IndianRepublic.in

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 1 Of 15 Image Source: @Sidhant on X Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the General Debate of the 81st UN General Assembly on Tuesday, September 22, with a speech that framed the moment as a choice between two kinds of world. "We are called to choose between multilateralism or unilateralism, democracy or extremism, sovereignty or subordination," Lula told world leaders, speaking shortly before US President Donald Trump took the same podium. It was the tenth time Lula had opened the debate, a role Brazil has held by custom since the 1950s. He said it was the most critical moment for the United Nations since he first addressed the Assembly in 2003, and that the feeling driving him was indignation. His sharpest words were reserved for the rules of global trade. "The pillars of multilateralism are being corroded. The World Trade Organization is on life support," he said. "When governments capitulate in t...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 2 Of 15 Image Source: @RTErdogan Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan returned to the UN General Assembly with the slogan that has defined his speeches for more than a decade, and a proposal that goes further than most calls for Security Council reform. "We must acknowledge that a system in which the will of more than 190 countries is subject to the whim of just five countries is not a fair system, and it is not capable of fully inspiring or establishing trust either," Erdoğan said on the opening day of the General Debate of the 81st session, Tuesday, September 22. "The world is bigger than five." Erdoğan turned the phrase into a slogan in his first General Assembly speech as president in 2014 and has returned to it repeatedly since. This year he paired it with a call, according to reports of the speech, to abolish the veto held by the five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, ...

UNGA81 And The Multipolar Drift | Part 3 Of 15 File Photo/Representational: Via: @alexstubb on X Finland's President Alexander Stubb offered one of the clearest Western readings of the multipolar shift at the 81st UN General Assembly, acknowledging that power is moving away from the West while warning that a multipolar world without cooperation will end in conflict. "We seem to be going the other way: towards a non-cooperative multipolar world order," Stubb told the General Debate on Tuesday, September 22. "This order, as it turns out, is based on zero-sum deals, transactions, and unrestrained power. This is a short-sighted approach." Such an order, he said, "will ultimately lead to conflict. It will turn against us, whether you represent a great power, a middle power, or a small state, like Finland." His diagnosis echoed the Secretary-General's warning earlier that day that multipolarity could take the form of fragmentation and transactionalism....

Satinderjeet Singh, better known as Goldy Brar, is accused of leading the North American arm of the Lawrence Bishnoi network and of ordering a 2023 killing in Canada that earlier strained India's relations with Ottawa Image Source: FBI Los Angeles The FBI has added an Indian gangster known as Goldy Brar to its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list and offered a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to his arrest, escalating a manhunt that has run across three continents. Satinderjeet Singh, who uses the alias Goldy Brar among others, was named to the list on Monday by Patrick Grandy, the assistant director in charge of the FBI's Los Angeles field office. He is the 543rd person added since the list was created in 1950. He is accused of leading the North American operations of the Lawrence Bishnoi Organized Crime Group, which US prosecutors describe as a syndicate running targeted killings, shootings, kidnappings, extortion and narcotics and weapons trafficking across th...

Home minister sets out a ten-year counter-terrorism framework and says 288 fugitives have been brought back since 2019 Image Source: @AmitShah on X Indian agencies have arrested 350 people across 15 states in an operation against the Shahzad Bhatti Network, the group New Delhi designated a terrorist organisation earlier this month, the home minister said on Monday. Amit Shah said more than 40 modules of the network, which the government accuses of smuggling weapons, explosives and narcotics across the border, had been dismantled, and that more than 100 first information reports had been registered. He attributed the results to improved coordination between agencies. The government added the network to the First Schedule of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act on 16 September, making it the 46th organisation on that list. The notification accused it of recruiting young people and local criminals into cross-border smuggling and of posing a threat to communal harmony and interna...

Kalawati Saran to go from 394 to 894 beds, with intensive care capacity rising fivefold Image Source: @JPNadda on X A children's hospital in central Delhi is to more than double its bed capacity as part of an expansion reviewed on Monday by India's health minister, J P Nadda.  Kalawati Saran Children's Hospital will go from 394 beds to 894, its intensive care capacity from 40 beds to 200, and its operating theatres from four to twelve. Construction is under way on the campus. The hospital is attached to Lady Hardinge Medical College, one of Delhi's oldest public medical institutions, along with Sucheta Kriplani Hospital. Minister Nadda reviewed progress across all three, covering infrastructure, clinical services, medical education and research. The government says the expansion is intended to strengthen specialist paediatric care and to widen capacity for training doctors at undergraduate, postgraduate and super-speciality level. Public hospitals in Indian cities ro...

India's new livestock insurance portal covers policy issuance and claims in 13 languages, with more than 30 lakh animals insured so far this year. (Updated) Image Source: PIB India The Indian government launched a national online portal for livestock insurance on Monday, consolidating policy issuance, claims and monitoring on a single platform available in 13 languages.  Rajiv Ranjan Singh, known as Lalan Singh, the union minister for fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying, launched the portal in New Delhi at rashtriyapashubima.dahd.gov.in . The minister of state, S P Singh Baghel, and the animal husbandry secretary, Naresh Pal Gangwar, were present, along with state government officials and representatives of insurance companies. More than 4,000 people joined online. Gangwar said more than 30 lakh animals, over three million, have been insured during the year under the scheme. The portal covers animals insured under the Livestock Insurance activity of the National Livestock Miss...

Belize-flagged MT Seagull 9 lost engine power and began flooding in the Bay of Bengal before a boarding team stopped the leak Image Source: PIB India The Indian Coast Guard has stabilised a listing chemical tanker carrying 9,000 tonnes of palm oil and 23 crew about 37 nautical miles east-south-east of Paradip, off India's eastern coast, averting what it said could have been a capsizing. The Belize-flagged MT Seagull 9 sent a distress call at about 7.30am on Sunday after its main engine failed and a ballast tank flooded rapidly, tilting the vessel dangerously. Ballast tanks hold seawater to keep a ship upright and trimmed; uncontrolled flooding in one can cause a list a crew has no power to correct. The patrol vessel ICGS Vishwast was sent to the position, and a specialist damage-control team boarded the unstable ship. The team deployed submersible pumps to remove water, stopped the leak, sealed off two damaged seawater pipelines and contained a third that had fractured, removing ...

More than 270 events at temples, ghats, schools and heritage sites carried a message linking service to the upkeep of cultural sites Image Source: @MinOfCultureGoI More than two lakh people took part in a week of street plays, cleaning drives and public performances across India, the culture ministry said on Monday, in a campaign that tied the upkeep of heritage sites to the idea of national service. The initiative, called Seva Hi Sanskriti , or service is culture, ran from 17 to 24 September. The ministry said more than 270 activities were held, including street theatre, rangoli-making, cleanliness drives and collective singing of Vande Mataram, India's national song. Events took place at government office complexes, schools and colleges, parks, markets, temples, riverside ghats and heritage sites. Two themes ran through them: heritage and development, and what the ministry called a new story of cleanliness. The campaign was run through three national arts bodies, the Sangeet N...