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Wednesday afternoon the Pak Army was planning a “full-scale operation” to free Pak Army personnel taken hostage by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) in a train. This, after claiming that security forces had "rescued over 100 civilian hostages" when the reality was the BLA had already "released civilians, including women and children."

WASHINGTON DC: On the evening of January 19, 2025, the American Hindu Coalition — a pro–Donald Trump group whose stated mission is to “build a stronger America through Hindu Enlightenment Principles” — joined forces with several right-wing Latino organizations to host a joint Hindu-Latino inaugural ball in downtown Washington, DC. Among those who gathered in the ballroom of the swanky Mayflower Hotel, rubbing shoulders with Argentina’s far-right president Javier Milei, was Rajiv Pandit, who serves on the Board of Directors of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) — a Washington, DC–based advocacy group that proudly professes to be the “largest and oldest education and advocacy organization and the pre-eminent voice for Hindu Americans.”

The 14th National People’s Congress of China ended its one-week-long session in Beijing on Tuesday March 11 with a clear direction given by the President and the Communist Party supremo Xi Jinping that China will take on the disruptions made in the global order by the United States president Donald Trump in his second term, through both diplomacy and increased strength of the country’s economy.

Trump's tariff policy is making headlines once again. On 2 March, the Trump administration's decision to impose 20% tariffs on Chinese imports and 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico came into effect. As a retaliatory measure, Canada has announced immediate 25% tariffs on C$30 billion ($20.7 billion) worth of U.S. imports, with the potential to extend these measures to an additional C$125 billion ($86.2 billion) if the U.S. tariffs remain in place beyond 21 days. Likewise, China has announced additional tariffs of 10–15% on various U.S. products.

NEW YORK: Mark Carney has been elected leader of Canada’s Liberal Party in months-long, high stake race to replace the present Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Now the question that follows is twofold – can he repair the deteriorating relations between Canada and USA as the Prime Minister designate over the 25% tariffs issue and can he arrest the rising popularity of the opposition Conservative party and its leader before the next national elections.

TORONTO: Last Sunday, a rally led by President Claudia Sheinbaum filled Mexico City’s central square, the Zócalo. It was not, however, a political party event, a historical commemoration, or a state of the union address. It was a national unity rally called in the face of ongoing tariff threats by US president Donald Trump. “I have said that we are a government of the people . . . and that whenever there was a need to inform or face adversity, we would be together,” she began. “And besides, we come from a great people’s movement that was created in public plazas, and here we are back with you.”

Returning empty-handed and crestfallen from his meeting with United States President Donald Trump, popular satirical comedian turned Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky looks more like a totally confused person now. He doesn’t know whom to trust — highly peeved US President Donald Trump or the leaders of the EU-UK combine, the backstage instigators who constantly propped him up to fight a losing battle with mighty nuclear armed Russia. Even after the globally-televised snubs he received from Trump and his Vice President James David Vance at a White House press conference after a tense Oval Office meeting, he had the cheek to confer with those European leaders, playing the fiddlers on the roof, on his return about the future of his country’s three-year old war with mighty Russia, especially after the massive death and devastation on its eastern front. Joker Zelensky is clearly at his wit’s end.

As if the tariff war against almost the whole world, leading among them China, Mexico, Canada, and India, hots up, it portrays the leading hero, Trump in this case, frothing at the mouth and cursing and cussing everyone, if he does not get what he wants, and shows a completely new and unacceptable face of the American democracy and diplomacy.

Oil prices have hit their lowest since October and by all indications the downward move is far from over. Brent has already dipped below 70 dollars per barrel as the market is feeling the weight of a supply overhang, with OPEC+ barrels set to flood an already well-supplied system, keeping a lid on any meaningful price recovery.

On a business-as-usual basis, achieving gender equality in employment rate will take another two centuries, says the new brief given by the International Labour Organization, which was released on March 8, International Women’s Day. The brief, which also marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action, noted that progress has been uneven and insufficient with the global gender employment gap narrowing by only 4 percent in the last three decades. Women remain underrepresented in employment, overrepresented in informal work, and face persistent pay gaps.