Bengaluru (Karnataka) , March 11,2023: Chief Election Commissioner of India Rajiv Kumar said on Saturday announced that all senior citizens above 80 and people with disability will get a vote-from-home option in the Karnataka Assembly elections.
The term of the 224-member Karnataka Assembly is set to end on May 24.
“The term of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly is till May 24, 2023. So, the new Assembly has to be in place, and elections have to be completed before that,” said Kumar.
Kumar further said that form 12D will be available within five days of the notification so that any 80 plus or PwD voter, desirous of voting from home, can be facilitated.
“For the first time, we are going to provide in Karnataka the facility to all 80 plus and Persons with Disabilities (PwD) voters, if they so desire, to vote even from their homes. There is a form 12D which will be available within five days of the notification so that any 80 plus or PwD voter, desirous of voting from home, can be facilitated,” the CEC added.
The three-member Election Commission of India is on a three-day visit to Karnataka to review preparations.
Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar and Election Commissioners Anup Chandra Pandey and Arun Goel are in Bengaluru to review the poll preparedness for forthcoming Assembly Elections in Karnataka, the ECI had said in a tweet.
Mar 11,2023:Iran and Saudi Arabia have agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations and reopen their embassies within two months, according to Iranian and Saudi state media.
The agreement was reached on Friday during talks in Beijing.
Iranian state media posted images and video of Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, with Saudi national security adviser Musaad bin Mohammed al-Aiban and Wang Yi, China’s most senior diplomat.
“After implementing the decision, the foreign ministers of both nations will meet to prepare for an exchange of ambassadors,” Iranian state television said.
In the footage aired by Iranian media, Wang offered “whole-hearted congratulations” on the two countries’ “wisdom”.
“Both sides have displayed sincerity,” he said. “China fully supports this agreement.”
The Saudi Press Agency confirmed the agreement when it also published the joint statement from Saudi Arabia and Iran, which said the two countries had agreed to respect state sovereignty and not interfere in each other’s internal affairs.
The statement also said Riyadh and Tehran had agreed to activate a security cooperation agreement signed in 2001.
Beijing [China], March 11,2023: China’s Shanghai Party SecretaryLi Qiang became the new premier on Saturday after being nominated for the post during a session of the 14th National People’s Congress, Global Times reported.
Earlier today, Chinese President Xi Jinping nominated Li Qiang for the post of premier during the ongoing first session of the 14th National People’s Congress.
Li Qiang will replace Li Keqiang, who became premier in 2013 with high hopes that he would usher in liberal reforms. But his power was curbed by Xi, who increasingly sidelined Li Keqiang and placed allies in key strategic positions over him.
Yesterday, Keqiang took his final bow as the country’s premier, marking a shift away from the skilled technocrats who have helped steer the world’s second-biggest economy in favour of officials known mainly for their unquestioned loyalty to China’s most powerful leader in recent history, the Voice of America (VOA) reported.
After exiting the ruling Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee in October, despite being below retirement age, Li’s last major task was delivering the state of the nation address to the rubber-stamp parliament on Monday. The report sought to reassure citizens of the resiliency of the Chinese economy but contained little that was new.
Li Qiang, who joined the Communist Party’s powerful Politburo Standing Committee in October, is considered a novice in China’s complex central government administration encompassing 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, according to Nikkei Asia.
The 63-year-old politician served for four decades in his home province of Zhejiang and became a secretary to Xi when the latter was a top official in that industrial region in eastern China.
Li was later promoted to become party boss of Jiangsu and later Shanghai, where his reputation plunged during the financial centre’s gruelling two-month COVID lock down last year.
Even so, Li is rising to become the second most powerful Chinese official after Xi in the country’s intricate system of governance.
As per Nikkei Asia, Li earned a degree in executive business administration from Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2005, decades after he graduated from Zhejiang Agricultural University in 1982.
Wednesday 08,2023:The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group said on Wednesday his forces had taken full control of the eastern part of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the year-long war. If the claim is true, it would mean Russian forces control nearly half the city in their costly push to secure their first big victory in several months.
Ukrainian defenders remained defiant, however. Last week they appeared to be preparing for a tactical retreat from Bakhmut, but military and political leaders are now speaking of hanging on to positions and inflicting as many casualties as possible on the Russian assault force. Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin said his fighters, who have been spearheading the Russian campaign to seize Bakhmut, had now captured the city’s east.
“Everything east of the Bakhmutka River is completely under the control of Wagner,” Prigozhin said on Telegram. The river bisects Bakhmut city, which sits on the edge of a swathe of Donetsk region that is already largely under Russian occupation.Prigozhin has issued premature success claims before and Reuters was not able to verify his latest one. Ukrainian military statements said earlier there may be “conditions” in Bakhmut for a Ukrainian offensive.
Beijing [China], March 7,2023: China defended its growing defence budget and said that the military spending is purely to safeguard the country’s sovereignty, security and interests, The Global Times reported.
Tan Kefei, a spokesperson of the People’s Liberation Army and People’s Armed Police delegation to the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress made these remarks on Monday at two ongoing sessions, after the country announced its plan to raise the defence budget by 7.2 per cent in 2023.
“The Chinese government adheres to the policy of coordinated development of national defence development and economic development, and it reasonably sets the scale of defence expenditure based on the needs of national defence and the development level of the national economy,” Tan said.
Foreign media should look at their own countries’ military expansions before hyping the “China threat” theory, analysts said.
The eight-day annual session of China‘s National People’s Congress opened on March 4 in the presence of around 3000 delegates and President Xi Jinping and other leaders. The session assumed importance in the backdrop of new geo-political threats facing China and its lowest growth in decades at 3 per cent in the year 2022.
Outgoing Premier of China Li Keqiang, while addressing the opening of the annual session and presenting the government’s annual work report (AWR), revealed that the growth target for China for the year 2023 would be “around 5 per cent”. The AWR also highlighted that over 12 million jobs were added in 2022 while the urban unemployment rate fell to 5.5 per cent. He suggested that the Chinese government “should give priority to the recovery and expansion of consumption”. Li will finish his decade as the country’s premier, who was in charge of the economy, at the end of the eight-day National People’s Congress (NPC).
Mar 07,2023:North Korea has said that any move to intercept and shoot down its test missiles would be considered “a declaration of war”.
The statement on Tuesday by Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, cited a South Korean media report that said the United States planned to shoot down Pyongyang’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) if the weapons were test-launched towards the Pacific Ocean.
The US and its allies have never shot down North Korean ballistic missiles — typically launched at steep angles to avoid neighbouring countries — but the question has drawn new scrutiny since Pyongyang suggested it would fire more missiles over Japan.
Kim Yo Jong said Pyongyang would see any US military action against its strategic weapons tests as a “declaration of war”.
“The Pacific Ocean does not belong to the dominion of the US or Japan,” she said.
The fiery rhetoric from North Korea comes as the US and South Korea restore and scale up their joint military drills following a record number of missile tests by Pyongyang last year.
The US deployed a B-52 bomber for a joint drill with South Korean fighter jets on Monday in what South Korea’s defence ministry said was a show of force against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats.
The US and South Korean militaries are also preparing to revive their largest exercises later this month.
The field training exercises, known as Warrior Shield FTX, will include amphibious landings and run alongside the Freedom Shield exercise, a computer-simulated command post training aimed at strengthening defence and response capabilities.
Kim Yo Jong warned on Tuesday that North Korea was ready to take “overwhelming” actions against the drills.
TAIPEI/BEIJING ,MAR 07,2023:Taiwan will not allow “repeated provocations” from China, the island’s defence minister said on Tuesday, as China’s foreign minister said Taiwan was the “first red line” that must not be crossed in Sino-U.S. relations.
Tensions over democratically governed Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, have spiked over the past three years as Beijing ramps up diplomatic and military pressure to get Taipei to accept Chinese sovereignty.
China staged war games near Taiwan in August to protest the Taipei visit of then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen plans to meet current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the United States in coming weeks, two sources told Reuters.
Speaking to reporters at parliament, Taiwan Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said he was not aware of a planned meeting between Tsai and McCarthy.
“The Chinese communists use any reason to send troops,” Chiu said. “But we won’t just say ‘bring it on’. We will take a peaceful and rational approach.”
Although it hopes this does not happen, Taiwan’s military is prepared to fight, he added.
“If the Chinese communists move again, the armed forces’ job is to fight,” Chiu said. “We won’t allow repeated provocations against us. We can’t accept that.”
Taiwan’s government has not announced a Tsai visit to the United States, which previously she has made as stop-overs on the way to countries which maintain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Taiwan’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday it will make an announcement at an appropriate time about any foreign travel for the president but that it had nothing to announce for the time being. McCarthy has also not confirmed a meeting with Tsai.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said it was “absurd” for U.S. officials to say that Taiwan is not an internal affair of China’s.
“The Taiwan question is the core of the core interests of China, the bedrock of the political foundation of China-U.S. relations and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations,” he said on the sidelines of China’s annual meeting of parliament.
“The United States has unshakable responsibility for causing the Taiwan question.”
China will keep working for “peaceful reunification”, but reserves the right to take all necessary measures, Qin said.
“No one should ever underestimate the firm resolve strong will and great capability of the Chinese government and people to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Taiwan’s government strongly disputes China’s territorial claims though has repeatedly offered talks with Beijing, and says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.
One of the sources told Reuters that should the U.S. meeting go forward – likely in April – it did not necessarily rule out McCarthy visiting Taiwan in the future.
Four other sources – including U.S. officials and people with knowledge of the U.S. and Taiwan administrations’ thinking – said both sides were deeply uneasy that a future visit by McCarthy would severely increase tensions across the Taiwan Strait at a time when the island is preparing for its own presidential election early next year.
Wednesday08,2023:Nepal has made it mandatory for all tourists who trek in the country’s Himalayan region to hire local assistance, officials say.
The rule, which will come into effect from April 1, is aimed at ensuring the safety of travellers and creating more jobs, the dpa news agency reported.
Mani Raj Lamichhane, spokesperson for the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB), the agency behind the decision, on Tuesday said every tourist will have to hire a guide or porter through a registered trekking company.
The new rule will apply to established trekking routes within the purview of the Trekkers’ Information Management System, where each trekker, including free independent trekkers, must obtain permission from the NTB.
The new rule, however, will not affect the climbing industry which has its own set of regulations.
“It will help ensure a safe trekking experience while allowing us to keep track of trekkers and provide timely rescue services in case of any emergency situations, ” Lamichhane said, adding the decision was taken in consultation with the country’s Trekking Agencies’ Association and Joint Tourism Trade Unions Forum.
According to Lamichhane, every year, NTB receives about 40 to 50 cases of missing trekkers along the trail, and authorities often face problems in tracking and rescuing them.
Previously, tourists were allowed to trek solo without local assistance or with unregistered guides or friends.
Nilhari Bastola, the president of the Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal, said that the new regulation would benefit both trekkers and the tourism industry.
“The majority of individuals who perish or disappear while trekking are those who go alone without a guide or an understanding of the terrain. These tragedies could have been avoided if they had a local guide,” he said.
Kohima (Nagaland) , March 7,2023: Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) leader Neiphiu Rio was on Tuesday sworn in as the Chief Minister of Nagaland for the fifth time.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Nagaland Governor La Ganesan, BJP President JP Nadda and Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma witness the oath-taking ceremony in Kohima.
Taditui Rangkau Zeliang and Yanthungo Patton also took oath as Deputy chief ministers of Nagaland.
The ruling Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party-Bharatiya Janata Party retained power in the Nagaland election, with the two parties having secured 37 seats in the 60-member assembly.
Notably, a history was scripted in Nagaland when the state elected its first women legislators in its 60 years of statehood. The state, which has had 13 Assemblies so far, never had a woman MLA before Thursday’s result.The two women lawmakers – Hekhani Jakhalu and Salhoutuonuo Kruse of the ruling NDPP defeated the sitting MLAs in Western Angami and Dimapur-III seats respectively.
Mar 06,2023:Voters in Estonia have elected a new parliament with almost complete results suggesting a big win for the centre-right Reform Party of Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, one of Europe’s most outspoken supporters of Ukraine.
With 99 percent of ballots counted, Kallas’s liberal group was at 31.6 percent, followed by the far-right eurosceptic EKRE party at 16.1 percent, reflecting concerns among some voters over the rising cost of living in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Centre Party, traditionally favoured by Estonia’s sizable ethnic-Russian minority, was at 14.7 percent.
“This result, which is not final yet, will give us a strong mandate to put together a good government,” the 45-year-old Kallas told her party colleagues and jubilant supporters at a hotel in the Baltic nation’s capital, Tallinn.
Preliminary results suggested six parties passed the 5 percent threshold of support needed to enter the 101-seat parliament, or Riigikogu, including newcomer Eesti 200, a liberal centrist party. Voter turnout was 63.7 percent, little changed from the previous election.
Estonia, a country of 1.3 million people on Russia’s northwestern border, has been one of Kyiv’s most vocal supporters since Moscow invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Its military assistance to Ukraine amounts to more than one percent of gross domestic product (GDP) — the biggest contribution of any country relative to the size of its economy.
Kallas said any government she formed would keep calling for pressure on Russia.
“We … have to invest in our security, our aggressive neighbour has not vanished and will not vanish, so we have to work with that”, she told reporters.
Reform is a centre-right liberal party that appeals to business owners and young professionals.
It has promised to raise military spending to at least three percent of GDP and ease taxes on business. It also wants to pass a law approving same-sex civil partnerships.
The latest results will give the Reform Party 37 seats in the legislature, and Kallas will need junior partners to form a coalition with a comfortable majority to govern.
Estonia broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991 and is a member of NATO and the European Union.
Mar 06,2023:Nations have reached a historic agreement to protect the world’s oceans following 10 years of negotiations.
The High Seas Treaty aims to place 30% of the seas into protected areas by 2030, to safeguard and recuperate marine nature.
The agreement was reached on Saturday evening, after 38 hours of talks, at UN headquarters in New York.
The negotiations had been held up for years over disagreements on funding and fishing rights.
The last international agreement on ocean protection was signed 40 years ago in 1982 – the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
That agreement established an area called the high seas – international waters where all countries have a right to fish, ship and do research – but only 1.2% of these waters are protected.
Marine life living outside of these protected areas has been at risk from climate change, overfishing and shipping traffic.
In the latest assessment of global marine species, nearly 10% were found to be at risk of extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
These new protected areas, established in the treaty, will put limits on how much fishing can take place, the routes of shipping lanes and exploration activities like deep sea mining – when minerals are taken from a sea bed 200m or more below the surface.
Environmental groups have been concerned that mining processes could disturb animal breeding grounds, create noise pollution and be toxic for marine life.
The International Seabed Authority that oversees licensing told the BBC that moving forward “any future activity in the deep seabed will be subject to strict environmental regulations and oversight to ensure that they are carried out sustainably and responsibly”.
Marine protected areas could help endangered species like the whale shark – the largest living fish – recover
Rena Lee, UN Ambassador for Oceans, brought down the gavel after two weeks of negotiations that at times threatened to unravel.
Minna Epps, director of the IUCN Ocean team, said the main issue was over the sharing of marine genetic resources.
Marine genetic resources are biological material from plants and animals in the ocean that can have benefits for society, such as pharmaceuticals, industrial processes and food.
Richer nations currently have the resources and funding to explore the deep ocean but poorer nations wanted to ensure any benefits they find are shared equally.
Sea sponges have yielded key ingredients for HIV and cancer treatments
Dr Robert Blasiak, ocean researcher at Stockholm University, said the challenge was that no one knows how much ocean resources are worth and therefore how they could be split.
He said: “If you imagine a big, high-definition, widescreen TV, and if only like three or four of the pixels on that giant screen are working, that’s our knowledge of the deep ocean. So we’ve recorded about 230,000 species in the ocean, but it’s estimated that there are over two million.”
Laura Meller, an oceans campaigner for Greenpeace Nordic, commended countries for “putting aside differences and delivering a treaty that will let us protect the oceans, build our resilience to climate change and safeguard the lives and livelihoods of billions of people”.
“This is a historic day for conservation and a sign that in a divided world, protecting nature and people can triumph over geopolitics,” she added.
Countries will need to meet again to formally adopt the agreement and then have plenty of work to do before the treaty can be implemented.
Liz Karan, director of Pews Trust ocean governance team, told the BBC: “It will take some time to take effect. Countries have to ratify it [legally adopt it] for it to enter force. Then there are a lot of institutional bodies like the Science and Technical Committee that have to get set up.”
Mar 10,2023:Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has been charged with abuse of power and money laundering in connection with the awarding of government contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Muhyiddin, who led the country from March 2020 through the worst of the pandemic, pleaded not guilty to the six charges at a Kuala Lumpur court on Friday morning.
The charges were filed after Muhyiddin was questioned by investigators from Malaysia’s anti-corruption agency for a number of hours on Thursday over a government support programme that his government introduced to help building contractors during the coronavirus lockdown.
He faces four counts of abuse of power involving 232.5 million ringgit ($51.40 million), and two counts of money laundering involving 195 million ringgit.
Muhyiddin, whose ethnic Malay dominated Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition lost a close-fought election to Anwar Ibrahim’s multi-ethnic rival in November, has previously called the investigation politically motivated.
He is the second former leader to face corruption charges after Najib Razak who was prime minister until May 2018 when his once dominant Barisan Nasional coalition under the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) lost power for the first time amid popular revulsion over the multi-billion dollar scandal at state fund 1MDB.
Najib began a 12-year prison sentence on 1MDB-related charges last August after Malaysia’s top court dismissed his final appeal. He is also facing a number of other cases related to alleged wrongdoing at the fund.
New Delhi , March 07,2023: India’s G20 Presidency is an opportunity to resume focus on the Arctic and its impact on the world as there is a complete lack of engagement between Russia and the West in the aftermath of the Moscow-Kyiv conflict, reported The Arctic Institute.
In protest against Russia’s actions, on 3 March 2022, seven (A7) of the eight members of the Arctic Council (AC), announced a historic suspension of participation in all activities of the council. This was followed on the same day by the Nordic Council of Ministers.
Much of the research and data sharing between scientists has been put on hold due to restrictions imposed by funding agencies in Europe and the US. Several field experiments originally planned for the region have shifted to the North American or European Arctic.
The relevance of the Arctic for India can be broadly explained under three categories: Scientific Research, Climate Change and Environment; Economic and Human Resources; and Geopolitical and strategic reasons, said Anurag Bisen, a Research Fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.
The Arctic and the Himalayas, though geographically distant, are interconnected and share similar concerns.
The Arctic meltdown is helping the Indian scientific community to better understand the glacial melt in the Himalayas, which has often been referred to as the ‘third pole’ and has the largest freshwater reserves after the North and South Poles.
The changes occurring in the Arctic are yet to be understood fully, but apart from affecting global weather, climate, and ecosystems, they also influence the monsoons in India and have a significant negative impact on India’s economy as well as other human and development indices, reported The Arctic Institute.
Moreover, India is the only developing country, apart from China, to have a permanent research station in the Arctic since 2008. India has undertaken 13 scientific expeditions to the Arctic since 2007, reported Bisen.
The rising sea levels can have a significant impact not only on India’s 1,300 island territories and maritime features and the welfare of 1.3 billion Indians but also on India’s immediate neighbourhood.
There are also some good consequences arising out of global warming-induced changes in the Arctic. The warming Arctic is leading to increased availability and accessibility of resources. The Arctic has the potential to secure India’s energy and rare earth mineral deficiencies.
For India, geopolitically, the Arctic is of special significance as its two most significant strategic partners, the United States and Russia, and its principal adversary, China, are locked in an ever-increasing direct strategic contestation.
While India has adroitly balanced the geo-political and geo-economic ramifications arising out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, it needs to remain engaged in the Arctic region, to secure its increasing national interests, said Bisen.
The resumption of scientific exchange is an imperative that can be ignored only at the cost of collective detriment to the world. Since there is a deep trust deficit in the Arctic, the resumption of scientific exchanges will need a mediator with legitimacy, credibility, and acceptability of all member states.
No other country and organisation other than India and G20 fit the bill, reported The Arctic Institute, said Bisen.
Promotion of security and stability in the Arctic region and pursuit of international cooperation and partnerships with all stakeholders in the region, inter alia are listed as objectives in India’s Arctic policy.
Most importantly, in keeping with India’s civilizational ethos of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam–The World Is But One Family, India offers its readiness to “play its part and contribute to the global good” in its engagement with the Arctic.
The resumption of scientific cooperation in the Arctic is one such global good that India could strive for, by bringing together the conflicting protagonists, said Bisen.
Eleven of the 19 G20 member countries, representing a majority 60 per cent of the forum, have an Arctic stake, with three of them–the United States, Russia and Canada, being permanent members of the Arctic Council.
Eight G20 countries–China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom–are Observers at the Arctic Council.
Further, three other Arctic Council members (Denmark, Finland, and Sweden) and two Observers (Spain and Poland) are also represented at the G20 by the virtue of their European Union membership and EU being a G20 member.
Thus, six of the eight Arctic Council Permanent Members and 12 of the 13 Observers are represented at the G20.
Moreover, the Arctic is no longer the distant and cold region that it was once considered. It stands at the crossroads of several issues with global consequences such as climate change, increased accessibility and availability of resources, and an arena of global strategic contestation, that has made the region increasingly relevant to the world. As such, the stakes of a large portion of humanity cannot be decided by a select few.