LIVE news updates: Strong earthquake tremors felt in Delhi
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
35 minutes ago
- Mint
Brics isn't an anti-US forum, it's a voice of the Global South
Gift this article It likes to think of itself as the developing world's equivalent of the Group of Seven. Yet unlike the G-7, the Brics bloc—designed for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but now expanded to 11 members—has sharply diverging interests. It includes energy exporters like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as importers like India; material-hungry manufacturing giants like China and commodity superpowers like Brazil; moderate democracies like Indonesia and extremist theocracies like Iran. It likes to think of itself as the developing world's equivalent of the Group of Seven. Yet unlike the G-7, the Brics bloc—designed for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but now expanded to 11 members—has sharply diverging interests. It includes energy exporters like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as importers like India; material-hungry manufacturing giants like China and commodity superpowers like Brazil; moderate democracies like Indonesia and extremist theocracies like Iran. If there's one thing that almost all of them have in common, however, it's that they want to ensure the grouping's most powerful member, China, doesn't dominate. Beijing might want to use its influence over global trade to increase the use of the yuan; but India has made it clear that replacing the US dollar as the global reserve currency isn't part of Brics's mandate. Some of the newer members, such as the UAE, are close US allies. Also Read: Brics isn't out to build a wall but serve the Global South Of course, US policy is not universally popular, either. When is it ever? At the Brics meeting this week in Brazil, leaders jointly condemned the 'indiscriminate rising of tariffs," in a swipe at US President Donald Trump's trade policy. But Trump was not criticized half as harshly as the Europeans were: Their carbon border taxes were described as 'unilateral, punitive and discriminatory protectionist measures that are not in line with international law." Partly that's because the Global South is divided on tariffs, just as it is on everything else. Yes, it might be unfair that poorer countries are losing market access to richer ones—that's a violation of normal economic logic, in which the poor sell to the rich and everyone's better off as a result. But most in the developing world might well welcome tariffs on China; they agree its stranglehold on global manufacturing must somehow be loosened. They are saying: We're not going to condemn US tariffs targeted at China as strongly as we do European barriers, because doing so would mean playing Beijing's game. The only thing that could push these diverse nations together is if the US makes a real effort to present itself to them as a shared target. Unfortunately, that's exactly what Trump apparently wants to do. He responded to Brics's Rio summit by threatening an extra 10% tariff on 'any country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of Brics." That plays into China's hands. Nothing would strengthen Beijing's case to lead the emerging world more than US efforts to paint a basically innocuous, ineffectual grouping as 'anti-American." India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi certainly wouldn't participate in a summit that was designed to be anti-American. If anything, India's participation in the Brics is meant to highlight its own bid for leadership of the Global South—or, at least, its determined attempt to deny that position to Beijing. On his way to Rio, Modi stopped off in multiple developing countries—Namibia, Ghana, Trinidad and Argentina. It's an interesting group, one that clarifies India's Global South strategy. The diaspora is one quiver in Modi's bow: People of Indian descent are the largest ethnic group in Trinidad and Tobago. India's hunger for commodities is another component—imports of cooking oil from Argentina have soared since Ukrainian sunflower oil was taken off the market by Russia's invasion in 2022. Ghana exports more to gold-hungry India than anywhere else. And the global race to access the raw materials of the future is part of it as well. Indian companies have been pushed to find ways to process lithium and other critical minerals in Argentina and Namibia. Also Read: China plus one: It's a moving target that India can still strike It's just not possible for India to immediately substitute for China—or anyone else—as an economic partner in most parts of the world. But a strategy that's more concentrated geographically and focused on sectors like critical minerals and agri-processing might work, particularly because India's private sector-driven economic model is far more inclusive and open to local value creation than China's approach. The real lesson of the Rio Brics summit, and Modi's meandering journey to it, is that it isn't meant to be a forum for the Global South to be anti-American. It's better understood as a place where countries bid to lead the Global South. Not all those propositions are designed around diminishing the US role in the world. Such competition is healthy, for the West as well as the South. Trump should not push a group so distrustful of each other into forming a common cause instead. Instead, make some friends, and keep them—or China will steal them from you. ©Bloomberg The author is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. Topics You May Be Interested In
Hindustan Times
42 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
The Drone Factories Fueling Russia's Unprecedented Assaults on Ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine—Russia's factories have begun churning out vast quantities of attack drones over the past year, producing a deadly fleet that is now taking to Ukrainian skies in record numbers almost daily. An assault Wednesday was the largest yet, according to Ukrainian officials. In the early morning hours, Russia launched 728 drones and decoy munitions at cities in western Ukraine. The attacks came just hours after President Trump blasted Russia for dragging its feet over peace talks to end the war, saying the U.S. gets 'a lot of bulls—' from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack showed again that Russia has no desire to end the war. 'At a time like this, when so much has been done to achieve peace, and a cease-fire, and only Russia is rebuffing them all,' he said on social media. The attacks are often targeted at Ukrainian military sites and at getting Ukraine to use up its interceptor drones. Ukraine said its air defenses downed most of the drones in Wednesday's attack, and the damage, which included several warehouses in western Ukraine, was limited. But the attacks have also killed many civilians and have contributed to a sense of siege in Ukraine's cities and towns, where air-raid sirens are sending people to bomb shelters in parts of Ukraine almost nightly. A Russian Shahed drone shot down by Ukraine's air defense forces earlier this year. More than 24,000 drones have barreled toward Ukraine's towns and cities since the start of this year, according to an analysis of Ukrainian figures by the Center for Information Resilience, a U.K.-based open-source investigations organization. Wednesday's attack included more drones in a single night than in the entire month of July last year. 'They're constantly beating new records,' said Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine's air force. Many of the largest attacks have come amid rising tensions between Russia and the U.S. Russia hit an earlier record in recent days after a call between Trump and Putin, which led the U.S. president to say he was disappointed in the Russian leader for being unwilling to halt the war. Moscow on Wednesday tried to play down Trump's latest comments, which were made during a cabinet meeting the previous day and included saying that a lot of what the Russian leader said turned out to be 'meaningless.' 'We are fairly calm about this,' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday of Trump's criticism of Putin. What paved the way for the unprecedented scale of Wednesday's drone attacks was an agreement Russia signed in November 2022 with Iran, to purchase and produce Iran's Shahed attack drones on Russian territory. Russia paid $1.75 billion for the Shahed technology, equipment, source code and 6,000 drones, according to a recent report from C4ADS, a nonprofit organization researching illicit networks worldwide. At the time, Moscow had expended much of its long-range rocket stocks in the course of that year, and the effective but cheap Iranian drones offered an alternative solution enabling Moscow to continue its aerial assaults. Estimates vary widely on how much it costs Russia to produce a single Shahed drone, with defense analysts putting it anywhere from $35,000 to $60,000. The initial models were shipped directly from Iran, but Russia also paid for the technology and, over time, mastered the different elements of the production chain. In Tatarstan, east of Moscow, facilities inside the Alabuga Special Economic Zone expanded to accommodate the requirements of drone manufacture. Alabuga drew on Chinese components, a workforce that included cheap laborers hired from Africa, and the logistics networks that Iran had honed during its own yearslong standoff with the West. The aftermath of a combined Russian drone-and-missile strike at an apartment building in Kyiv last month. Ukrainian drones have struck the facility several times, but Russia has managed to continue the work. Intelligence officials in Kyiv say it has since outsourced parts of it to other facilities across the country. For Russia, making the drones locally has been a way of reducing its reliance on Iran—a prescient decision in light of Israel's bombardment of Iran last month and the depletion of Iran's own drone stocks through retaliatory attacks on Israel. Moscow's adaptations have also improved on Iran's original design, making them faster and quieter. That has increased their maneuverability and helped maximize damage. Ukrainian officials say Russia is now producing more than 5,000 of the long-range drones and decoys each month, with some able to fly 2,500 kilometers to their target. That has allowed Moscow to saturate Ukraine's skies with the flying machines. Ukraine meets the threat by scrambling jet fighters and helicopters, deploying electronic jamming and mobile air-defense teams on the ground and, increasingly, drones tasked with intercepting the Russian munitions hurtling through the sky. 'We're using all the resources at our disposal,' said Ihnat, the air force spokesman. At the same time, Russia is regularly changing its own tactics to wreak maximum havoc. Russia's goal is to force Ukraine to expend valuable interceptor missiles in bringing down decoy drones, which resemble ordinary Shahed drones in appearance but carry no payload. Russia deploys hundreds of these imitator drones to distract Ukraine's air defenses from the real threat, Kyiv says. Ukrainian air defenses are, in turn, getting better at identifying these decoys, noting subtle differences in their sound, appearance, and flight path, Ihnat said. He said Ukraine aims to disable them using only electronic warfare, dialing into the radio frequency that guides them. Drone attacks have been two-way traffic. Moscow has said that Ukraine is launching dozens of its own munitions at Russian territory each day, alleging that some of the projectiles strike civilian areas. Authorities in Russia's Kursk said three civilians were killed and seven injured in a drone strike on a beach in the city Tuesday night. A video published by Russian law enforcement showed an official sifting through what he said was the wreckage of a destroyed drone. Write to Matthew Luxmoore at The Drone Factories Fueling Russia's Unprecedented Assaults on Ukraine
Mint
43 minutes ago
- Mint
Russia responsible for downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, European court rules
Europe's top human rights court has ruled that Russia is responsible for the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in 2014 and for committing widespread human rights abuses in Ukraine. In a unanimous decision on Wednesday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that Russia had carried out 'indiscriminate military attacks,' 'summary executions of civilians,' and acts of torture, including the use of rape as a weapon of war. The court also said Moscow was guilty of the unjustified displacement and transfer of civilians, among other serious violations. The ECHR, which is based in Strasbourg, is the judicial arm of the Council of Europe. Russia was expelled from the Council in 2022 following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The following year, Russia's parliament voted to withdraw from the ECHR's jurisdiction. Ahead of the ruling, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the court's authority, saying: 'We consider them null and void.' In its ruling, the ECHR said: "Taken as a whole, the vast volume of evidence before the Court presented a picture of interconnected practices of manifestly unlawful conduct by agents of the Russian State (Russian armed forces and other authorities, occupying administrations, and separatist armed groups and entities) on a massive scale across Ukraine." The ruling concerned four consolidated cases, one of which involved Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, which departed Amsterdam for Kuala Lumpur in July 2014 and was shot down over eastern Ukraine amid fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists. All 298 people on board the plane died. Moscow denies any responsibility for MH17's downing and in 2014 denied any presence in Ukraine. The ECHR ruled that Russia had failed to conduct an adequate investigation into the incident, to cooperate with requests for information or provide legal remedies for survivors. Its lack of cooperation and continued denial of any involvement has caused additional suffering for the victims' relatives, the court said. Responding to the ruling, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said: "Nothing can take away this suffering and grief, but I hope the verdict offers a sense of justice and recognition." A majority of those on the airliner were Dutch. The other three cases covered by Wednesday's ruling were brought by Ukraine, over pro-Russian separatists accused of abducting groups of Ukrainian children and transferring them to Russia, and over alleged patterns of human rights violations during Russia's war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year. Ukraine's Justice Ministry, in a statement on the Telegram messaging app, hailed the ECHR ruling as "one of the most important in the practice of interstate cases". The court is expected to rule in due course on possible damages and compensation but it has no way of enforcing its rulings, especially on a country that no longer recognises its jurisdiction, meaning Wednesday's verdict is mainly symbolic. (With inputs from Reuters)
