Tashkent: Russian President Vladimir Putin starts his first state visit to Uzbekistan under new leadership on Thursday as the Kremlin attempts to recalibrate a once thorny relationship with billions of dollars in business deals. The last time Putin jetted off to ex-Soviet Central Asia’s most populous republic in 2016, Uzbekistan was in the throes of […]
Afghanistan’s policy on Pakistan is “flawed” and it has never taken a strong political stand against Islamabad, former Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh said Wednesday, asserting that “an enemy is an enemy”. Saleh, during an interaction here, said Afghanistan never tried to increase the “cost of war” for Pakistan and always took a “high moral […]
NEW DELHI: Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe will reach New Delhi today on a three-day visit which comes in the backdrop of controversial media reports that the Sri Lankan President has accused Indian intelligence agency RAW of plotting his assassination, a claim firmly rejected as “false” by Colombo. Mr Wickremesinghe, who will arrive in […]
The Canadian government is ready to pardon those with a pot possession record of 30 grams or less after Canada becomes the second and largest country with a legal national marijuana marketplace Wednesday. A senior government official said those with a record will be allowed to apply for a pardon. The official was not authorized […]
Washington: The Trump administration has said it is planning to “revise” the definition of employment and specialty occupations under the H-1B visas by January, a move which will have an adverse impact on Indian IT companies in the US and small and medium-sized contractual firms mostly owned by Indian-Americans. The H-1B visa, most sought-after among […]
Voters are a smarter lot that most venal politicians think. After a period of emergency, jailing of opposition leaders, and muzzling of a liberal press, the voting public in the Maldives have ousted President Abdulla Yameen with a huge majority. The prevailing hope is that the change to lawmaker Ibrahim Mohamed Solih will bring some […]
Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are punished for violating regulations banning beards and burqas, and for the possession of unauthorised Korans, it added. China must come clean about the fate of an estimated one million minority Muslims swept up in a “massive crackdown” in far western region of Xinjiang, Amnesty International said in a new […]
Thwarting efforts by Indian agencies to have him extradited from the UAE where he had been detained, Nitin Jayantilal Sandesara, the owner of Gujarat-based Sterling Biotech group and a key accused in a Rs 5,300-crore bank loan fraud, is believed to have left the Emirates. On August 15, Indian agencies had learnt that Sandesara […]
THE Nepal government will soon award the contract for the 1200MW Budhi Gandaki hydropower project to Gezhouba, a Chinese company. In accordance with the decision taken at a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister K P Oli on Friday night, the energy ministry will formalise the deal with the Chinese company, Energy Minister Barshaman Pun […]
MOSCOW : Russia’s defense minister says Moscow will send more modern S-300 missile defense systems to Syria following last week’s downing of a Russian plane. Syrian government missile defense systems last week shot down a Russian military plane, killing all 15 people on board. Russia laid the blame squarely on Israel, saying that its fighter […]