NEW DELHI: There’s a distinct desi trend visible in the tech space in India. Recently, the National Informatics Centre launched Sandes, a WhatsApp-like instant messaging app for use by government servants. A little earlier there was a rush for Koo, a microblogging platform billed as the local alternative to Twitter, which got a million downloads […]Read More

NEW DELHI: Ties between Turkey and the U.S., strained for many years over multiple issues, got a reprieve when a U.S. court dismissed a case against the Turkish state-owned Halkbank, which was accused of helping Iran evade American sanctions. But the reprieve may be temporary. The recent killing of 13 Turkish nationals by the Kurdistan […]Read More

NEW DELHI: President Joe Biden may not be making the Saudis, or more particularly Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), happy at the moment. His promise to release a report on the Saudi role in the murder of journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi, and the freeze on arms sales to Riyadh (and Abu Dhabi) last […]Read More

NEW DELHI: Sweden’s decision late last year to ban, on national security grounds, China’s telecom major Huawei (and ZTE) from offering 5G services has important lessons for India. Notable is the CEO of Swedish telecom company Ericsson defending Huawei! He was apparently driven by concerns of reprisals by China where Ericsson runs a very profitable […]Read More

NEW DELHI: By any academic standard, this could be considered unusual. The Washington DC-based think tank, Atlantic Council, has published a strategy paper by an anonymous author on how to deal with China. The foreword describes the author as a “former senior government official with deep expertise and experience dealing with China”. It describes the […]Read More

NEW DELHI: India’s Adani Group has been invited by the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) to discuss the terms of a proposed agreement to develop the East Container Terminal of Colombo Port. Sri Lankan sources have told StratNews Global that in keeping with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s assurances to port trade unions, the terminal will remain […]Read More

NEW DELHI: China may have failed to keep the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) united despite a last-ditch attempt in dispatching a four-member delegation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to Kathmandu late last month. But for all intents and purposes, the Chinese are in Nepal for the long haul. A worried India knows this […]Read More
PUNE: There is an old Chinese board game called ‘Go’, which the Chinese prefer to chess. The objective of the game is to capture as much territory on the board as possible. The game can last for hours or even days, and patience is the key. The player with the most territory is the winner. […]Read More

NEW DELHI: In the next few days, Pakistan’s National Assembly will pass an Act setting up the CPEC (China Pak Economic Corridor) Authority. The Act formalises the Army’s already existing hold over CPEC since its head will be the current chairman and former ISI chief Lt-General (retd) Asim Saleem Bajwa. The controversial ‘The China Pakistan […]Read More

NEW DELHI: Joe Biden has been hailed as the voice of reason especially as far as Iran is concerned. But the US president-elect raised eyebrows in a recent interview in the New York Times where he spoke in what seemed to be Trumpian language on Iran. While Biden did agree that the US would return […]Read More