Modi refrains from raising border issue with Chinese president

June 10, 2017

Beijing/New Delhi, Jun 10: Amid strife in bilateral ties with China, PM Narendra Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday with the Indian side describing the discussions as "cordial and positive" and noting that the two leaders agreed on the importance of working together.

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Modi is understood to have thanked Xi for India's accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. "Both leaders noted that in a multi-polar world, and at a time of global uncertainty, India-China relations are a factor of stability, and it is important for both countries to work together," sources said.

According to agency reports, the PM said that the two nations should respect one another's "core concerns" and Xi said sensitive issues that impede bilateral ties should be addressed. Xi called for both sides to "properly address sensitive and major issues", the Chinese foreign ministry said.

The two leaders met in the Kazakh capital Astana on the sidelines of the SCO summit.

The meeting seemed to focus on commonalities despite differences over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, India's NSG membership and Beijing stonewalling sanctions on Maulana Masood Azhar.

The meeting also came after US President Donald Trump blamed India and China for an "unfair climate deal" while pulling out of the Paris agreement "There was an understanding that where we have differences, it is important that differences should not become disputes," foreign secretary S Jaishankar told reporters, describing the meeting as "cordial" and "very positive".

It was expected Modi would bring up India's positions on contentious issues but the meeting seemed to have been less dominated by issues such as NSG as was the case when the group was to consider the Indian application. The meeting saw a discussion on issues like trade, investment, connectivity and cultural exchange.

This was the first meeting between the two leaders after India kept away from the high-profile Belt and Road (OBOR) Forum held in Beijing last month in which 29 world leaders took part.

During his meeting with Xi, Modi said the two sides should tap their potential in cooperation, strengthen communication and coordination in international affairs, respect each other's core concerns and appropriately handle their disputes.

Asked whether the NSG, OBOR and Azhar issues were raised, Jaishankar did not give a direct reply and said the meeting was for taking a broad assessment of the relationship.

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News Network
January 20,2020

Langkawi, Jan 20: Malaysia will not take retaliatory trade action against India over its boycott of palm oil purchases amid a political row between the two countries, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Monday.

India, the world’s largest edible oil buyer, this month effectively halted imports from its largest supplier and the world’s second-biggest producer in response to comments from Mahathir attacking India’s domestic policies.

“We are too small to take retaliatory action,” Mahathir told reporters in Langkawi, a resort island off the western coast of Malaysia. “We have to find ways and means to overcome that,” he added.

The 94-year-old premier of Muslim-majority Malaysia has criticised New Delhi’s new religion-based citizenship law and also accused India of invading the disputed region of Kashmir.

Mahathir again criticised India’s citizenship law on Monday, saying he believed it was “grossly unfair”.

India has been Malaysia’s largest palm oil market for the past five years, presenting the Southeast Asian country with a major challenge in finding new buyers for its palm oil.

Benchmark Malaysian palm futures fell nearly 10% last week, their biggest weekly decline in more than 11 years.

New Delhi is also unhappy with Malaysia’s refusal to revoke permanent resident status for controversial Indian Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, who has lived in Malaysia for about three years and faces charges of money laundering and hate speech in India.

Mahathir said even if the Indian government guarantees a fair trial, Naik faces the real threat of vigilante action and that Malaysia will only relocate the preacher if it can find a third country where he would be safe.

“If we can find a place for him, we will send him out.”

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News Network
May 5,2020

May 5: Global coronavirus deaths reached 250,000 on Monday after recorded infections topped 3.5 million, a news agency tally of official government data showed, although the rate of fatalities has slowed.

North America and European countries accounted for most of the new deaths and cases reported in recent days, but numbers were rising from smaller bases in Latin America, Africa and Russia.

Globally, there were 3,062 new deaths and 61,923 new cases over the past 24 hours, taking total cases to 3.58 million.

That easily exceeds the estimated 140,000 deaths worldwide in 2018 caused by measles, and compares with around 3 million to 5 million cases of severe illness caused annually by seasonal influenza, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

While the current trajectory of COVID-19 falls far short of the 1918 Spanish flu, which infected an estimated 500 million people, killing at least 10% of patients, experts worry the available data is underplaying the true impact of the pandemic.

The concerns come as several countries begin to ease strict lockdowns that have been credited with helping contain the spread of the virus.

"We could easily have a second or a third wave because a lot of places aren't immune," Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and microbiologist at Canberra Hospital, told Reuters. He noted the world was well short of herd immunity, which requires around 60% of the population to have recovered from the disease.

The first death linked to COVID-19 was reported on Jan. 10 in Wuhan, China after the coronavirus first emerged there in December. Global fatalities grew at a rate of 1-2% in recent days, down from 14% on March 21, according to the Reuters data.

DEATH RATE ANOMALIES

Mortality rates from recorded infections vary greatly from country to country.

Collignon said any country with a mortality rate of more than 2% almost certainly had underreported case numbers. Health experts fear those ratios could worsen in regions and countries less prepared to deal with the health crisis.

"If your mortality rate is higher than 2%, you've missed a lot of cases," he said, noting that countries overwhelmed by the outbreak were less likely to conduct testing in the community and record deaths outside of hospitals.

In the United States, around half the country's state governors partially reopened their economies over the weekend, while others, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, declared the move was premature.

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who battled COVID-19 last month, has said the country was over the peak but it was still too early to relax lockdown measures.

Even in countries where the suppression of the disease has been considered successful, such as Australia and New Zealand which have recorded low daily rates of new infections for weeks, officials have been cautious.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has predicated a full lifting of curbs on widespread public adoption of a mobile phone tracking app and increased testing levels.

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News Network
May 18,2020

Washington, May 18: US President Donald Trump on Sunday called his predecessor Barak Obama a ‘grossly incompetent president’.

The Trump’s reaction came after Obama on Saturday criticised the US authorities' response to the coronavirus outbreak.

“He (Obama) was an incompetent president. That’s all I can say. Grossly incompetent,” Trump told reporters at the White House on his arrival from Camp David.

Trump was responding to a question on the virtual commencement address by Obama a day earlier.

In his address to college graduates, Obama had said that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the American leadership.

“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama said without naming officials.

“A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge,” he added.

There was no immediate response from the office of the former president on the remarks made by Trump.

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