Category: South Asia

NEW DELHI: India’s top tourist attraction the Taj Mahal is set to reopen more than six months after it was shut, officials said on Tuesday, even as the vast nation battles soaring coronavirus infections. India, home to 1.3 billion people, on Monday overtook Brazil to become the world’s second most-infected nation with more than 4.2 […]

COLOMBO: A burning oil tanker began leaking diesel off Sri Lanka’s coast, naval officials said on Tuesday, fuelling fears of a major environmental disaster. The Panama-flagged New Diamond, carrying 270,000 tonnes of crude oil and another 1,700 of diesel fuel, has been burning since Thursday. A diesel oil slick was observed near the crippled vessel […]

China accused Indian troops of violating a bilateral agreement and firing warning shots in the air during a confrontation with Chinese personnel on the disputed border on Monday, amid renewed tensions between the two countries. Chinese border guards took “countermeasures” to stabilise the situation, Zhang Shuili, spokesman for the military’s western command theatre, said in […]

The Indian Army has asked its Chinese counterpart if five civilians who went missing from an eastern border state days ago were in their custody, an Indian military spokesman said on Monday. Relations between the nuclear-armed Asian giants have hit a multi-decade low since clashes at their western Himalayan border in June that killed 20 Indian soldiers. […]

India displaced Brazil on Monday to take second place after the United States in terms of coronavirus infections, with 90,082 new cases whose numbers are expected to grow, while some cities re-opened underground train services shuttered for months. With its nationwide tally of 4.2 million exceeded only by the US figure of 6.2 million, India […]

The United States is ready to help resolve the dispute between India and China over the mountain border running through the western Himalayas, President Donald Trump said on Friday. Trump told reporters the situation was “very nasty”, adding that the two countries were “going at it much more strongly than a lot of people even understand”. Both […]

India has become the world’s third country to pass four million coronavirus infections, setting a new record daily surge in cases on Saturday as the crisis shows no sign of peaking. The 86,432 new cases took India to 4,023,179 infections, third behind the United States which has more than 6.3 million and just trailing Brazil […]

COLOMBO: A Panamanian-registered oil tanker burned out of control for a second day off Sri Lanka on Friday, raising fears of a major new oil spill in the Indian Ocean. Sri Lankan navy and Indian coastguard vessels fired water cannon while an air force helicopter dropped water on the drifting New Diamond. Just a week […]

India’s army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane said on Friday he was confident the ongoing border stand-off with China could be resolved through talks, even as thousands of troops remained amassed along a disputed Western Himalayan region. “We are sure that the problem can be resolved fully through talks,” Naravane told Reuters partner ANI during a visit to the Ladakh region, […]