Stephanie Nebehay | Geneva | May 24

Reuters - The last three countries where polio is still paralyzing children -- Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria -- said on Thursday that they have enlisted Muslim women and religious leaders to allay fears of vaccination and wipe out the disease.

Polio cases are at an all-time low worldwide, following its eradication in India last year, raising hopes but also fears about a threat of resurgence especially in sub-Saharan Africa unless remaining reservoirs of polio virus are stamped out.

Jason Burke | May 20

The Guardian - Mahinda Rajapaksa poised to free jailed political rival in bid to quell international criticism over country's human rights record

Jailed former army general Sarath Fonseka is to be freed on Monday after the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, signed orders releasing his high-profile political rival.

Fonseka, widely condemned for his role in atrocities during the 2009 battles against the Tamil Tigers that ended the 25-year civil war, was imprisoned on graft charges more than two years ago after challenging Rajapaksa for the presidency. A second conviction was for launching a political career before leaving the military.

The move, confirmed by government spokesmen, is an apparent attempt to quell international criticism of the government's human rights record before a series of key visits by foreign officials and trips by the president over the summer, including to the London Olympics.

A previous trip to the UK ended in controversy when Rajapaksa was forced into a hasty departure after activists sought an arrest warrant for him. The authorisation for Fonseka's release will be sent to the justice ministry a spokesman told Reuters news agency.

When did the neoconservatives start giving a shit about Tibet?

Apr 30

BBC - Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi says she and fellow opposition MPs will take a parliamentary oath despite disputing the wording of it.

Ms Suu Kyi, who was elected to parliament a month ago, said her party was willing to compromise to prevent it complicating political matters.

She and 42 other National League for Democracy MPs will be sworn in to parliament on Wednesday.

In a historic address to Burma's parliament, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was encouraged by recent reform efforts in the country, but said the process of change was fragile and needed nurturing.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who is due to meet Mr Ban on Tuesday, said her party would "proceed as quickly as possible to become legal members of parliament by swearing the oath".

The NLD last week said they would not take part in a swearing-in ceremony unless the wording of the oath was changed from "safeguard" to "respect" the constitution.

On Monday she said: "Some people might ask, given that we didn't accept the wording of 'safeguard' in the beginning, why we accept now. The reason we accept it, firstly, is the desire of the people. Our voters voted for us because they want to see us in parliament."

She added: "We are not giving up, we are just yielding to the aspirations of the people."

Apr 19

Hindustan Times - India on Thursday conducted the maiden test of its indigenously developed nuclear capable Agni-V ballistic missile with a strike range of over 5,000 km, from the Wheeler Island off Odisha coast.

The three stage, solid propellant missile was test-fired from a mobile launcher from the launch complex-4 of the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at about 8:05am, defence sources said.

Soon after the maiden launch took place, Agni-V witnessed a smooth and perfect vertical lift-off from the launcher and analysis was done to assess its health parameters after retrieval of date from all the sophisticated wide range of communication network systems, they said.

The test-fire of the first of its kind missile, which was originally scheduled for Wednesday, had to be postponed at the last moment due to bad weather marked by rains and heavy lightning, the sources said.

The trial of Agni-V, considered to be of the category of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), demonstrates giant strides taken by India in its integrated missile development programme.

Only the United States, Russia, France and China possess the capability to operate an ICBM at present.

(My favorite comment: We dont have electric power for 10 hours a day!!! Anyways, we have a missile!!)

Palash R. Ghosh | April 17

IBT - Less than a week after North Korea's failed rocket launch, India may be on the verge of test-firing a nuclear-capable missile that has the ability to reach all parts of Asia and even parts of Eastern Europe, according to reports.

The 50-ton, 20-meter Agni V rocket – also known as the “China Killer” in Indian media -- boasts a range of more than 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles).

Jim Yardley | New Delhi | April 8

NYT - In the first visit to India by a Pakistani head of state in seven years, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India on Sunday expressed a mutual desire to improve relations between their rival South Asian nations, and Mr. Singh announced that he would at some point visit Pakistan for the first time since taking office.

The meeting was not a formal summit meeting, and diplomats tried to tamp down expectations. Mr. Zardari had originally asked to make a private visit to an important Muslim religious site, the Ajmer Sharif shrine, in Rajasthan State. Mr. Singh then invited him to make a detour to New Delhi for lunch.

Here's my "good news" story for today: the man who single-handedly planted an entire 1,360 acre tropical forest.

A little over 30 years ago, a teenager named Jadav "Molai" Payeng began burying seeds along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in northern India's Assam region to grow a refuge for wildlife. Not long after, he decided to dedicate his life to this endeavor, so he moved to the site where he could work full-time creating a lush new forest ecosystem. Incredibly, the spot today hosts a sprawling 1,360 acre of jungle that Payeng planted single-handedly.

...While it's taken years for Payeng's remarkable dedication to planting to receive some well-deserved recognition internationally, it didn't take long for wildlife in the region to benefit from the manufactured forest. Demonstrating a keen understanding of ecological balance, Payeng even transplanted ants to his burgeoning ecosystem to bolster its natural harmony. Soon the shadeless sandbar was transformed into a self-functioning environment where a menagerie of creatures could dwell. The forest, called the Molai woods, now serves as a safe haven for numerous birds, deers, rhinos, tigers, and elephants -- species increasingly at risk from habitat loss elsewhere.

Reading news that we're probably headed for a worldwide financial collapse by 2030 or that world food prices are currently rising fast - meaning there's going to be more food-anxiety unrest of the kind that triggered the Arab Spring - I often feel like the 1980s pioneers of the "cyberpunk" genre got the motifs right, but were off on the timeline by about thirty years. I get especially depressed by supposed experts in and out of government making great plans for more of the same with no obvious apprehension about the coming inevitable collapse if we don't change the way we do things. Here's a reminder that we can all take action directly rather than just burying our heads in the sand.

Sanjoy Majumder | Vishakhapatnam, India | April 4

BBC - India is to formally commission a nuclear submarine into its navy, joining an elite group of nations with similar capabilities.

The $1bn (£630m) Russian-built Nerpa has been leased by the Indian navy for the next 10 years. It was handed over to India in eastern Russia in January.

India previously had a Soviet submarine but decommissioned it in 1991.

It now rejoins China, Russia, the US, the UK and France as an operator of underwater nuclear vessels.

Rebeccah Byerly | New Delhi | March 29

CSM - As the United States isolates Iran by pushing countries to cut oil purchases and other commerce with the Islamic republic, India is building new trade ties there, saying Iran is its path to building the influence it needs in Central Asia and Afghanistan.

Prior to partition, the Indian subcontinent enjoyed trade and political links with Central Asia and onward into Russia and Europe. The creation of Pakistan cut India's access to the region and India has long eyed Iran as a workaround.

India's government is hosting a 14-nation conference this week to help build a new shipping network, the International North-South Corridor, that will use Iranian ports, highways, and railroads. The project aims to connect India to parts of Europe in half the time required by current trade routes through Egypt's Suez Canal.

An NGO in India has started to use Google Earth satellite technology to shine a light on whole neighborhoods of wretched slums, which authorities had long pretended didn't even exist. But not all are happy about what happens when people suddenly appear on the map.

WorldCrunch/LeMonde, By Julien Bouissou, March 27

Sangli, India - Before Google Earth existed, the slums of Sangli, a city of 550,000 in southwestern India, was acknowledged on government maps by nothing more than some clumsily outlined, empty spaces. But then, from high in the sky, the eye of a satellite saw what no municipal geometer had taken the trouble to show: small islands of huts with dilapidated roofs spread throughout the city.

Thanks to the satellite images available on Google Earth, a full picture of these forgotten slums has emerged. They now have borders; they are mapped; they have an identity. And using these images, Shelter Associates, a Pune-based NGO, has begun rehabilitating the slums. For the first time in their lives, 3,900 families in Sangli are going to be moving into apartments.

"Google Earth’s maps are true to reality. They help us reshape and rehabilitate the slums in a way that makes sense within the overall city plan of Sangli,” says Pratima Joshi, the director of Shelter Associates. The families don’t just need a leak-free roof or proper toilets; they need to be relocated to a place nearby so they don’t lose their jobs -- the salary of a domestic worker, a chauffeur or a security guard won’t stretch to pay for two bus tickets a day. In Delhi, families who were relocated in comfortable houses in the suburbs returned to the city within a few weeks.

Barring some unforseen turnabout in world conditions, by the middle of the century India will be one of the planet's pre-eminent superpowers. Sure, it'll still be home to some crushing poverty and some massive inequalities - so was the US in 1945 or Britain in 1820 - but it's demographic curve pretty much guarantees it'lll be the largest economy on earth as well as the largest democracy. Just as the British Empire "handed off" the torch of leader of the democratic world to the US in 1945 whether either liked it or not, Indians are beginning to understand that it'll be their turn next.

Thus there's a major debate among Indian foreign policy, national security and international relations thinkers right now as to what kind of strategy their next couple of decades should pursue, a debate we'd all do well to keep an eye on. Essentially, the indian foreign policy establishment has decided upon what's being called "Non-Alignment 2.0", while others - often ex-pat Indians living in the U.S. - would rather see India choose to align openly with the US in the interim. India is debating while looking over its shoulder at its rival, China and their proxy, Pakistan.

By 2050, a superpower will do as superpowers always do: the national interest will be pre-eminent and India will be the one others want to be aligned with. But how it gets there will make a massive impact on the latter half of this century.

Reading: Non-Alignment 2.0 PDF

Suicide bombers attacked secret service headquarters in Damascus and elsewhere. Dozens are dead. Russia is selling weapons to Syria while Gulf States are arming the rebels.

The bombings probably were done by Islamic terrorists. They have the expertise.

Callum Macrae | Mar 11

The Independent - Footage of atrocity committed at the end of the government's war with the Tamil Tigers is revealed

It is a chilling piece of footage that represents yet another blow for the beleaguered Sri Lankan government in its attempts to head off a critical resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva this week.

The short clip dates from the final hours of the bloody 26-year civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the secessionist rebels of the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE.

A 12-year-old boy lies on the ground. He is stripped to the waist and has five neat bullet holes in his chest. His name is Balachandran Prabakaran and he is the son of the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. He has been executed in cold blood. Beside him lie the bodies of five men, believed to be his bodyguards. There are strips of cloth on the ground indicating that they were tied and blindfolded before they were shot – further evidence suggesting that the Sri Lankan government forces had a systematic policy of executing many surrendering or captured LTTE fighters and leading figures, even if they were children.

The footage – dating from 18 May 2009 and which seems to have been shot as a grotesque "trophy video" by Sri Lankan forces – will be broadcast for the first time on Wednesday night in a Channel 4 film, Sri Lanka's Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished – a sequel to the controversial investigation broadcast last year which accused both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Gareth Porter | Washington | Mar 2

Al Jazeera - The magnet bomb that exploded on an Israeli Embassy diplomat's car in Delhi on February 13 seemed on the surface to be consistent with an Iranian-sponsored action.

It was carried out with same method by which Israel's Iranian proxy, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, had assassinated an Iranian scientist in mid-January. It occurred on the anniversary of the 2008 assassination of Hezbollah operations chief Imad Mugniyeh, which Hezbollah had vowed to avenge. And it happened at the same time as what appeared to be attempted bombings in Bangkok and Tbilisi.

But a review of the evidence uncovered thus far makes the link to Iran begin to look very dubious. Instead, it points to the distinct possibility that the Israelis planned a carefully limited bomb attack that was not intended to cause serious injury to Israeli diplomatic personnel, but that would advance the larger Israeli narrative on the need to punish Iran.

The evidence surrounding that bomb itself indicates a series of decisions by the terrorist team that is fundamentally inconsistent with an Iranian-Hezbollah revenge bombing. The preliminary forensic analysis of the bomb itself had estimated it to be 250-300 grams of explosives, but sources in the investigation later reduced the estimate to 200-250 grams. The 250-gram bomb that exploded near the Delhi High Court in May 2011 did not even damage the car under which it had been placed and was characterised by Police Commissioner B K Gupta as a "low-intensity and mild blast".

Lucknow | March 4

IANS - Draped in pink sheets since Jan 11 following an Election Commission (EC) order, the veils will at long last go off scores of statues of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati and elephants - the poll symbol of her party - in public spaces across Lucknow and Noida.

These include nine statues of Mayawati and 156 statues of elephants in Lucknow, and two statues of the chief minister and 52 of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) symbol in Noida, neighbouring New Delhi.

In a late night decision Saturday, the EC ordered that the statues be uncovered, following the completion of the voting process in Uttar Pradesh.

Andrew R.C. Marshall | Tar Pu Village, Shan State, Myanma | Feb 19

Reuters - In Myanmar's new war on drugs, meet the weapon of mass destruction: the weed-whacker.

Its two-stroke engine spins a metal blade, which is more commonly deployed to tame the suburban gardens of wealthy Westerners. But today, in a remote valley in impoverished Shan State, Myanmar police armed with weed-whackers are advancing through fields of thigh-high poppies, leaving a carpet of stems in their wake.

When the police are finished, their uniforms are flecked with a sticky brown sap harvested from these flowers for centuries: opium. Myanmar produced an estimated 610 tonnes in 2011, making it the world's second-biggest opium supplier after Afghanistan, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The area under poppy cultivation has doubled in the past five years.

Now, emerging from half a century of military dictatorship, Myanmar says it wants to buck that trend.

Here's some more of my free "think big" advice for Indian strategists, something I do from time to time. A leader in the Economist today, "India and its near-abroad: The elephant in the region" sets out a brief case that India isn't engaging fully with it's neighbours, and that until it does it is hamstringing its own potential.

Natasha Pieris | Feb 17

IPS - - With the Feb. 27 session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) looming on the horizon, human rights watchdogs are making yet another push to get Sri Lanka onto the agenda – and once and for all settle the issue of alleged wartime abuses that the government continues to deny.

Military Fills the Cracks in Sri Lanka – Part 2

On the eve of the Feb. 27 Human Rights Council Session in Geneva, during which human rights advocates had hoped the issue of alleged wartime abuses in Sri Lanka would finally be put to rest, the Sri Lankan government announced its appointment of a five-member court of inquiry to investigate laws of war violations during the first five months of 2009.

The events and aftermath of the final stages of the Fourth Eelam War, the battle that finally brought an end to Sri Lanka's 30-year-long conflict with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, have been ferociously controversial, both nationally and in the international arena.

Sources like U.N. spokesperson Gordon Weiss, informed by real-time bulletins and post-war reports from grassroots agencies, doctors, survivors and international NGOs operating in the country's northern and eastern warzone, posit that the war ended in a "conflagration of grenades and gunfire", killing tens of thousands of civilians and leaving hundreds of thousands shell-shocked, maimed and homeless.

The Sri Lankan government, meanwhile, insists that it performed a "No Civilian Casualties" humanitarian operation in the last days of combat during which it rescued countless Tamil civilians from the clutches of the Tigers and ferried them to safety in government "welfare camps"

Feb 16

AFP - Indian Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said Wednesday that an Indian business delegation would still visit Iran despite a string of bomb attacks blamed on the increasingly isolated Islamic republic.

Sharma told AFP during a trade visit to Pakistan that terrorism and trade were "separate issues", adding that the perpetrators behind Monday's bomb attack on an Israeli diplomat's car in New Delhi had yet to be established.

"I am sure that our investigating agencies will identify and bring to justice the perpetrators," said Sharma.

Israel said Tehran was responsible for the attack which badly injured an Israeli woman, but Sharma insisted the matter had to be dealt with through the legal process.

"Let's be very, very clear, an act of terrorism has to be dealt as per the law," he said.

India said last week it would send a "huge" trade mission by the end of this month to Iran to explore business opportunities created by sanctions imposed by the West over the Islamic republic's disputed nuclear programme.

Iran is India's second-largest oil supplier after Saudi Arabia, providing around 12 percent of the fast-growing country's crude needs.

India says it will abide only by UN sanctions, and will not implement those by individual nations or groupings.

Male, Maldives | Feb 10

CBS News - The United States on Friday backtracked from its swift recognition of the new Maldives government, which the nation's former leader claims came to power in a coup.

The Maldives has faced one day of rioting and two days more of a political standoff since Mohamed Nasheed announced Tuesday that he was resigning as president, following months of protests against his rule and fading support from the security forces. But the next day Nasheed, who now faces an arrest warrant, announced he had actually been pushed from power at gunpoint. The reality remains unclear.

Nasheed criticized Washington after the State Department said Thursday it recognized the new government as legitimate.

"It's unfortunate that the American government has decided to work with the regime," Nasheed told reporters.

On Friday in Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that the circumstances in the Maldives are murky and contested. "I got myself in a place yesterday that was not borne out by the facts," she told a news briefing.

"We will work with the government of the Maldives, but believe that the circumstances surrounding the transfer of power need to be clarified. And we also suggest that all parties agree to an independent mechanism to do that," she said.

Asked whether there had been an extraconstitutional change in power, she said the U.S. does not yet have a clear view of the facts, but would expect to have a clearer idea after U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake visits Male, arriving Saturday.

Thomas Fuller | Tay Bay Hta, Myanmar | Feb 3

NYT - When Myanmar announced a cease-fire last month with one of the country’s most prominent rebel groups, images of longstanding enemies shaking hands across a table were beamed around the globe and touted as evidence of further reconciliation in a country emerging from decades of military dictatorship and interethnic strife.

Now, three weeks after the deal was announced, the leadership of the rebel group is denying that a cease-fire was signed.

“We can’t say there’s a cease-fire yet,” Naw Zipporah Sein, the general secretary of the Karen National Union, said in an interview. “We still need to discuss the conditions.”

There have been no reports of clashes between Karen rebels and government troops in recent weeks. But the defiant stance of the Karen leadership appears to be a significant setback for the government’s efforts to end the grinding civil conflicts that have divided the country for decades.

Reconciliation with the country’s armed ethnic groups has been one of the conditions that the United States and other Western countries have put on Myanmar before economic sanctions and other punitive measures are lifted.

The day after the cease-fire announcement, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, said that the United States would reward “action with action” and announced that Washington would appoint an ambassador to Myanmar after more than a decade without one. She called the cease-fire an “important step forward” for the country.

The confusion over the cease-fire remains murky and appears to be a mix of misunderstanding and backpedaling by the rebel group’s leadership.

Emanuel Stoakes | Jan 29

Truthout - The extrajudicial killing of civilians, surrendering soldiers and dissident journalists under the direction of the Sri Lankan government has been alleged by a former general in the Army who was extremely well-placed to comment on military activity during the island nation's bloody civil war.

The source, whose name is withheld for reasons of safety, had high-level security clearance and access to the flow of orders during the final days of the conflict. He made the assertions in legally binding testimony to a US lawyer in New York in 2010, recorded in an affidavit seen by Truthout.

His statements hold particular significance because they appear to corroborate claims made in reports by prominent human rights organizations, international media and a report for the United Nations by a panel of experts published in 2011. The allegations also closely corroborate the accounts of other members of the Sri Lankan Army during the civil war.

It is believed that representatives of the United States State Department have spoken to the source and hold a rich collection of testimonies and other evidence regarding alleged crimes committed during the civil war.

The most explosive claims have meaningful implications in terms of international law, given that they contribute to a body of evidence that places the command responsibility for alleged war crimes at the feet of key figures in Sri Lanka's civilian leadership.

Yesterday brought news that India has selected France's Dassault as the preferred bidder for a hundred or more advanced fighter aircraft, the Rafale, in a deal worth up to $30 billion over ten years. Russia, the US and the Eurofighter consortium had also bid on the deal and the deal was so coveted that President Obama personally pushed the US bids on his last visit to India. The U.S. amabassador to India resigned the day after the U.S. bid was rejected.

Dawei | Jan 29

AFP - Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will travel outside Yangon on the campaign trail Sunday with a visit to a southern city to promote her party ahead of April's by-elections.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi, who is standing for office in the polls after spending much of the past two decades in detention, is expected to be greeted by large crowds on her one-day visit to the coastal district of Dawei.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party is running for all 48 seats up for grabs in the by-elections and she is standing in a rural constituency near Yangon, but Sunday's trip is in support of NLD candidate Aung Soe.

"We have requested many times for Daw Suu to campaign for our region," he told AFP. Daw is a term of respect in Myanmar.

"She hasn't been here for 23 years. The people of Dawei are looking forward to it very much," said Aung Soe, who is standing in a local township.

Suu Kyi has spent much of the past two decades under house arrest and the NLD was stripped of its status as a legal political party after boycotting a national election in 2010, saying the rules were unfair.

The 66-year-old was released a few days after the poll and the new quasi-civilian government has since given her approval to return to the official political arena, against the backdrop of a dramatic reform programme.