illustration: lan truong  Walk into the office of a senior government official anywhere in India and you will find the same scene. Behind a large desk sits the man (or, occasionally, the woman) in charge. Arrayed in front of him are neat rows of chairs. And on those chairs sit supplicants patiently awaiting their turn to petition for justice, relief or favours. Many more clamour outside. Periodically the official rings a bell, signalling to a peon to usher in the next hopeful. From the offices of district magistrates in remote backwaters to those of the bureaucratic elite in the na ..read more

By Muktadir Rashid DHAKA – At least 128 Myanmar Border Guard Police have fled fighting with the Arakan Army in northern Rakhine State since Friday and crossed the border into Bangladesh with their arms and ammunition, Bangladeshi officials said. They said 88 Border Guard Police arrived from Myanmar on two boats on Sunday morning while the rest came on Saturday and Friday. This time, they are being held at a government school in the Hnila area of Teknaf town in  Cox’s Bazar District. Three majors – Kyaw Zin Thant, Nyein Chan Aung and Tin Saw Tun – are the most senior officers in the group ..read more

BENGALURU — Indian entrepreneurs are making windfalls in initial public offerings, but about one-fourth of the companies that hit the bourses amid a rally beginning in 2021 have tanked, raising questions about whether the bull market triggered overpriced IPOs. Between 2021 and 2023, entrepreneurs — called “promoters” in local parlance — sold shares worth 814.24 billion rupees ($9.8 billion) in IPOs on India’s two main exchanges, the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange. This was 2.4 times more than the IPOs between 2018 and 2020, according to the public ma ..read more

Read the full letter, obtained by Zeteo, which threatens sanctions in defense of Netanyahu. TEAM ZETEO AND MEHDI HASAN  May 6, 2024 Karim Khan KC, ICC Prosecutor (Photo by Yui Mok/PA Images via Getty Images) A group of influential Republican senators has sent a letter to International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan, warning him not to issue international arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, and threatening him with “severe sanctions” if he does so. In a terse, one-page letter obtained exclusively b ..read more

Simran Agarwal : The idea of a squadron of government officials storming a newsroom to shut down news-gathering and seize laptops and phones of journalists would send shivers up the spine of anyone who values a free and open democracy. However, the current Indian government routinely uses national interest as a smokescreen to raid news houses critical of it. In 2023, the state launched a series of income tax-related searches and seizures at BBC India after the UK telecast of India: The Modi Question, a documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s involvement in the 2002 comm ..read more

May 2, 2024    New York Times Credit…Sebastien Nogier/EPA, via Shutterstock   By Thomas L. Friedman Opinion Columnist, reporting from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox. Saudi Arabia and Israel are America’s two most important Middle East allies, and the Biden administration is deeply involved with both today, trying to forge a mutual defense treaty with Saudi Arabia and ..read more

An indigenous people’s group enforced a day-long shutdown in India’s strife-torn Manipur state on the first anniversary of the unprecedented ethnic violence amid a call for peace from a Catholic bishop. The Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF) urged “all members of the Kuki-Zo community to hoist a black flag on every household as a mark of remembrance and solidarity.” All businesses, institutions, and markets were also asked to remain closed “as a sign of respect and homage to our fallen heroes,” the ITLF said in a May 1 statement A government official who did not want to be name ..read more

by Zohaib Altaf, Nimrah Javed India and Pakistan’s integration of a triad of advanced technologies into its arsenal has shifted South Asia’s strategic landscape. The recently tested Agni-5 missile with Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRV) technology, space and land surveillance systems enhanced by Artificial Intelligence (AI), and increasingly sophisticated missile defense capabilities all have significant implications for the subcontinent. MIRV technology enables a state to independently target multiple locations using one ballisti ..read more

India’s external spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, has long been accused of tapping into criminal networks to carry out operations in South Asia. Is the agency now doing similar operations in the West? By Mujib Mashal and Suhasini Raj Reporting from New Delhi Months after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada accused India’s government of plotting a murder on Canadian soil — plunging diplomatic relations between the two countries to their lowest level ever — the first arrests in the killing, which came on Friday, did little to demystify the basis of his claim. The police didn’t of ..read more

A commuter in Kolkata, India covers her face with cloth to protect herself from heat on a hot summer day. (Image: Samir Jana/Alamy) BY Joydeep Gupta Crippling heatwaves are sweeping across South and Southeast Asia. In the southern state of Kerala in India, two people have died reportedly due to high humidity coupled with heatwave conditions as temperatures hit 42 degrees Celsius. In the last few weeks, Indian politicians campaigned during near 40C temperatures. As India goes to the ballot between now and 1 June, some politicians have blamed heatwaves for a low tur ..read more