There is a difference of opinion between Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi and Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio on the issue of illegal immigration from Bangladesh into the North- east. Gogoi says that the influx is not a major problem. Rio says that the region is being overrun by large scale infiltration from the neighbouring country and has asserted that it is a must [Full Article...]

Editor, In “The 3 Tier ID Card: How does it work?” (ST NOV 28, 2012), Mr. Toki Blah has merely rehashed, with some new ideas borrowed from my article “Making sense of the ILP” (ST NOV 15, 2012), his earlier write-up – “The comprehensive 3-tier ID CARD is the mechanism for influx control”(ST SEP 11, 2012) to which I had responded with the write-up [Full Article...]

By Patricia Mukhim The news that Meghalaya has the highest number of landless tribals in the country (ST November 24) does not surprise us. I had written in these columns a couple of weeks ago that landlessness will be the biggest challenge to Meghalaya and could well be the cause for Leftist-Maoist movements in the State. When the poor and oppressed are pushed beyond [Full Article...]

By Anirudh Prakash A post-ideological democratic state, in which this writer would include the US, the UK and India, among some others, is usually animated in its internal politics positively by values and negatively by opportunism. When in the aggregate values exceed opportunism, politics reaches a stability which is usually characterized by a stable two-party system. A good example would be the United States, [Full Article...]

UNITED NATIONS: The UN General Assembly is set to implicitly recognize a sovereign state of Palestine today despite threats by the United States and Israel to punish the Palestinian Authority by withholding much-needed funds for the West Bank government. A Palestinian resolution that would change the Palestinian Authority’s UN observer status from “entity” to “non-member state,” like the Vatican, is expected to pass easily [Full Article...]

TOKYO: A new Japanese party that hopes to become a force to contend with in a December 16 general election called for more defence spending on Thursday to protect national interests and cuts in corporate and income taxes to bolster the economy. The Japan Restoration Party, which trails only the main opposition Liberal Democrats in a latest opinion poll, also wants to shrink the [Full Article...]

Kunduz: Two men have been arrested for slitting the throat of a 15-year-old Afghan girl after her family refused a marriage proposal, police said. The girl was carrying water from a river to her village home in northern Kunduz province on Wednesday when she was murdered, police spokesman Sayed Sarwar Hussaini told AFP on Thursday. Hussaini said one of the suspects had proposed marriage [Full Article...]

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani Taliban faction has claimed that its fighters were holed up in Amritsar and Hyderabad to carry out attacks to avenge 26/11 convict Ajmal Kasab’s execution last week. “We will avenge the death of Ajmal Kasab on Indian soil within a month,” Ahmed Marwat, a spokesman for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s Jundullah group told the TOI from an undisclosed location on Wednesday. “His death [Full Article...]