India is fast-tracking environmental clearances for projects like power plants and coal mines in a bid to propel growth. But this has set off alarm bells among environmentalists and affected residents who say the decisions are being made too quickly, reports Reuters.
India has drastically reduced the supply of essential commodities to the Maldives for 2018-19 going by a clause in the trade agreement which says that the annual supply could be determined on the basis of the average “lifting” of the goods in the past three years ,writes Devirupa Mitra in The Wire.
Yoga is immensely popular in all cities of Pakistan; a yoga teacher named Shamshad Haider claims to run 50 yoga clubs in Punjab, and International Yoga Day has been celebrated in Pakistan for three years in a row. Yoga is practiced all the way from Chitral in the north to Karachi in the south. There’s a whole crop of younger teachers now equipped with training from India, Thailand and Bali, as well as from yoga schools in North America and Britain. Teachers at swank studios in Karachi attract students through Facebook pages and affiliations with the International Yoga Alliance.
One of the highest grossing Bollywood films of all time, Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots is all set for a sequel. Released in 2009, the film has a cult following of its own and an entire generation of youngsters growing up with it. 3 Idiots remains one of most popular films even in its many TV re-runs. The director is currently working on the script of the sequel of Aamir Khan, R Madhavan and Sharman Joshi-starrer. Hirani was asked a question while promoting his upcoming film Sanju.
Pakistan continues to be ahead of India when it comes to possessing nuclear warheads, with China having double the quantity, according to a report by a leading Swedish think-tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Pakistan is believed to have 140-150 nuclear warheads this year, 10 more than last year. In contrast, India is said to have 130-140 nuclear warheads, according to the annual nuclear forces data by SIPRI.
Former US President Richard Nixon opposed India during Bangladesh’s 1971 war with Pakistan because he believed India’s military action would set a “bad precedent” and endanger the future of any small country, according to the declassified documents of the era. Nixon made those remarks during a meeting with the then Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato during their meeting at San Clements in California, PTI reports citing the declassified documents.
Big retailers are betting on India’s online grocery market, but mastering logistics will be one of the key challenges as customers demand fast or even same-day deliveries. India’s snarling traffic jams, weak infrastructure, narrow lanes and unplanned housing complexes are all potential obstacles to on-time grocery delivery, writes Rosemary Marandi in Nikkei.
With the Trump administration increasing import duties and initiating trade war with various countries including India, the Indian government on Wednesday slapped higher duties on a number of items including apples, almonds, walnuts, diagnostic reagents and certain steel products. the bulk of these products figure in a list of items imported from the US, alongside other countries.
Amidst major strategic and trade divergences between the two countries, India and the US will hold their first “2+2 Dialogue” in Washington on July 6, both countries announced on Thursday. US Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Secretary of Defense James Mattis will host External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Minister of Defense Nirmala Sitharaman in Washington, D.C, for a dialogue that “will focus on strengthening strategic, security, and defenae cooperation as the United States and India, and jointly confront global challenges,” the U.S State Department said in a statement.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s decision to withdraw from its coalition with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) in Jammu and Kashmir and scuttle the three-year old government has been taken with an eye on the Indian State and parliamentary elections to be held later this year and in 2019. The withdrawal is meant to impose President’s rule, which will follow immediately because no party wants to bolster the PDP; take over the State’s administration de facto; go after the militants and separatists ruthlessly; and sharpen the military conflict with Pakistan to consolidate Hindu support ahead of the forthcoming elections.