India extends $1 billion line of credit for development of Russia's Far East

Washington, Jun 2: There is no place for hate and racism in the society, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said, asserting that empathy and shared understanding are a start, but more needs to be done. Nadella’s remarks come in the wake of the custodial death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man who was pinned to the ground in Minneapolis on May 25 by a white police officer who kneeled on his neck as he gasped for breath.

“There is no place for hate and racism in our society. Empathy and shared understanding are a start, but we must do more,” Nadella said in a tweet on Monday.

“I stand with the Black and African American community and we are committed to building on this work in our company and in our communities,” Nadella said.

A day earlier, Google CEO Sunder Pichai expressed solidarity with the African-American community.

“Today on US Google & YouTube homepages we share our support for racial equality in solidarity with the Black community and in memory of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery & others who don’t have a voice,” Pichai wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

“For those feeling grief, anger, sadness & fear, you are not alone,” Pichai said, sharing a screenshot of the Google search home page which said, “We stand in support of racial equality, and all those who search for it.”

Nadella’s Microsoft also said they will be using the platform to amplify voices from the Black and African American community at the company.

Nadella had also spoken out a few months ago about the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act passed in his native country. Talking to BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief, Ben Smith, in Manhattan, Nadella said what’s happening in the country is “sad.”

“I think what is happening is sad. I feel, and in fact quite frankly, now being informed (and) shaped by the two amazing American things that I’ve observed which is both, it’s technology reaching me where I was growing up and its immigration policy and even a story like mine being possible in a country like this.

“I think, it’s just bad, if anything, I would love to see a Bangladeshi immigrant who comes to India and creates the next unicorn in India or becomes the CEO of Infosys. That should be the aspiration. If I had to sort of mirror what happened to me in the US, I hope that’s what happens in India,” Microsoft’s India-born CEO was quoted as saying by BuzzFeed.

Jul 3: China under President Xi Jinping has stepped up its "aggressive" foreign policy toward India and "resisted" efforts to clarify the Line of Actual Control that prevented a lasting peace from being realised, according to a report released by a US Congress appointed commission.

The armies of India and China have been locked in a bitter standoff at multiple locations in eastern Ladakh for the last seven weeks, and the tension escalated after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a violent clash in the Galwan Valley on June 15.

“Under General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Xi Jinping, Beijing has stepped up its aggressive foreign policy toward New Delhi. Since 2013, China has engaged in five major altercations with India along the Line of Actual Control (LAC),” said a brief issued by US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

"Beijing and New Delhi have signed a series of agreements and committed to confidence-building measures to stabilise their border, but China has resisted efforts to clarify the LAC, preventing a lasting peace from being realised,” said the report and was prepared at the request of the Commission to support its deliberations.

Authored by Will Green, a Policy Analyst on the Security and Foreign Affairs Team at the Commission, the report says that the Chinese government is particularly fearful of India’s growing relationship with the United States and its allies and partners.

“The latest border clash is part of a broader pattern in which Beijing seeks to warn New Delhi against aligning with Washington,” it said.

After Xi assumed power in 2012, there was a significant increase in clashes, despite the fact that he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi several times and Beijing and New Delhi have agreed to a series of confidence-building mechanisms designed to mitigate tensions.

Prior to 2013, the last major border clash was in 1987. The 1950s and 1960s were a particularly tense period, culminating in 1962 with a war that left thousands of soldiers dead on both sides, according to the records of China's People's Liberation Army, the report said.

“The 2020 skirmish is in line with Beijing’s increasingly assertive foreign policy. The clash came as Beijing was aggressively pressing its other expansive sovereignty claims in the Indo-Pacific region, such as over Taiwan and in the South and East China seas,” it said.

China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Beijing has built up and militarised many of the islands and reefs it controls in the region. Both areas are stated to be rich in minerals, oil and other natural resources and are vital to global trade.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have counter claims over the area.

Several weeks before the clash in the Galwan Valley, Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe called on Beijing to “use fighting to promote stability” as the country’s external security environment worsened, a potential indication of China’s intent to proactively initiate military tensions with its neighbours to project an image of strength, the report said.

Vienna, Jun 17: Austrian police fined a man 500 euros for loudly breaking wind after officers stopped him earlier this month to check his identity.

The police defended the massive fine saying he had deliberately emitted a "massive flatulence," lifting his backside from the bench where he was sitting.

The accused complained of what he called the disproportionate and unjustified fine when he gave his account of the June 5 events on the O24 news website.

In reply to social media commentaries that followed, the police in the Austrian capital justified their reaction on Twitter.

"Of course, nobody is put on the spot if one slips out by accident," the police said.

However, in this case, the police said, the young man had appeared "provocative and uncooperative" in general.

He then "slightly raised himself from the bench, looked at the officers and patently, in a completely deliberate way, emitted a massive flatulence in their immediate proximity."