-
Main Slide
The Map and the Mandate: India’s Gender Reform Meets Its Federal Fault Lines
India has passed a landmark law for women’s representation but by tying it to delimitation it has turned a social reform into a high-stakes political contest over who holds power in the world’s largest democracy. By Gunjeet Sra NEW DELHI: In September 2023, India appeared to close a chapter that…
Read More » -
South Asia
China’s 15th Five-Year Plan and the Shifting Strategic Landscape of South Asia
By Leo Nirosha Darshan COLOMBO: According to World Bank reports, China has extended nearly $48 billion in loans to South Asian nations. Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh hold record levels of debt to Beijing. In 2024, China became Pakistan’s largest creditor, with loans totaling $29 billion. Between 2006 and 2022,…
Read More » -
Main Slide
Lebanon Burns and the Questions the World Will Not Answer
By Ghena Halik BEIRUT: The numbers are stark: 357 killed, 1,232 wounded. But numbers, however large, conceal as much as they reveal. They flatten lives into data points, obscuring the people behind them -children, parents, professionals, neighbors – whose futures ended in a matter of minutes. Last week, Lebanon experienced…
Read More » -
Main Slide
Australia And Singapore “Good Neighbours” in Good and Bad Times
By Ivan Lim SINGAPORE: Australia and Singapore, in a show of “friends in need are friends in deed” have inked a bilateral agreement to keep fuel supplies and essential goods flowing between them in the wake of the disruption in supply chains created by United States-Iran conflict, now entering its…
Read More » -
West Asia
The War Behind the War: How Misinformation Wins
Nouha Belaid By Nouha BelaidPhD in Media & Communication, Master in Public Law DUBAI: I got into my car, paused for a moment… and then it hit me: the footage was old, recycled and recast as if it belonged to the current escalation surrounding Iran. In that instant, it became…
Read More » -
West Asia
“Pseudo-Experts” Turn Crisis into Currency as Media Faces Credibility Test
Mohammad Al Momani addressing the media By Habib Toumi MANAMA: Amid the brutal war gripping the Middle East, and as tensions intensify, concern is mounting over a growing class of “pseudo-experts” who are transforming crises into content and confusion into personal fame. This noticeable phenomenon has taken hold well beyond…
Read More » -
EditorsPick
War, Racism and Nazism
The intensity of the attack on the B1 bridge (Photo: Aref Fathi) By Alireza BahramiTEHRAN: After attacking several universities, schools, pharmaceutical factories and the Pasteur Institute in Iran, the US military attacked and destroyed the highest bridge in Iran and the region, near Tehran, on Thursday evening with heavy bombs.…
Read More » -
EditorsPick
Two Rockets, Two Worlds: One Reaches the Moon, the Other Targets Lives
Contrasting worlds: People cheer as the Artemis II rocket carries hope and dreams in Florida (Right). Buildings damaged and people injured as rocket (missile) hits residential area in Bahrain (Left) By Habib Toumi MANAMA: In Florida, crowds gather with a sense of awe and collective pride, watching as the Artemis…
Read More » -
West Asia
Football as a Medium in War
Iran’s national football team wore held school bags in a friendly match against Nigeria, a symbolic gesture for the dozens of students killed in an Iranian elementary school in a U.S. military missile strike. By Ali Bahrami TEHRAN: Iranian players from the World Cup-qualified team carried pink school backpacks to…
Read More » -
EditorsPick
Santhanaselvam Krishnan Another Innocent Life Gone
Santhanaselvam Krishnan By Habib Toumi MANAMA: On most days, lives like Santhanaselvam Krishnan’s pass quietly, without headlines or notice. He was not a public figure. Not a soldier. Not a man whose decisions shaped events or whose name carried weight in political circles. He was, simply, a worker in Kuwait,…
Read More »