduced to pleading for a halt to the violence,' notes Shyam G Menon, exactly a month after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
At least 10 people were injured on Friday in a car bomb blast outside a restaurant in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, hours after seven people were killed by a suicide bomber near a strategic air force complex in Punjab province. Witnesses said the blast occurred soon after a man parked a car outside a restaurant in Hayatabad on the outskirts of Peshawar. The walls and windows of the restaurant were shattered by the blast.
Pakistani Hindu and Sikh families, who have been targetted by Taliban for failing to pay 'religious' tax, left their homes and moved to Punjab province to take shelter as the government in Islamabad on Saturday dismissed India's "verbal demarche" on the issue.
A special aircraft of the Indian Air Force was sent on Saturday to bring back the Indian diplomats, officials and other staff members including a group of Indo-Tibetan Border Police personnel.
A coal-mine explosion in Western Turkey killed at least 201 workers in the nation's worst mining accident in more than two decades and rescuers raced to try to free hundreds more miners trapped underground.
Omar runs a shadow government, complete with military, religious and cultural councils, and has appointed officials and commanders to virtually every Afghan province and district, just as he did when he ruled Afghanistan, the Taliban claim, the New York Times reported on Monday.
The government's negligence towards this 'treasure house of knowledge' can be seen from the fact that monkeys roam about freely in the reading rooms, disturbing the calm of the library, as well as putting the lives of the readers in danger, writes Sajad Ahmad Dar.
Now, as before, India's vote at the UN was dictated by paramount national interests. Though the Indian vote was 'neutral', its explanation was explicit in its criticism of the Russian actions. India took back with the left hand what it had given with the right, explains Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Cheteshwar Pujara, a vital cog in India's batting wheel, on Tuesday, stressed on the importance of leaving the ball on the bouncy pitches of South Africa during the three-Test series beginning, in Cape Town, on Friday.
These images prove we live in a wonderfully weird world.
A suicide bomber killed at least 45 people at a volleyball tournament in eastern Afghanistan, officials said on Sunday.
Here is your weekly digest of the odd moments from around the world
'The PLA has continued to do exercises and drills and recently carried out air exercises with fighter jets.'
Rajneesh Gupta gives us a list of noteworthy statistics from first-class and Ranji Trophy
India is too diverse to be governed centrally and with a single system. The way forward is for the central government to keep the monopoly of military power and a share of national resources while the provinces must have greater autonomy, recommends Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Rajneesh Gupta throws up all the numbers of how both teams have fared in Twenty20 Internationals.
At a time when Pakistan is plagued by terrorism, its official academia has been unable to stop the inclusion of hate material targeting Hindus, Christians and Sikhs and fanning sectarian hatred in school curriculum.
'My family goes to the airport every day so that they can find a way out.'
Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban leader freed from a Pakistani jail on the request of the US less than three years ago, has emerged as an "undisputed victor" of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, according to a British media report.
Rediff.com gives its readers a glimpse of what it's like being a woman in Pakistan
A total of 152 miners were working underground at the Xiaojiawan Coal Mine in the coal-rich Panzhihua city when the blast occurred on Wednesday evening.
The mosque was attended by the members of the local Shiite minority.
China has chosen to keep New Delhi guessing, while retaining for itself the option of constantly changing facts on the ground and shifting the LAC westwards -- the strategy called 'salami slicing', notes Ajai Shukla.
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