Strung across remote mountain settlements, a secret network of activists and volunteers is helping spirit hundreds of defecting Myanmar policemen away from the military’s brutal crackdown on dissent and into relative safety in a small north-eastern Indian state.Their escape – by car, motorcycle and on foot through densely forested terrain – is often guided by volunteer-led groups on both sides of the border, according to accounts from at least 10 people who are involved in the loose-knit netw

India will produce more than one billion more COVID vaccine doses by the end of next year in an initiative launched Friday with the United States (US), Japan and Australia, challenging China as the four leaders held their first-ever joint summit.US President Joe Biden, who has vowed to reinvigorate alliances in the face of growing worries about China, met virtually with the three nations' prime ministers as they pledged together to defend a "free and open" Indo-Pacific region.&

As countries scramble to secure COVID-19 vaccines, ugly expressions like “vaccine race” and “vaccine apartheid” have entered the global lexicon.

Emboldened by its cost-free expansion in the South China Sea, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime has stepped up efforts to replicate that model in the Himalayas.

A number of people have begun escaping the turmoil in Myanmar into India, some of them police refusing to take part in the violent crackdown on protests against a military coup there, officials and reports said.Myanmar's junta ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on 1 February, triggering a mass uprising that the military has responded to with increasingly lethal force.

As the world enters the second year of the coronavirus pandemic, vaccination has moved front and centre in policymakers’ responses. But while vaccines offer the surest way out of the crisis, countries are approaching them in different ways. Some are racing to vaccinate their populations, while others await longer-term efficacy data before beginning.

India said Sunday that its troops, along with their Chinese counterparts, had completed a pullback from a disputed part of their Himalayan border after months of heightened tensions.The nuclear-armed neighbours fought a border war in 1962 and have long accused each other of seeking to cross their frontier - which has never been properly agreed - in India's Ladakh region, just opposite Tibet.The latest flare-up turned deadly in mid-June last year when 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a b

One week into the job, United States (US) President Joe Biden has sent a clear warning to Beijing against any expansionist intentions in East and Southeast Asia.In multiple calls and statements, he and his top security officials have underscored support for allies Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, signalling Washington's rejection of China's disputed territorial claims in those areas.On Wednesday, Biden told Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga that his administratio

The tiny clinking vials supervised by silent personal protective equipment (PPE)-wearing technicians belie the excitement inside the world's largest vaccine manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India, a major player in the fight against coronavirus.The firm, founded in 1966 in the western city of Pune, is producing millions of doses of the Covishield vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, for India and much of the developing world.Unlike the rival Pfizer-BioNTech vaccin

In celebrating the liberation from Donald Trump’s misrule, we must not forget that Trump’s presidency embodied the raw politics of United States (US) white supremacy. He often spoke like a segregationist Southern governor of the 1960s, and, after losing the 2020 election, like a secessionist senator on the eve of the Civil War.