'The picture only looks worse from where Bajwa sits.' 'He sees a domineering India to the east, an unravelling Afghanistan and a complex Iran to the west, an overbearing China on the north and a US which is no longer an ally,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
In a Facebook post, Jaleel himself confirmed that he had put in his papers. "I am happy to say that those who had been baying for my blood can be relieved for now. I have submitted my resignation to the chief minister. Since the past two years, I have been facing a media onslaught," Jaleel, second minister in the LDF ministry to resign on nepotism charges, said in the post.
"Stop killing people in the name of Islam", Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Saturday said as she vowed to do everything to eliminate terrorists from the country after 20 foreigners were killed in an attack on a cafe in Bangladesh claimed by the Islamic State terror group.
'We are trying to trace them.' 'We feel their phone batteries must have died because they are travelling by road.'
'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).
Pakistan on Monday briefed foreign envoys on its response to the Mumbai terror attacks and its own probe into the information provided by India, as part of an effort to counter the diplomatic initiative launched by New Delhi. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and interior ministry chief Rehman Malik briefed the ambassadors and high commissioners of most foreign countries at the foreign office in Islamabad.
The army chief's comments on Wednesday, at the Raisina Dialogue, on engaging with Taliban were first such public remarks by a senior functionary of the government.
'The visit by the MEPs and their photo-op with Modi would suggest that we have now given a quiet burial to the 'internal matter' charade,' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'China is unwilling to restore the status quo ante of April 2020.' 'India will have to weigh its options based on this premise.'
Replying to clarifications sought by MPs in Rajya Sabha on his statement on the border row, the minister said skirmishes and face-off with China in the last few months have been primarily over the issue of patrolling the Ladakh border.
American Vice President-elect Joseph Biden will travel to Pakistan this week to defuse regional tensions in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks, according to a media report.
Days after it asked lslamabad to take "effective" steps to stop the activities of terrorist groups on its territory, Russia on Monday said it "welcomes" the surgical strike by India as every country has a right to defend itself.
'Modi and Abe are working seriously for India-Japan bonhomie to grow stronger.' 'It is a win-win situation for both countries and the future look promising,' says Rajaram Panda, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations India Chair Visiting Professor at Reitaku University, Japan.
A confrontation with the Taliban in Kabul in this fading light of a twilight zone would have been sheer madness, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Should India engage Pakistan's generals directly, bypassing Imran? Ambassador G Parthasarathy, India's former high commissioner to Pakistan, ponders Delhi's diplomatic dilemma.
'The border standoff, if not properly addressed by both sides, could escalate to a conventional or sub-conventional conflict between India and China,' predicts Srikanth Kondapalli, one of India's leading China experts.
The former army chief was also quoted as saying that the Nawaz Sharif government lacks aggression.
He was deliberately reducing Ansari to his Muslim identity by linking his career as a diplomat in the Arab world and educationist and his reflections on intolerance with his religion.
Mallya has lived on the edge for long enough to know that his extradition from UK is not a given, says N Sundaresha Subramanian.
Shah attacked Banerjee over the alleged culture of political violence in the state, saying the only industry that was flourishing in Bengal was that of "crude bombs and illegal weapons".
Speaking about the COVID-19 pandemic in Parliament on Tuesday, Oli said it has become very difficult for Nepal to contain the spread of the deadly virus due to the flow of people from outside.
Answering questions on the clashes near Naku La Pass in the Sikkim sector which resulted in injuries to both sides, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that the most pressing issue for the world at present is the fight against the coronavirus.
India will be informing Sri Lanka about an official working with the Pakistan High Commission in Colombo who was allegedly playing a key role in planning terror strikes at the behest of ISI on the US and Israeli consulates in the southern part of this country.
'If the situation escalates, then mini-scale firing might happen.'
Summary of sports events and persons who made news on Monday
Four Chinese soldiers were killed in the fierce clash with the Indian Army in the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh in June last year, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) acknowledged for the first time on Friday.
The Obama administration has asked Russia to "expel" fugitive National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden "without delay", even as it agreed with the Russian President Vladimir Putin that the two countries should avoid a diplomatic showdown over the issue.
'Though the prime minister has talked somewhat needlessly of pilot projects and the real stuff to come, India cannot be sure of a clean victory in any full-fledged conflict -- even if there is reason to engage in such,' points out T N Ninan.
'The virus of trust deficit seems to be taking a toll of the friendship built over the years by succeeding leaderships of the two countries,' notes Rup Narayan Das.
'Quiet back channel advice will probably be rendered by Saudi Arabia to India that international perception on both issues does not favour India and that it should be prudent to look inwards and introspect on where the failing has been,' notes Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
India has told China that disengagement at all friction points is necessary to contemplate de-escalation of troops in eastern Ladakh even as the foreign ministers of the two countries agreed to establish a hotline for "timely" communication and exchange of views.
News of all that's transpired on and off the football field
Nisha Desai Biswal, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs in the Obama administration, has strongly asserted that India's support for Russian President Vladimir Putin's actions in Ukraine and Moscow's annexation of Crimea should not be conflated with the row over diplomat Devyani Khobragade.
Sources said China was forcefully pushing for inking the deal during the RCEP summit later in the day, which was seen as an attempt to counter-balance the impact of its lingering trade war with the US as well as to project the region's economic might to the West.
'We have to hit Pakistan in such a manner where it hurts them the most.'
While India does not figure in the top 10 export destinations for Pakistani goods, it serves as a crucial channel for select goods such as leather hides and cheaper variants of fertilisers that are generally procured by importers at short notice.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have secured a rare concession from Pakistan that 'terrorism' and not the issue of Kashmir be the central theme of the India-Pakistan dialogue.
'Jai Ho! Democracy is a hasty uptake of news channels and papers drawn into a skit that's too short on subtext to be a realised satire and too silly to be taken seriously', writes Sukanya Verma.
Italy has petitioned the United Nations over the trial of its two marines in India under a strict anti-piracy law for the killing of two Indian fishermen, and said it would exercise "all options" to bring back the naval personnel.
