Anant Ambani, the son of tycoon Mukesh Ambani, said he had formally requested the Colombian government to stay a decision to kill the animals, which have wreaked havoc on rivers in the South American nation.

Instead, he has asked to allow the “safe, scientifically-led translocation that would bring the 80 animals to a permanent home” at his Vantara animal centre.

The vast zoo in India’s western state of Gujarat bills itself as the “one of the world’s largest wildlife rescue, care and conservation centres”.

Vantara is already home to hundreds of elephants, as well as 50 bears, 160 tigers, 200 lions, 250 leopards and 900 crocodiles, among other animals, according to India’s Central Zoo Authority.

Experts have repeatedly sounded the alarm on Vantara’s massive animal intake, including the import of critically endangered and rare species.

Escobar brought hippos — which are native only to Africa and can weigh up to several tonnes — to Colombia in the 1980s.

After Escobar’s death, hippos from his private zoo made a new life in the lush river banks of the Colombia’s Magdalena River — where they have attacked fishermen, prompting moves to cull them.

Anant Ambani, son of the billionaire head of the multinational conglomerate Reliance Industries, said he had submitted a detailed plan to give the animals a new home at Vantara.

The animal centre is sited alongside the Reliance Jamnagar Refinery Complex, which the conglomerate said was the world’s largest crude oil refinery.

Summers there can get extremely hot, with temperatures soaring above 40 degree Celsius.

Ambani’s proposal sets out a veterinary-led capture and transport, as well as the creation of a “purpose-designed naturalistic setting” for the hippos, according to a statement.

“Vantara has the expertise, infrastructure and resolve to support this effort, entirely on Colombia’s terms,” the statement said.

“These 80 hippos did not choose where they were born, nor did they create the circumstances they now face,” Ambani added.

“They are living, sentient beings, and if we have the ability to save them through a safe and humane solution, we have a responsibility to try.”

Ties between the countries soured after a popular uprising forced Bangladesh’s long-serving Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee to New Delhi in 2024, where she remains.

Trivedi’s appointment highlights India’s push to rebuild trust with Bangladesh as it faces stiff competition from China for influence and business.

Trivedi, 75, a former railways and health minister, joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2021 from a regional party in West Bengal, a border state that plays a key role in India’s ties with Bangladesh and where Modi has been seeking to expand his party’s influence in ongoing local elections.

“He is expected to take up the assignment shortly,” India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement about Trivedi.

Relations between the two countries began improving only after an election in February brought Tarique Rahman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to power, replacing an interim government that had veered strongly towards China.

Bangladesh’s foreign minister visited Delhi this month seeking increased fuel and fertiliser supplies, closer energy cooperation and eased travel restrictions, but one of the biggest sticking points remains India’s refusal so far to extradite Hasina.

Negotiations over the agreement concluded in December 2025, and will see India gain greater access for a range of products, including engineering goods, machinery and textiles, while also protecting its sensitive dairy sector.

“This forward-looking agreement will also facilitate $20 billion of investment into India,” New Delhi’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said after signing the agreement alongside his New Zealand counterpart, Todd McClay.

New Delhi, in return, has offered to reduce tariff barriers in sectors such as forestry, lamb and wool, while granting quota-based access for fruits such as apples.

Two-way trade remains modest. Indian data showed merchandise trade at about $1.3bn in 2024-25, while total goods and services trade was estimated at roughly $2.4bn in 2024.

The deal was struck at a time when US President Donald Trump’s tariff war had upended global trade, forcing countries around the world to tap new markets.

The Middle East war has since delivered a global energy shock, disrupting production across multiple sectors and reinforcing the need to bolster trade ties and shed protectionist stances.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on Monday the “once-in-a-generation agreement” will give local exporters “unprecedented access” to the world’s most populous nation.

“It means more jobs on farms and orchards, it means more money coming into local communities, and it means more opportunities for your family to get ahead,” Luxon said in a social media post.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it “marks a landmark moment in the India-New Zealand partnership” and that it would “strengthen our cooperation in agriculture, manufacturing, innovation and technology”.

However, parts of the agreement have sparked criticism in Wellington.

These include greater visa access for skilled Indians, with New Zealand officials telling AFP that the deal could see more than 20,000 Indian migrants entering the country.

The right-wing populist NZ First party has also pointed to concerns about a NZ$34bn (US $20bn) investment New Zealand is bound by the deal to make in India over a 15-year period.

Trade pact cuts fruit tariffs, boosts exports, visas

The FTA will lower tariffs on key fruit imports such as kiwifruit and apples, expanding opportunities for Indian exports and easing visa access as the nations deepen economic ties.

Concluded in December after about nine months of talks, the pact is one of the South Asian nation’s fastest trade deals, and will cut or remove tariffs on 95 per cent of New Zealand’s exports to India, including seafood, iron, steel and scrap aluminium.

In agriculture, India kept sensitive sectors such as dairy, coffee, sugar, spices, edible oils and rubber outside market access commitments to protect domestic producers, Goyal said.

That was a disappointment for New Zealand’s dairy industry, its largest export sector.

Under the deal, New Zealand will offer market access across 118 services sectors from the professional, audio-visual and computer-related to construction, telecoms and tourism.

The deal also provides a quota of 5,000 temporary employment visas for Indian professionals and 1,000 working holiday visas, while easing post-study work rights for Indian students, Indian officials said.

Tariff cuts over a period of time

The pact will lower tariffs on wine over 10 years and allow immediate duty-free access for dairy and other food ingredients meant for re-export, while phasing in duty-free access for bulk infant formula and other high-value dairy products over seven years, and halving a tariff on high-value milk albumins within a New Zealand-specific quota.

McClay said the deal would support New Zealand’s goal of doubling exports in 10 years.

“This deal will deliver thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in additional exports.”

More than half of New Zealand’s exports to India will become duty-free immediately, with tariffs on other products reduced over time, New Zealand said in a statement.

The deal is expected to boost key Indian export sectors such as textiles, leather, pharmaceuticals, engineering goods and automobiles, while allowing duty-free access to industrial inputs such as wooden logs, coking coal and metal scrap.

The airline did not elaborate, but the Economic Times reported that one of the engines had caught on fire as the plane was accelerating down a runway and that the passengers were injured during an emergency evacuation.

“Shortly after 1am local time on April 26, an issue occurred with one of the engines during the takeoff of flight LX147 in Delhi. The crew aborted the takeoff and, after assessing the situation, decided as a precaution to evacuate the aircraft,” Swiss International said in a statement.

It said that it had set up a task force to look into the incident, adding that the injured passengers were taken to a hospital, while the crew member had sustained a sprained ankle.

The airline had earlier said that six passengers had been injured but revised the number.

There were 228 passengers, four infants and 13 crew members on board the aircraft, which was an Airbus A330.

Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport declared an emergency following the incident, but runway operations have since resumed, said a source familiar with the matter who was not authorised to speak on the issue and declined to be identified.

In its statement, the airport said its operations remained unaffected.

Manipur has seen periodic clashes for nearly three years between the predominantly Hindu Meitei majority and the mainly Christian Kuki community in which more than 250 people have been killed.

“In a heavy exchange of fire… three individuals sustained fatal bullet injuries,” Manipur police said in a statement late on Friday.

The clashes took place at Mullam village in Ukhrul district, and police did not specify which community the men came from.

“Security measures have been enhanced in the area to prevent further escalation of violence,” police said.

“Operations are still underway.”

Longstanding enmity between the Meitei and Kuki communities revolves around competition for land and public jobs.

Rights activists have accused local leaders of exacerbating ethnic divisions for political gain.

Unrest erupted in 2023, when around 60,000 people were forced to flee their homes, according to government figures.

Trouble eased, but earlier this month four people, including two children, were killed during an attack by a Kuki group, and a Meitei mob later stormed a paramilitary camp.

On Thursday, 249 Indians from the northeastern states of Manipur and Mizoram — from the Bnei Menashe community who claim descent from one of the “lost tribes” of Israel — arrived in Tel Aviv.

They were the first group to arrive since the Israeli government decided in November to fund the immigration of around 6,000 members of the community.

Their oral history tells of a centuries-long exodus through Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet and China, all the while adhering to certain Jewish religious practices, such as circumcision.

In India, they were converted to Christianity by 19th-century missionaries.

Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad handed over a letter from Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar to the Security Council president, Ambassador Jamal Fares Alrowaiei of Bahrain.

A statement issued by Pakistan’s Mission said the letter drew the UNSC’s attention to the matter “one year after India’s illegal decision to hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance” and highlighted the move’s “grave peace and security, and humanitarian consequences”.

The Security Council was urged “to take cognisance of the alarming situation and call upon India to restore the full implementation of IWT, resume all Treaty-mandated cooperation and data-sharing without delay, desist from any form of water coercion, and comply fully with its international obligations in good faith”.

The statement said Ambassador Ahmad also briefed the Security Council president on “the regurgitation of baseless allegations and propaganda by India at a time when Pakistan is engaged in serious mediation efforts to promote regional and international peace and security”.

He further underscored that “the unresolved Jammu and Kashmir dispute — a longstanding item on the Security Council’s agenda — was the root cause of instability in South Asia that necessitated a just and lasting settlement in accordance with relevant Security Council resolutions and wishes of the Kashmiri people”.

A treaty under strain

The Indus Waters Treaty, brokered by the World Bank in 1960, regulates the distribution of the Indus river system between India and Pakistan. It allocates the eastern rivers — Ravi, Beas and Sutlej — to India, while the western rivers — Indus, Jhelum and Chenab — are largely allocated to Pakistan.

The agreement has long been considered one of the most durable frameworks of cooperation between the two countries, surviving wars and repeated crises. However, it has come under strain since India announced in 2025 that it was placing its treaty obligations in abeyance.

India announced a unilateral suspension of its obligations under the IWT in April last year following an attack on tourists in occupied Kashmir’s Pahalgam that killed 26 — an incident New Delhi blamed on Islamabad without evidence. For its part, Pakistan strongly denied the allegations and called for a neutral investigation.

In June 2025, the Permanent Court of Arbitration — an organisation that provides a framework for international disputes — had issued a Supplemental Award of Competence, stating that India could not unilaterally hold the treaty in abeyance.

India has maintained that it will keep the treaty in abeyance until Pakistan ends alleged support for cross-border terrorism — an accusation that Islamabad denies.

New Delhi has also argued that climate change, technological advances, and demographic pressures warrant modifications to the treaty. Pakistan, however, insists the agreement remains fully in force and binding, citing the 2025 Court of Arbitration ruling that reaffirmed its validity.

Pakistan warns of humanitarian impact

Pakistan has repeatedly warned that politicising water poses serious humanitarian and economic risks. At a UN World Water Day event in March, Federal Minister for Climate Change and Environmental Coordination Musadik Malik said India’s decision undermined decades of cooperation and violated international law.

“For us, water is nature. Water is humanity. Water is our civilisation. For us, water is agriculture,” he said, noting that 25–30 per cent of Pakistan’s GDP and nearly half its workforce depended on agriculture linked to the Indus basin.

He said water insecurity was not only a legal issue but a humanitarian one, affecting food systems, women, and children. He added that over 61pc of women’s employment in Pakistan was tied to agriculture.

Between three and five children died from the disease every day for the past week. Five children died on Wednesday, including three in the capital Dhaka, and another five on Thursday.

The government said it launched a robust nationwide vaccination programme since the outbreak began on March 15, the worst in the South Asian nation for decades.

“Our target is to vaccinate 18 million children,” health department spokesman Zahid Raihan told AFP.

“So far, we have covered a little over one-fourth of our target, and it may take another two weeks to see the impact of this vaccination programme.”

Md Sajib and Afsin Meem lost their three-year-old son, their only child, on Tuesday, and a photograph of a relative carrying his tiny body along a road was shared extensively on news sites.

“After noticing a rash on our son’s skin, we rushed him to the hospital. Five days later, we brought him back dead,” Sajib told AFP.

“He had a high fever and breathing difficulties.”

Measles is one of the world’s most contagious diseases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and is spread through coughs and sneezes.

It can affect people of any age but is most common among children, and can cause complications that include brain swelling and severe respiratory problems.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, speaking in parliament on Wednesday, blamed the previous government of Sheikh Hasina, who was toppled in a 2024 revolution, and a subsequent caretaker administration for failing to vaccinate the population.

Bangladesh has made significant advancements in vaccinations to tackle infectious diseases, but a measles drive that was due in June 2024 was delayed by the deadly uprising that toppled Hasina.

“The autocratic government that we ousted, together with political parties both inside and outside parliament, did not procure vaccines,” said Rahman, who took power in February.

Rahman said Bangladesh was receiving assistance from the UN children’s agency, but there was a shortage of testing kits.

The April 22, 2025 attack in Pahalgam saw 26 people, mostly tourists, killed in what is being described as the deadliest armed attack in the disputed Himalayan region since the year 2000. New Delhi blamed the attack on Pakistan without any evidence. For its part, Pakistan strongly denied the allegations and called for a neutral investigation.

On the attack’s one year anniversary, some in India appeared to link Pakistan again with terrorism. Meanwhile, the Indian army also said that a “response is assured” against acts of terrorism.

Subsequently, without referring to any particular instance, the Foreign Office (FO) in Islamabad said in a statement: “At a time when Pakistan, along with its international partners, is undertaking concerted diplomatic efforts for regional and international peace and security, it is deplorable that India has once again resorted to a campaign of baseless allegations and propaganda to link Pakistan with the Pahalgam incident.

“It is unfortunate that, in the midst of an ongoing regional crisis, India remains focused on weaponising its false narrative against Pakistan for narrow domestic political gains.”

The FO recalled the brief military conflict in May 2025 that followed the Pahalgam attack, saying: “After receiving a befitting reply to its misplaced adventurism in the form of Operation Bunyanum Marsoos last year, such allegations constitute yet another chapter from India’s playbook of creating a smokescreen for its continued sponsorship of terrorism across the region.”

It said fact remained that such propaganda campaigns could not distract the international community’s attention from India’s continued occupation of Kashmir and its denial of the right to self-determination to the Kashmiris, in violation of relevant UN resolutions.

“Nor can such gimmicks conceal the fact that India continues to undermine regional peace and security by resorting to inflammatory rhetoric, repeated provocations, and aggressive military posturing, including its illegal unilateral action to hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance, in clear violation of international law,” the FO added.

It expressed hope that the international community would call on India to demonstrate responsible behaviour and to refrain from all rhetoric and actions that may serve as a spoiler to ongoing efforts aimed at regional and international peace and security.

Two days after the Pahalgam attack, India had taken a series of aggressive measures against Pakistan, including unilaterally suspending the critical Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). Pakistan retaliated by suspending all kinds of trade, closing its airspace for Indian flights and shutting down the Wagah border.

Subsequently, New Delhi launched deadly overnight air strikes on Pakistan on May 6 over allegations about the Pahalgam attack. In retaliation, Pakistan Air Force downed five Indian jets, later raising the tally to seven.

After tit-for-tat strikes on each other’s airbases, it took American intervention on May 10 for both sides to finally reach a ceasefire.

Summer heat in the world’s most populous nation can be brutal — putting millions of people at risk, with nearly 11,000 people dying due to heat stroke between 2012 and 2021, according to government data.

A heatwave in May 2024 in New Delhi saw temperatures match the capital’s previous record high: 49.2 degree Celsius clocked in 2022.

That year was India’s hottest year since thorough records began in 1901, with sizzling temperatures following a global pattern of extreme weather driven by climate change.

The temperature on Wednesday morning in New Delhi and the wider sprawling metropolitan region of 30 million residents was a relatively balmy 29.4 degree Celsius.

But weather forecasters predict temperatures will hit 41-43 degree Celsius later on Wednesday, and rise to 42-44 degree Celsius later in the week.

The India Meteorological Department has issued a “yellow alert” for Delhi, indicating the likelihood of a heatwave later in the week.

On Tuesday, guidelines issued by the Delhi education directorate asked schools in the city to adopt a plethora of steps to shield students.

They included avoiding “outdoor physical activities” and conducting “awareness sessions” to remind them of the importance of hydration.

“Outdoor assemblies to be curtailed or conducted in shaded/indoor areas with minimal duration,” the note read.

“No open air classes to be conducted.”

Quirkier directions are also on offer: schools have been asked to start a “water bell” initiative to prevent dehydration and also implement a “buddy system” for students to look out for each other.

“Schools shall implement a ‘Water Bell’ system, whereby a bell is rung at regular intervals (every 45-60 minutes) reminding students to drink water to prevent dehydration,” the circular notes.

“Each student may be paired up with another student during school hours to monitor and take care of each other’s physical wellbeing,” it added.

The April 22, 2025 attack in Pahalgam saw 26 people, mostly tourists, killed in what is being described as the deadliest armed attack in the disputed Himalayan region since the year 2000.

“To this day, India has not presented any solid evidence or proof regarding the Pahalgam incident, nor has it offered satisfactory explanations,” Tarar said in a televised statement issued on the incident’s anniversary.

He recalled India’s refusal to accept Pakistan’s offer for a neutral and transparent investigation into the Pahalgam attack, adding that it “raises serious questions and suggests that the incident may have been a false flag operation”.

“The false flag operation in Pahalgam reflects a mindset that is hollow — driven by false pride, arrogance and greed,” he contended.

“Let me make it very clear that this was the last false flag operation that India carried out in Pahalgam […] It will not dare to carry out such false flag operation again,” Tarar asserted.

Stating that the entire matter was “handled through empty slogans and in a very crude manner”, Tarar said Pakistan had been itself a victim of terrorism and had expressed “full sympathy” with the civilians affected in the Pahalgam attack.

The minister questioned how the first information report (FIR) of the case was registered within “10 minutes of the incident” and noted that think tanks had raised questions about there being “no proper security” at the site.

“Furthermore, without evidence, without investigation and without proper inquiry, the blame was immediately placed on Pakistan,” he said, adding that “baseless and fabricated propaganda” becomes very difficult to sell.

“To this day, the world continues to ask questions and India has no answers to give,” the information minister said.

“India’s issue is that it presents its internal matters as external ones and its external matters as internal. A clear example of this is terrorism,” Tarar said.

He added, “Terrorism is India’s internal issue, yet it portrays it as an external problem. Similarly, the Kashmir issue is an international issue but India presents it as an internal one.”

The minister slammed the “ugly face” of Indian media for spreading what he described as propaganda. He asserted that India’s institutions have been “politicised” and suppress minorities.

Tarar highlighted that India had been found involved in transnational terrorism, including the killings of Sikh leaders abroad. “So terrorism is part of India’s state policy and they continue to follow it,” he added.

The minister reiterated Islamabad’s allegations against New Delhi of its involvement in terrorism on Pakistani soil, adding that the country had evidence for it that is periodically shared with the international community.

“In many terrorist incidents, India’s involvement appears here and there, but we are strongly countering them,” he said.

The minister went on to assert, “India should remember that any misadventure of any kind will be met with a firm, decisive and swift response.”

He reiterated the government’s resolve to “take every possible step for the defence of the country”.

He contended that due to its policies, India was “facing global isolation”, while Pakistan was moving forward on its mission of peace.

Just two days after the Pahalgam attack, India took a series of aggressive measures against Pakistan, including unilaterally suspending the critical Indus Waters Treaty (IWT).

Pakistan retaliated by suspending all kinds of trade, closing its airspace for Indian flights and shutting down the Wagah border.

Subsequently, New Delhi launched deadly overnight air strikes on Pakistan on May 6 over allegations about the Pahalgam attack, which Islamabad denied. In retaliation, Pakistan Air Force downed five Indian jets, later raising the tally to seven.

After tit-for-tat strikes on each other’s airbases, it took American intervention on May 10 for both sides to finally reach a ceasefire.

India ranked among the top two in athletics’ most anti-doping rule violations between 2022 and 2025, prompting the AIU board to move the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) from Category B to Category A.

Category A federations, deemed the highest risk, face stricter obligations under the rules, including minimum testing thresholds for national-team athletes, the AIU said.

“The doping situation in India has been high-risk for a long time and, unfortunately, the quality of the domestic anti-doping programme is simply not proportionate to the doping risk,” AIU Chairman David Howman said in a statement.

While the AFI advocated for anti-doping reforms within India, not enough changed.

“The AIU will now work with the AFI to achieve reforms to safeguard the integrity of the sport of athletics, as we have done with other Category A member federations,” it said.

India, which will host the 2030 Commonwealth Games and is bidding for the 2036 Olympics, also topped the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) list of doping offenders for three straight years.

WADA president Witold Banka, who was in India last week, called the easy availability of performance-enhancing drugs in the country a “serious problem”, and met senior officials of India’s federal police seeking help to disrupt supply chains.

AFI Spokesperson Adille Sumariwalla said the federation was working with the AIU, the sports ministry and India’s National Anti-Doping Agency to address the issue.

“AFI has got a strong plan and we are all for criminalising doping in this country,” Sumariwalla, also a World Athletics vice president, told Reuters by telephone.

“There’s nothing wrong in more scrutiny. More athletes are getting caught in India because more tests are being conducted.

“We are fighting it tooth and nail. The crooks and criminals doing it should be stopped by police. We are not police, our job is to create a policy and the government is helping.”

When an Indian delegation visited the International Olympic Committee (IOC) headquarters in Lausanne last year, they were told to curb the doping menace to boost their Olympic bid.

New Delhi and Seoul also agreed to resume and step up negotiations to give new energy to their 2010 trade agreement as India wanted their trade to be more balanced and South Korea wanted greater market access to the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung is in India for a three-day visit, the first South Korean presidential state visit to the country in eight years.

“We decided to upgrade the framework of economic cooperation between the two countries to create a new engine for shared growth,” Lee told reporters after talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The two countries created a ministerial-level economic cooperation committee for the first time, Lee said, adding that they would strengthen cooperation in areas such as nuclear power plants, clean energy as well as trade and investment.

With the US-Israel war on Iran squeezing global energy supplies, India and South Korea would also continue to cooperate to ensure the stable supply of energy resources and key raw materials such as naphtha, Lee added.

Modi said Lee’s visit was extremely significant and that the two countries had taken important decisions to boost two-way trade to $50bn by 2030 from around $27bn at present.

“Today, we are laying the foundation for the success story of the next decade,” Modi said, as he recalled strong civilisational ties between the two countries that go back several centuries.

Big investment in India’s steel sector

Indian Trade Minister Piyush Goyal said he held talks with his South Korean counterpart, Yeo Han-koo, and discussed ways to resume and revamp the trade pact and explored opportunities to deepen cooperation in the areas of industry, green energy and digital trade.

Lee will attend a joint business forum conference later on Monday where some 250 South Korean participants are expected, including leaders of household names in India such as Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor and LG Group, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said.

The two sides also plan to sign a total of 20 private-sector memoranda of understanding on the sidelines of the forum, covering areas including shipbuilding, digital technology and energy, Yonhap said.

Separately, South Korea’s POSCO Holdings said in a regulatory filing on Monday that its steelmaking unit plans to build a joint venture integrated steel plant with India’s JSW in Odisha state.

POSCO’s investment until end-2031 is expected to be about $1.09bn, the filing said.

The joint venture deal to set up a 6-million-ton-per-annum steel plant in Odisha was announced last week.

In a policy seminar at South Korea’s parliament last week, Maeng Hyun-chul, a research fellow at Seoul National University’s Asia Centre, noted India’s longstanding complaint of a widening trade deficit with South Korea and said that political ties had not kept pace with commercial ties.

South Korea had a $12.8bn trade surplus last year, with exports worth $19.2bn and imports of $6.4bn, according to Korea International Trade Association data.

Lee will be visiting Vietnam after India.

The planned oil hub in the northeastern port of Trincomalee featured in a meeting with Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, India’s visiting Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told reporters.

The project, which also involves the United Arab Emirates, has been under discussion since 2023, he added.

“There is no further time to lose in making progress on strategic projects such as these,” said Misri, who is visiting the Sri Lankan capital along with India’s Vice President C.P. Radhakrishnan.

Sri Lanka, India and the UAE signed an agreement a year ago, following two years of talks, to set up a multi-product oil pipeline connecting the two South Asian neighbours and to establish the Trincomalee oil storage complex.

Misri said that in Sunday’s talks, both sides agreed on the need to get the project off the ground quickly.

Had the energy hub been completed, it could have been useful “especially at a time like this”, he added.

Sri Lanka, which imports all its oil requirements as well as coal needed for power generation, has raised fuel and electricity prices since the Middle East war began in late February, when the United States and Israel began bombing Iran.

The conflict has disrupted energy supplies globally and sent prices soaring.

Sri Lanka’s Trincomalee is already home to a 99-tank oil storage farm from the British colonial era, but only 14 containers are in use under a previous agreement with an Indian oil firm.

Last year, both India and Sri Lanka expressed hope of expanding the proposed hub to include a refinery. They also discussed a power line to share electricity between them.

In a statement, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said Iran’s Ambassador to India Dr Mohammad Fathali was summoned “for a meeting with [the] foreign secretary this evening”.

During the meeting, the foreign secretary “conveyed India’s deep concern at the shooting incident earlier today involving two Indian-flagged ships in the Strait of Hormuz”, the MEA said.

“He noted the importance that India attached to the safety of merchant shipping and mariners and recalled that Iran had earlier facilitated the safe passage of several ships bound for India.”

Reiterating his concern at “this serious incident of firing on merchant ships”, the foreign secretary urged the ambassador to convey India’s views to the authorities in Iran and “resume at the earliest the process of facilitating India-bound ships across the strait”.

The MEA noted that the Iranian envoy “undertook to convey these views to the Iranian authorities”.

Reporting the development, Indian news agency ANI shared a video of the Iranian ambassador leaving the MEA in the evening.

After briefly reopening the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, Iran on Saturday morning declared that the waterway was closed for commercial ships once again due to the United States’ continued blockade of its ports.

Reuters, citing an Indian government source, reported that an Indian-flagged vessel carrying crude oil, identified as the Sanmar Herald, was attacked while attempting to cross the strait. The source said that the crew on board and the vessel were safe.

Shipping sources said at least two vessels reported coming under fire while trying to transit the waterway.

Maritime security and shipping sources said some merchant vessels received radio messages from Iran’s navy saying no ships were allowed through the waterway.

Earlier, maritime trackers had shown a convoy of eight tankers transiting the narrow passage in the first major movement of ships since the US-Israeli war on Iran began seven weeks ago.

It was reported last month that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the state body that operates Aadhaar, had asked the IT ministry in January to engage with Apple, Google and other leading smartphone makers to consider mandatory pre-installation of the Aadhaar app.

A unique 12-digit identity number tied to an individual’s fingerprints and iris scans, Aadhaar is held by nearly 1.34 billion residents and is widely used for verification purposes in banking and telecom services, as well as for faster airport entry.

India’s IT ministry reviewed the proposal and “is not in favour of mandating the pre-installation of the Aadhaar App on smartphones,” UIDAI said in a statement to Reuters on Friday, giving no reason for the decision.

India’s IT ministry did not respond to Reuters’ queries.

The IT ministry held a “consultation with stakeholders from the electronics industry” before reaching its decision to drop the Aadhaar preloading proposal, UIDAI added in its statement.

The Aadhaar request was the sixth time in two years the government has sought pre-installation of state apps on phones, according to industry communications reviewed by Reuters earlier this year. All six attempts were opposed by the industry.

Smartphone makers flagged concerns about device security and compatibility when they received the Aadhaar preload proposal, and also flagged higher production costs as they would have been required to run separate manufacturing lines for India and export markets, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

Apple and Samsung, in particular, both had concerns with the proposal due to questions over safety and security, sources told Reuters in March.

The government’s decision not to proceed with the proposal shows the constraints on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s digital push as India courts firms like Apple to expand its role as a global smartphone hub.

In December, India faced criticism over an order mandating smartphone firms to pre-install a telecom security app, forcing a rollback within days.

A senior Indian official said on Friday, on condition of anonymity, that the IT ministry is not supportive of any preloading of apps, “unless it is considered very essential”.

Safety concerns

While the government maintains Aadhaar is safe and secure, the app has faced persistent criticism from privacy advocates, including for data leaks where personal details of millions of holders surfaced on the dark web.

Apar Gupta, founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation, a New Delhi-based digital advocacy group, welcomed the government’s decision to drop the Aadhaar pre-installation proposal, and said other such proposals should also be spiked as they lack a legislative foundation and have no public policy goal.

“Hopefully it is a welcome exercise of regulatory restraint that recognises that citizens carry their phones as extensions of their autonomy, not as vessels for government order,” Gupta said.

“We’re set to take historic steps to empower women,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, ahead of the special sitting of parliament on Thursday, to debate constitutional amendments to both expand seats for women and the overall size of parliament to over 800.

The bill proposes fast-tracking implementation of a 2023 law in the world’s largest democracy of 1.4 billion people, reserving 33 per cent of seats for women.

Increasing the number of women in parliament has, in principle, broad cross-party support.

“We are all united to give rightful positions to women in India,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said on Thursday.

Women currently account for just 14pc of India’s 543 members of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament.

To achieve the expansion, the government said it plans to redraw parliamentary boundaries based on population, a move that would increase the number of seats by nearly 40pc to more than 800.

Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) draws much of its support from the densely populated north, and critics say expanding seats in parliament would therefore benefit it the most.

Opposition parties, which control states in southern India where the population is lower, fear they would lose overall power in parliament.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said that while his Congress party supports increasing the number of women in parliament, the government’s approach is aimed at consolidating power.

“The proposal that the government is now bringing has no connection to women’s reservation,” Gandhi said, in a statement on social media.

“It is merely an attempt to seize power through delimitation and gerrymandering.”

M.K. Stalin, chief minister of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and a rival to Modi’s BJP, also opposed the plan.

“Let the flames of resistance spread across Tamil Nadu,” Stalin said, accusing the BJP of trying to marginalise the state through redrawn boundaries.

“Let the arrogance of the fascist BJP be brought down,” he added on social media.

The bill requires a two-thirds majority to be passed, with three days of debate beginning on Thursday.

The government is proposing that delimitation of new seats be based on the last completed census, in 2011, and come into effect for the next general election in 2029.

But opposition parties want the government to wait for the results of an ongoing census, which was launched this month, a formidable logistical challenge that will take a year to carry out — and even longer for the data to be processed.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh has seen a sharp rise in religious intolerance and mob violence since the 2024 uprising that toppled the government of former premier Sheikh Hasina.

Shamim Reza Jahangir, believed to be in his 60s, died from his injuries after hundreds of people stormed his residence in Kushtia district and thrashed him with sticks, chief administrative official Touhid bin Hasan said.

The mob was angered after an old video of the man resurfaced online on Fri­day. He had uttered remarks against the Holy Quran.

“Sensing that something might happen, police went to the spot, and the administration tried their best. But an angry mob of more than 200 people attacked his residence,” bin Hasan said.

Jahangir was taken to a nearby hospital, where doctors declared him dead. Police sources said that Jahangir had been briefly arrested in 2021 for making comments that angered villagers.

The sources said the video that circulated was recorded during that time. Bangladesh police spokesman AHM Sahadat Hossain said an investigation was underway.

Mob attacks are frequently reported in the South Asian nation of 170 million people.

At least 153 people have been killed by mob violence from August 2024 — when Hasina’s rule ended and she fled to India — to September 2025, according to a report by Dhaka-based rights organisation Odhikar. Saturday’s killing was the first since the Bangladesh Nationalist Party swept to power in February.

Published in Dawn, April 12th, 2026

A sweeping voter registration overhaul — known as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) — meant to remove ineligible voters but which critics say is skewed against marginalised and minority communities, kicked off last year in several states and territories.

Many of these regions voted on Thursday to elect local governments, with two other states slated to go to polls later this month.

That includes West Bengal, a state with roughly 100 million people led by Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress party, where it has run into furious opposition.

West Bengal is also a crucial election battleground, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has never governed.

Voting was under way in Assam and Kerala, along with the federally administered territory of Puducherry, while West Bengal and Tamil Nadu will vote later this month. Results from all the elections are due on May 4.

Move to court

Banerjee, the state’s chief minister, accused India’s Election Commission of “working at the behest of the BJP” to strike off her supporters from the state’s electoral rolls.

“We will move court again to resist the exclusion of names,” she told her supporters at an election rally on Wednesday.

A previous challenge by Banerjee, one of Modi’s most formidable opponents, is pending in the Supreme Court.

Members of Modi’s BJP have long claimed that large numbers of undocumented Muslim migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh have fraudulently entered India’s electoral rolls.

West Bengal shares a 2,217-kilometre-long border with Bangladesh.

The Election Commission, in its defence of the SIR, has said it is in part to avoid “foreign illegal immigrants” from voting.

The SIR drive in West Bengal was carried out in two phases.

In the first, around 6.3m names were deleted, with officials citing routine reasons such as deaths or voters having moved out of the state.

A second, more controversial phase flagged another 6m voters for “adjudication”, a category introduced for the first time in West Bengal, which relied on software to identify anomalies such as spelling mismatches.

Muslims, who make up a quarter of the state’s population, were disproportionately flagged for this extra scrutiny, according to at least two independent analyses of Election Commission data.

Of those flagged, about 2.7m were finally found to be ineligible to vote, the Election Commission’s data released earlier this week, raising the total number of exclusions to over 9m — or roughly 12 per cent of the electorate.

The 2.7m left out after the second phase can still appeal their exclusion. But with the tribunals set up to adjudicate such matters still not fully operational, a decision is unlikely before voting begins on April 23.

Millions vote in Assam, Kerala

Meanwhile, millions of Indians queued to vote in local elections in the Assam and Kerala states on Thursday, kicking off four key contests this month amid a war in the Middle East that has triggered some fuel shortages.

State elections do not directly affect the stability of India’s federal government but are closely watched as a test of voter sentiment toward the ruling coalition.

A BJP-led alliance has ruled Assam for two successive terms and is expected to win again, according to public opinion platform Vote Vibe, while the opposition is set to retain Kerala.

In West Bengal, where the removal of large numbers of names from voter rolls during a revision exercise has become a major issue, the ruling regional party is ahead in a tight race, a Vote Vibe survey for broadcaster CNN-News18 showed.

In Tamil Nadu, a coalition that includes the BJP is expected to mount a close challenge against a ruling regional party, Vote Vibe said.

Vote Vibe founder Amitabh Tiwari said it was unclear what role global energy disruptions would play in the elections, but surveys by his agency showed voters broadly praised the Modi government’s handling of energy security since the Iran war began in late February.

India has not raised retail prices of regular petrol and diesel despite higher global prices and has diverted cooking gas for household use from some industries.

India typically relies on the Middle East for more than 40 per cent of its crude oil imports and over 90pc of its cooking gas imports.

The deal comes as the island nation recovers from its worst economic crisis in decades, which led to a foreign debt default in 2022 and a $2.9-billion IMF bailout programme.

Sri Lanka’s economic reforms have supported the recovery, but it has been significantly exposed to the Iran war and needs to “build back better” after Cyclone Ditwah, the IMF added.

The Middle East conflict caused a surge in energy prices, disrupted a key air hub for tourists, and affected Sri Lankans working in the region, said Evan Papageorgiou, the IMF’s mission chief for Sri Lanka.

“The staff-level agreement will go before the IMF executive board at the end of May or early April,” he added.

Sri Lanka will need to raise power tariffs further and carefully manage its finances to navigate the Middle East crisis, the IMF said, adding it could revisit reserve targets under the program to help Sri Lanka pay for higher fuel costs.

US-Israeli war on Iran disrupted energy flows from the Middle East before Tuesday’s ceasefire, crimping supplies and spurring efforts by Asian nations to tackle energy supply shortages and higher prices.

The deal comes as higher energy prices have put pressure on the foreign exchange reserves of Sri Lanka, which has ordered public holidays on Wednesdays, rationed fuel, and raised pump prices by about 35 per cent last month to rein in consumption.

Sri Lanka is in talks with China, India and Russia to ensure uninterrupted fuel supplies, and aims to spend $600m to buy refined fuel for April.

Bangladesh is almost entirely encircled by India and the border stretches for more than 4,000 kilometres, large parts of which are unfenced across delta regions where Himalayan rivers wind toward the sea.

Manoj Barnwal, an official of the Border Security Force, said “the use of reptiles” was discussed in a February meeting with the home ministry.

“We have been asked to explore the feasibility of deploying reptiles such as snakes or crocodiles in vulnerable riverine gaps,” said Barnwal, deputy inspector general of the paramilitary force based in Kolkata, near the border with Bangladesh.

“The plan revolves around leveraging natural deterrents like crocodiles and snakes in flood-prone zones, along the unfenced area where traditional fencings are either ineffective or not possible,” he added. The border between India and Bangladesh cuts through the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest.

“It’s an innovative move, but there are several challenges and it raises safety concerns,” Barnawl said. “How do we procure the reptiles? What impact might it have on the people in the villages sitting along the riverine border? “We have asked our field units to study the feasibility of the approach and send the report as soon as possible,” he added.

Relations between New Delhi and Dhaka soured after a 2024 uprising in Dhaka ended the autocratic rule of then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India.

Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman was in New Delhi on Wednesday the most senior envoy from Dhaka to visit since the uprising — in a bid to rebuild frosty diplomatic relations.

India has constructed border fencing stretching hundreds of kilometres and arrested scores of Bangladeshis attempting to cross the frontier in the wake of Hasina’s overthrow. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has long taken a hardline stance on immigration, particularly from Bangladesh. Top Indian officials have referred to migrants as “termites” and “infiltrators”.

Published in Dawn, April 9th, 2026

Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman is taking part in a “goodwill visit”, Bangladesh’s state news agency BSS said, but added that issues of “extradition, trade, water sharing and border security” would be discussed.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Dhaka in December to attend the funeral of former leader Khaleda Zia, the mother of the prime minister elected in February, Tarique Rahman.

Jaishankar said he had been “pleased to host” Khalilur Rahman, saying in a statement that they had discussed “strengthening our bilateral relationship”, without giving further details.

Relations have improved since Tarique Rahman, leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, won a landslide election victory, taking over from the interim administration that had led the country of 170 million people since Hasina was ousted.

Hasina fled to India, where she has remained in hiding, straining relations between Dhaka and New Delhi.

Bangladesh has repeatedly requested Hasina’s extradition. She was sentenced to death in absentia in November for orchestrating a deadly crackdown on the uprising.

Bangladesh was also expected to seek greater energy supplies from India, as it grapples with the impact of the Middle East war.

Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani were charged by the SEC in November 2024 with orchestrating a scheme to pay or promise to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian government officials to benefit Adani Green Energy, where both men are executives and directors.

The securities fraud case is tied to Adani Green’s alleged failure to disclose the scheme in documents for a $750 million bond offering in 2021.

In a filing in the Brooklyn, New York federal court, the Adanis’ lawyers said their clients disputed that there was any credible evidence supporting the alleged bribery scheme.

The lawyers said the Adanis’ lack of involvement in the offering, and the absence of any intent to defraud or negligence, supported a dismissal.

They also called the SEC claims “impermissibly extraterritorial,” reflecting how the Adanis and all alleged misconduct were in India, and the bonds were never traded on a US exchange.

The SEC had no immediate comment.

Lawyers for the Adanis said they will formally seek a dismissal by April 30.

US prosecutors filed a related criminal case in November 2024 against the Adanis and several other defendants. There have been no public developments in that case since December 2024. A spokesman for the US Attorney’s office in Brooklyn declined to comment.

Gautam Adani, 63, founded and chairs the conglomerate Adani Group, and is chairman of Adani Green.

He is worth about $60.6 billion, ranking 30th worldwide according to Forbes magazine.

Mukesh Ambani, chairman of the conglomerate Reliance Industries, is India’s richest person, worth about $91.4bn and ranking 20th worldwide, Forbes said.

Energy-hungry India, the world’s most populous country and third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has ambitious plans to expand nuclear power capacity from its current eight to 100 gigawatts by 2047.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam attained “criticality”, the stage at which a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction starts.

“Today, India takes a defining step in its civil nuclear journey, advancing the second stage of its nuclear programme,” Modi said in a statement late Monday.

“This advanced reactor, capable of producing more fuel than it consumes, reflects the depth of our scientific capability and the strength of our engineering enterprise.”

Modi called it a “decisive step towards harnessing our vast thorium reserves”, a potential fuel for nuclear reactors.

The reactor does not yet generate electricity for the grid. That comes in the next stages, once the reactor moves to full power operation.

The development also comes at a time of global energy uncertainty, including war in the Middle East, which has heightened concerns about fuel supply disruptions.

India remains heavily dependent on coal, but has pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2070.

The development comes as the airline grapples with persistent losses and heightened regulatory scrutiny following a crash last year that killed 260 people.

The news of his resignation comes just days after its bigger rival IndiGo tapped aviation industry veteran Willie Walsh as its next CEO, as the country’s two largest carriers come under pressure to tackle a mounting industry crisis stemming from the Middle East conflict compounded by domestic operational challenges.

Reuters reported in January that Air India’s board was scouting for a new CEO to replace Wilson, a former Singapore Airlines veteran brought in to steer the Indian carrier’s turnaround in 2022 after years of decline under government ownership.

The airline, which is contending with aircraft delivery delays, has also been reprimanded by regulators for safety lapses, including flying an aircraft eight times without an airworthiness certificate and running planes without checking emergency equipment.

New Zealand-born Wilson’s term was due to end in 2027. He is currently serving a six-month notice period and plans to stay with the company until a successor is found, the source said, declining to be identified as they were not authorised to speak with media.

Air India did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment outside regular business hours. Wilson’s resignation was reported by Indian publication Mint late on Monday.

Since taking over the top job in 2022, Wilson has steered the airline through the early and difficult stages of its turnaround, including overhauling Air India’s engineering department and refurbishing planes amid supply chain disruptions.

“Over the last four years, Campbell did a good job in very tough circumstances,” said Brendan Sobie, a Singapore-based independent aviation analyst.

“Finding the right candidate to complete (Air India’s) transformation will not be easy and Tata will particularly feel the pressure to get this right following IndiGo’s recent appointment of Willie Walsh,” he said.

In December, Air India admitted there was a “need for urgent improvements in process discipline, communication, and compliance culture”, Reuters reported.

Air India has a fleet of 191 planes and has placed orders for more than 500 aircraft.

It has lost money since being bought by Tata Group in 2022, with the financial pressure worsening since Pakistan banned Indian carriers from its airspace last year. Air India and its low-cost carrier Air India Express reported a combined loss of 98.08 billion Indian rupees ($1.05bn) in the 2024-2025 financial year.

A prolonged Iran war will add further pressure on Air India’s lucrative western routes, already scaled back due to Pakistan’s restrictions.

Air India is chaired by N. Chandrasekaran, who is also the chair of Tata Group. Singapore Airlines holds a 25 per cent stake in Air India.

Last week, Prime Minister Tarique Rahman directed two senior ministers to travel across the South Asian nation of 170 million people in an effort to assess the scale of the crisis to help coordinate a response.

Health ministry data released on Sunday showed that children aged between six months and five years old with suspected measles symptoms soared to 6,476.

“Compared with past years, the number of affected children is higher, and the death toll is higher too,” Halimur Rashid, director at the Communicable Disease Control, told AFP, referring to the number in suspected cases.

The largest number of suspected cases on record was in 2005 at 25,934, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) data, though that number had significantly declined until this year.

Rashid attributed the potential outbreak to “multifactorial causes, including a shortage of vaccines”.

Confirmed numbers of measles cases among the demographic stand at 826, with only 16 deaths, with experts saying in many cases, testing is either not done or patients die before testing can be done.

Measles is one of the world’s most contagious diseases, according to the WHO, and is transmitted when a person coughs or sneezes.

While the disease can affect a person of any age, it is most common among children and can cause complications, including brain swelling and severe breathing problems.

Bangladesh has made significant advancements in vaccinations to tackle infectious diseases, but a measles drive due in June 2024 was delayed by a deadly uprising that same year that toppled the autocratic government of Sheikh Hasina.

Most Bangladeshi children receive a vaccine at nine months, although many infected in the recent outbreak had been six months old, officials added.

Mahmudur Rahman, chief of the National Verification Committee of Measles and Rubella, said that “we committed to reducing the number to zero by December 2025 but failed to achieve the target due to poor vaccination programmes”.

Dhaka has identified 30 of the most affected areas in the region and has started a vaccination programme.

Health Minister Sardar Shakhawat Hossain Bakul said the vaccination drive will cover the “worst affected areas” before being expanded to other regions.

Tajul Islam A. Bari, a former official at the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) and a public health expert, told AFP that although funds had been allocated for vaccine purchases, authorities had failed to procure them.

“Now we see the result — the situation is scary,” Bari added.

The WHO estimates as many as 95,000 measles deaths globally every year, mostly among unvaccinated or under-vaccinated children under the age of five, according to its latest statistics.

There is no specific treatment for measles once caught.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has rationed fuel, raised its price by a third and increased electricity costs by up to 40 per cent since the war began disrupting global energy supplies.

Panic buying fuel in Sri Lanka has brought back memories of 2022, when the economy tanked, with inflation hitting 70pc after Colombo defaulted on its $46 billion external debt.

The accompanying protests toppled the once-powerful president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was accused of mismanagement and corruption. But the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) that led the “Aragalaya”, or struggle, that ousted Rajapaksa has warned that Dissanayake’s administration may be facing an implosion.

“We believe that a response to this economic crisis will come politically,” FSP politburo member Duminda Nagamuwa said. “Because of the strength of the (government’s) mandate, this economic shock is still being absorbed by the people without exploding politically,” he said.

Dissanayake’s leftist JVP, or the People’s Liberation Front, won a two-thirds majority at the November 2024 parliamentary elections after his own victory two months earlier in the presidential poll.

Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2026

Authorities have stepped up raids to curb hoarding of liquefied petroleum gas canisters after the US-Israeli war against Iran disrupted shipping, causing supply ​shortages.

India, the world’s number two Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) importer, meets about 60 per cent ​of its demand through overseas purchases, mostly from the Middle East.

“Just ⁠yesterday, around 2,600 raids were carried out and about 700 cylinders were ​seized,” Sujata Sharma, a senior official in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural ​Gas, told a regular briefing on the Middle East crisis.

“In addition, around 400 cylinders were recently found at one location inside a graveyard in Hyderabad. Ten people have been ​detained there, and the distributor involved has been suspended,” she said.

Police said ​the accused had been selling both commercial and domestic canisters from the graveyard at nearly ‌three ⁠times the current market price.

A commercial canister that costs about 2,100 Indian rupees ($22) had been sold for as much as 6,000 rupees. The total value of the seized canisters and some vehicles used by the accused was nearly ​2.2 million rupees, police ​said.

Reuters could ⁠not immediately contact the accused or their representatives.

“The supply of natural gas to domestic consumers is 100pc assured,” Sharma ​said. “With regard to LPG supply, prices have remained stable ​despite international ⁠volatility, and there has been no increase in the price of domestic LPG cylinders.“

To ease the pressure on LPG supplies, India has been promoting the use of ⁠alternatives ​such as kerosene, coal and biogas, while accelerating ​the roll out of piped natural gas for households.

Bangladesh in January banned IPL broadcasts after one of its teams, Kolkata Knight Riders, dropped Bangladesh pacer Mustafizur Rahman at the Indian cricket board’s instruction, just as tensions rose between the two countries following the killing of a Hindu man in Bangladesh.

Though Bangladesh is reviewing the ban and had on Saturday said any further steps will depend on the opinion of its sports ministry, the termination by JioStar means there will be no local broadcaster for the IPL season, even if the country were to change its stance.

“The agreement stands terminated with immediate effect,” JioStar said in a letter dated February 17 to Bangladesh broadcaster TSports, which had sublicensed the rights from JioStar for IPL seasons from 2023 to 2027.

The company cited its partner’s “continued failure and default in adhering to the payment timelines stipulated under the agreement”.

JioStar, a joint venture of Ambani’s Reliance and Walt Disney, did not respond to Reuters queries. TSports and Bangladesh’s sports and information ministries also did not respond to requests for comment.

IPL, the world’s richest cricket league, valued at $18.5 billion, enjoys huge popularity among the cricket-viewing public in Bangladesh, where the game is an obsession like it is in the rest of the subcontinent. Its latest season started on March 28.

India-Bangladesh relations have been strained since a political transition in Dhaka in August 2024 disrupted previously close ties under former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to New Delhi after a mass uprising.

But there are signs of a thaw in the relations after Tarique Rahman, the newly formed government’s prime minister, said in February that Bangladesh would engage on the basis of mutual respect and shared interests with its neighbours.

A separate JioStar letter, also dated February 17, showed the company has also terminated its broadcast deals in Bangladesh for the Women’s Premier League cricket tournament over similar defaults.

The approvals were given by the Defence Acquisition Council, led by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, according to a statement issued late on Friday.

The ministry said it has cleared 55 proposals worth 6.73 trillion Indian rupees ($71bn) in the 2025-26 financial year so far.

It has also signed capital procurement contracts worth 2.28tr Indian rupees ($25bn), the highest in a single fiscal year.

For the air force, the approved items include new medium transport aircraft to replace old AN-32 and IL-76 planes, additional S-400 air defence systems, drones and upgrades to Su-30 fighter jet engines.

Although India has expanded defence purchases from the United States, France and Israel in recent years, the new S-400 orders and Su-30 upgrades indicate that Russia remains an important defence supplier.

The S-400 system will “counter enemy long-range air” threats, while the “Remotely Piloted Strike Aircraft”, or armed drones, will be capable of both attack and surveillance, the statement said.

For the army, the council approved an air defence tracking system, armour-piercing tank ammunition, radios, artillery, and an aerial surveillance system for battlefield monitoring.

KATHMANDU: Nepal’s rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah was sworn in as prime minister on Friday after sweeping the first election since deadly anti-corruption protests toppled the government last year.

The 35-year-old reformist and his Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) dominated polls this month on a platform of youth-driven political change.

“I, Balendra Shah, in the name of the country and people, pledge that I will be loyal to the constitution,” Shah said, dressed all in black, including his trademark dark sunglasses.

Crowds at the ceremony cheered and chanted his name after he formally took office, where he named key cabinet posts, including former youth activist Sudan Gurung as interior minister.

At least 77 people were killed in the anti-corruption youth uprising, which began over a brief social me­­dia ban but tapped into longstanding fury over economic hardship in the nation of 30 million people.

Shah, better known as Balen, was sworn in a day after he released his first public statement since winning the March 5 elections, via a rap song posted on social media.

“The strength of unity is my national power,” Shah sang in the song, which has racked up nearly three million views since being re­­leased on social media and streaming sites on Thursday evening.

Shah had remained silent publicly since his RSP party won the election in a landslide, winning a commanding majority of 182 in the 275-seat House of Representatives.

He campaigned alongside the RSP president, combative television host Rabi Lamichhane, 51, a former deputy prime minister and interior minister and now a fellow lawmaker who retains a pivotal role in power.

“My heart is full of courage, my red blood is boiling; my brothers stand with me, this time we will rise,” Shah said in his song, over a video of him campaigning for election. “May my breath not run out; I will run like a leopard,” he added.

Finance Minister Swarnim Wag­le, a former United Nations econo­mic adviser, takes up hard task of reforming Nepal’s battered economy.

Foreign Minister Shishir Kha­n­­al, a former education minister, must balance landlocked Nepal’s relatio­­ns between giants India and China.

Pakistan, China and India congratulated Shah on assuming office as prime minister.

In a statement, President Asif Ali Zardari said that it was encouraging to see youth-led leadership shaping the region. “Pakistan values its enduring ties with Nepal and looks forward to deeper cooperation in all sectors,” he added.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a post on X: “Pakistan dee­ply values its longstanding and fri­endly relations with Nepal and lo­­oks forward to working closely with Your Excellency to further stren­g­then bilateral cooperation and adv­ance our shared goals of regional peace, stability, and prosperity.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he looked forward to taking “India-Nepal friendship and cooperation to even greater heights”.

Sushila Karki, 73, a former chief justice of Nepal who had led the caretaker administration for six months, said the country’s future lay in the hands of a younger generation.

“It makes me even more deligh­ted to have a 35-year-old youth as my successor,” the outgoing interim prime minister, who hugged Shah after he took the oath, said in a statement.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2026