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A Rama Navami rally in Howrah, West Bengla, India. Image via Wikimedia Commons by Biswarup Ganguly. (CC BY-SA 4.0.) Communal clashes between right-wing Hindu supremacist groups and the minority Muslim community have been reported across India at two recent Hindu festivals within a week. The first time was on the occasion of Ram Navami on April 10, when clashes were reported in Bengal, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, and Bihar. More clashes were reported on Saturday, April 16, at Hanuman Jayanti from Kurnool, Haridwar, and the Jahangirpuri area in India’s capital, New Delhi. Ram …

Pakistan conducted airstrikes this weekend in Afghanistan’s Khost and Kunar provinces in response to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) spring offensive inside Pakistan. As of this writing, the death toll reported by the Afghan Taliban was 45, including women and children, marking a worrisome escalation in cross-border violence between Pakistan and Taliban-led Afghanistan. The TTP is a coalition of militant groups that in reporting is sometimes referred to interchangeably as the Pakistani Taliban. It took the international stage and became a steadfast enemy of the Pakistani state when the …

By Asif Shahzad ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan’s new government is facing the daunting task of managing a stuttering economy with huge deficits, an aide to new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Tuesday. Sharif, 70, the younger brother of former premier Nawaz Sharif, was elected as prime minister on Monday followed a week-long constitutional crisis after parliament ousted Imran Khan in a no-confidence vote. “Imran Khan has left a critical mess,” Miftah Ismail, who is likely to be Sharif’s finance minister, told a news conference in Islamabad, adding the suspended talks with the Internationa…

“We want PM Khan back. We stand behind our leader Imran Khan,’’ chanted supporters of the now-former Pakistani prime minister as they gathered in the heart of London’s Hyde Park after he was ousted by a no-confidence motion on Sunday. The former international cricket star turned politician lost his majority in the 342-seat assembly through defections by coalition partners and even members of his own party. The opposition had needed just 172 votes to dismiss him. Khan tried everything to stay in power after losing his majority in parliament – including dissolving the assembly and calling a fres…

By Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was monitoring what he described as a rise in human rights abuses in India by some officials, in a rare direct rebuke by Washington of the Asian nation’s rights record. “We regularly engage with our Indian partners on these shared values (of human rights) and to that end, we are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials,” Blinken said on Monday in a joint press briefing with U.S. Defense Secr…