Pakistani military personnel stand beside Shaheen-II missiles during the Pakistan Day military parade on 23 March 2015; the country has reportedly test-fired the longer-range Shaheen-III weapons The time, attention and effort devoted to reaching a deal with Iran over its nuclear ambitions has unwittingly tended to obscure the growing dangers of nuclear proliferation elsewhere in the world. [caption id="attachment_15119" align="alignleft" width="300"] Pakistani military personnel stand beside Shaheen-II missiles during th...

Probably the least surprising thing about China’s GDP growth rate for the first three months of the year is that it slowed to 7%. After all, that’s the target for the year. What’s more surprising are the drivers: consumption more than investment, services outpacing manufacturing, and domestic demand rather than exports. Taking today’s figures and the data for March together with the full year picture for 2014 shows that China’s growth drivers are changing. Consumption contributed 3.8 percentage points to 2014’s 7.4% ...

About 400 migrants died in an attempt to reach Italy from Libya when their boat capsized, survivors said on Tuesday, the latest tragedy in the Mediterranean where the death toll from shipwrecks has surged this year. [caption id="attachment_15064" align="alignleft" width="300"] In this video grab released by the Italian Coast Guards (Guardia Costiera) on April 13, 2015 a boat of the Italian Guardia Costiera take part in a rescue operation of migrants off the coast of Sicily on April 12, 2015. The Italian coastguard has re...

The US Congress will have a say on a nuclear deal with Iran, under a new agreement reached with the White House. [caption id="attachment_15058" align="alignleft" width="300"] The bill was authored by Republican Senator Bob Corker[/caption] President Barack Obama withdrew his opposition to a bipartisan bill that was unanimously passed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has agreed to sign the bill, which gives Congress the right to reject any forthcoming agreement with Iran. An outline agreement on the future shape ...

Amid a row over snooping on close relatives of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, his grand nephew, Surya Kumar Bose, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday night in Berlin and raised the issue of declassification of all secret files related to the freedom fighter. Surya Kumar Bose met the Prime Minister after attending a reception hosted in Modi’s honour by India’s ambassador to Germany Vijay Gokhale. Surya, also the president of the Indo-German Association in Hamburg, was invited by the Indian embassy to attend the reception f...

The Indian government is likely to soon enact a law for rehabilitation of Hindu refugees from Pakistan and Bangladesh. At a meeting held at home minister Rajnath Singh’s residence, the issue was discussed along with the recent Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh and how to get past the roadblocks in the way of the land acquisition bill. The meeting was attended by Union ministers Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Nitin Gadkari, Ravi Shakar Prasad and Venkaiah Naidu apart from BJP president Amit Shah, party member Ramlal and RSS functionary Krishna Gopal. Sources sa...