LOOKEAST REPORT | Indian Minister of Home Affairs Rajnath Singh arrived in Dhaka on a three–day official visit. His Bangladesh counterpart Asaduzzaman Khan and Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Harsh V Shringla, welcomed him at the airport. According to officials, Rajnath Singh and his Bangladeshi counterpart will hold talks on various issues including security, border…
Read moreMINXIN PEI | WITH the imposition of 25% tariffs on $68 billion worth of their merchandise trade ($34 billion of exports each), the U.S. and China have fired the first salvos of their trade war. If one were to borrow a military analogy, the first round of the US–China trade war is either a skirmish or…
Read moreLOOKEAST REPORT | Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Khaleda Zia’s foreign lawyer Lord Alexander Carlisle has been deported from India on Tuesday. The ministry of external affairs (MEA) said Carlisle, a British national, arrived in New Delhi (from London) on July 11, 2018, without having obtained the appropriate Indian visa. “His intended activity in India…
Read moreSHAYNA BAUCHNER | A judge in Yangon formally charged two Reuters journalists for possessing confidential government documents in the latest blow to press freedom in Myanmar. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, detained for the past seven months during preliminary hearings, will now face trial for allegedly violating Myanmar’s colonial–era Official Secrets Act, which carries a prison…
Read moreLOOKEAST REPORT | SENIOR officials of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have reached Calcutta to investigate the Chinese drug syndicate exposed by recent arrests in the city. They have already questioned the five Chinese nationals arrested with a huge quantity of New York and China and pointed to synthetic amphetamine — type stimulants (ATS)…
Read moreGORDON WATTS | ISAAC Asimov was a visionary. The American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University was one of the “Big Three” science fiction writers of his generation along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. His seminal works were the Foundation, Galactic Empire and the Robot series. When asked about his views on technology, he simply…
Read moreLOOKEAST REPORT | In a significant statement, a senior political adviser to Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina has claimed Teesta river-sharing agreement is “no longer a problem”. The matter was no longer an irritant in the relations of the two countries or the two governments, he said in New Delhi. Imam, however, warned that the BNP…
Read more(LOOKEAST carries excerpts from a very interesting book edited by top academic Baladas Ghoshal and Satis Chandra called “Indo–Pacific Axis: Peace and Prosperity or Conflict “. The excerpts are from the introductory chapter by Baladas Ghoshal, one of India’s leading experts on South–east Asia, and now secretary general of the Society for Indian Ocean Studies….
Read moreCHIANG RAI, THAILAND | A former Thai military diver has drowned while helping in the operation to rescue 12 boys and their football coach trapped inside a flooded cave, officials said Friday, highlighting fears over the painstaking operation to extract the youngsters. His death raises serious doubts over the safety of attempting to bring the…
Read moreLOOKEAST REPORT | FIVE Chinese nationals arrested from Kolkata railway station for carrying almost 200 kilos of ‘Amphetamine’, popularly worth Rs 400 million late last week are part of a regional drug syndicate, drug enforcement officials suspect. The arrests made by the Sealdah Government Railway Police (GRP) on 29 June but the case was later taken over by…
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Election Commission of India has decided to deploy at least 480 companies of Central Forces in various troubled parts of West Bengal from March 1
