On November 15, 2022, a 34-year-old man, identified as Manker Hurra, was killed by suspected Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres in Hurrapinjodi village in the Antagarh Tehsil (revenue unit) of Kanker District in the Bastar Division. A group of Maoists abducted Hurra from the village in the night of November 15, and his body was found in the nearby forest in […]

Being fraught with danger, reporting from terrorism afflicted areas has always been a very challenging job as journalists often incur the wrath of either the establishment or terrorists. While the threat from the former is usually restricted to censorship and other legal restrictions that can be remedied by the court of law, terrorists on the other hand have no qualms […]

Pakistan Mercantile Exchange (PMEX), the country’s first and only multi-commodity futures exchange, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Uzbek Commodity Exchange (UzEx) at its head office in Karachi. Mr. Ejaz Ali Shah, Managing Director of PMEX and Mr. Badriddinov Ziyoviddin Bositovich, Chairman of the Board of UzEx, were the signatories.  The MoU aims at seeking closer cooperation between the […]

The recent much anticipated meeting between US President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping projected no new concrete intent by both sides to compromise on their own core tenets and interests. It did, however, project two fundamental factors that will guide the immediate term of fierce competition, moving forward. Xi went into the meeting with more of a quest to […]

The missile that landed in Eastern Polish farmland on November 15, killing two people and injuring three, caused a sharp international crisis, which was treated by Warsaw with due care and the utmost responsibility. Had the stray projectile been a Russian sea-launched Kalibr or an air-launched Kh-555, it would have constituted the first hostile strike on North Atlantic Treaty Organization […]

Russian multilateralism is unraveling. Cracks that were always visible within the Kremlin-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) groupings are now becoming ever more explicit.   The immediate cause is Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which has laid bare and further exacerbated the inherent weaknesses and self-interest within its regional initiatives. The geographic scope of these organizations is […]

What Mao’s Failures Reveal About Centralizing Control Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), scored a total victory at the 20th Party Congress in mid-October. He not only secured an unprecedented, though widely expected, third five-year term but also managed to fill the Politburo and its Standing Committee with loyalists. In a display of raw political […]

Pakistan on Monday reopened Chaman border crossing with Afghanistan for trade and pedestrian movement after shutting it down a week earlier following a border shooting. The shooting took place on November 13 at the Spin Boldak – Chaman crossing. One Pakistani border guard was killed in the incident. Pakistan immediately closed the crossing causing heavy losses to traders and stranding […]

Markus Potzel, Head of United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) is in Tajikistan to discuss options to strengthen cooperation between regional countries and Afghanistan. In a tweet on Sunday, UNAMA said the deputy head had arrived in Dushanbe for meetings with officials from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan where he will “discuss options to help strengthen regional cooperation with Afghanistan and […]

Using the option of pressure will not help, Amir Khan Muttaqi, foreign minister of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), said at a meeting in Kabul with Norway’s charge d’affaires Paul Coleman Bakr. The foreign minister said that the international community should adopt the policy of engagement and cooperation with Afghanistan. He said that history shows that pressuring Afghanistan doesn’t […]