With Sri Lankan port acquisition, China adds another 'pearl' to its 'string'
Updated 0117 GMT (0917 HKT) February 4, 2018
When Sri Lanka's government first looked to develop a port on its southern coast that faced the Indian Ocean, it went not to China, but to its neighbor, India.
Then-Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa said he urgently needed funding to transform the harbor of his home town and asked Indian officials for help with the project.
New Delhi showed little interest in funding a costly and massive port construction project in the underdeveloped fishing village of Hambantota, a district that had been crushed by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.
Dangerous little things: how I learned the importance of protest at an Indian university
That one hour achieved something. It introduced me to non-cooperation. Mahatma Gandhi had used it against the British. Now I understood it.
by Annie Zaidi
My grandfather was once in jail.
As a kid, I’d pronounce this with a little flush of pride. My grandpa! Way back in the 1941.
As a young man, my maternal grandfather became involved with student politics and wrote rousing poems, neither of which the British government cared for. A warrant was issued. He went underground, but was eventually arrested.
I know nothing of his jail stint except that he wrote more Urdu poetry and learnt the Hindi (Devanagari) script. I did ask once if his mother was mad at him for getting arrested. She was upset, he said, mainly on account of the family’s reputation. His marriage had been fixed, but after his arrest the girl’s side broke off the engagement. Clearly, not everyone thought it was such a fine thing to go to jail – not even in the name of the freedom.
Turkish border guards are shooting Syrian refugees fleeing war, says Human Rights Watch
Senior government official denies the accusations
Turkish guards at the Syrian border have shot at Syrian asylum seekers who are attempting to cross into their country, Human Rights Watch have said.
Refugees who had succeeded in crossing to Turkey, using smuggling routes, made the claims and said that people had died due to border police firing shots.
A senior Turkish government official denied the report and said the country had taken 3.5 million refugees since the conflict started in 2011.
A Monkey on Their BackGerman Carmakers Have Lost All Moral Standing
The scandal over exhaust experiments on monkeys shows just how unscrupulous Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler are when it comes to manipulating the public. Anything goes when it comes to diverting attention from the dangers inherent in diesel.
When auto industry executives come together to party, the smell of exhaust fumes is far from disagreeable. It's also perfectly acceptable to exalt a past when cars were still allowed to stink and nobody much cared. As such, a classic car center in Berlin was the perfect place to hold the New Year's reception for the German Association of the Automotive Industry on Tuesday of this week. There was plenty of room and glittering old cars were everywhere, their motors roaring as bluish smoke poured out of their exhaust pipes.
The only thing that wasn't allowed to pollute the air was honesty.
China accuses US of 'Cold War mentality' over nuclear policy
China has urged the US to drop its "Cold War mentality" after Washington said it planned to diversify its nuclear armoury with smaller bombs.
"The country that owns the world's largest nuclear arsenal, should take the initiative to follow the trend instead of going against it," China's defence ministry said on Sunday.
The US military believes its nukes are seen as too big to be used and wants to develop low-yield bombs.
Russia has already condemned the plan.
What exactly is the new US policy?
The US is concerned about its nuclear arsenal becoming obsolete and no longer an effective deterrent. It names China, Russia, North Korea and Iran as potential threats.
How democracies die, explained
The problems in American democracy run far deeper than Trump.
By
There are images that come to mind when we imagine a democracy’s end. Democracies fall in coups and revolutions, burn in fires and riots, collapse amid war and plague. When they die, they die screaming.
Not anymore, argue Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt in their new book, How Democracies Die. In most modern cases, “democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps.” They rot from the inside, poisoned by leaders who “subvert the very process that brought them to power.” They are hollowed out, the trappings of democracy present long after the soul of the system is snuffed out. (Related: I interviewed Levitsky and Ziblatt for my podcast, The Ezra Klein Show, which you can listen to here, or wherever you get your podcasts.)
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