As the coronavirus spreads, it has reached the western Amazon's Javari Valley, home to the world's remaining uncontacted indigenous groups   BRASILIA, June 30 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Dozens of indigenous people in the Brazilian Amazon's Javari Valley - an area the size of Switzerland and Denmark combined - have contracted COVID-19, with experts and officials warning the disease poses a huge threat to their lives and culture.   The valley in the we

BY VISHNU MAKHIJANI  New Delhi, June 29 (IANS) Growing up in a traditional middle-class family in Ranchi, writing was "one of those things" that 29-year-old Kritika Pandey -- the Asian regional winner of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and one of the five contenders for the top award -- did to keep herself occupied. The other was reading and these two activities proved to be the "perfect escape from being locked up at home" because they helped her

BY NISHANT ARORA  New Delhi, June 29 (IANS) The COVID-19 onslaught has accelerated the pace of IT modernisation and digital transformation via Cloud-driven solutions in the vast public sector in India and various state governments are fast embracing the Cloud technology to reduce the infection rate while efficiently managing the lockdown, a top global Amazon Web Services (AWS) executive has stressed.   According to Teresa Carlson, Vice President, Worldwide Public S

New Delhi, June 27 (PTI): China will have to pay a "heavy price" for decades for resorting to aggressive military behaviour towards India in eastern Ladakh as it will isolate the country globally, strategic affairs experts said on Saturday.   They said the economic cost of China's misadventure in the last couple of months in eastern Ladakh and South China will be "massive" as it has "exposed" Beijing's "real face" when the enti

Dharamsala, June 27 (IANS) The ongoing military aggression across the Himalayas is not the first by China and it won't be the last. India never shared a border with China -- it is the Indo-Tibet border. Knowing its strategic significance, India should consider the geopolitical importance of Tibet as one of its core issues.   These were the views of Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) President Lobsang Sangay, globally known as Prime Minister-in-exile, regarding a Himala

BY ANINDYA BANERJEE  New Delhi, June 26 (IANS) Was the donation from the Chinese Embassy towards the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF) just a tip of the iceberg or was it an aberration?   IANS has learnt that between 2004 and 2005, the Foundation, which is now run by Sonia Gandhi, had ran the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies (RGICS), which in turn was linked to a body that the US government in a 'staff research report' in 2018 called a "fron

BY ANANTH KRISHNAN IANS | June 26  Yadong, on the southern edge of Tibet, is where China meets India. Getting there takes you right across the roof of the world, a day-long drive from Lhasa. As I leave Lhasa and head south, towards India, the long and winding road traverses pristine lakes, many of which are sacred for Tibetans, their banks dotted with dozens of worshippers lying prostrate, yaks in tow. Our journey ends in the Chumbi Valley town of Yadong, a small, muddy and

BY SUMIT SAXENA New Delhi, June 25 (IANS) With India vulnerable to a second wave of the Covid pandemic, All India Institute of Medical Sciences Director Randeep Guleria feels in order to contain a further surge, a limited lockdown in hotspots and extensive contact tracing, where volume of cases is high, can be considered along with a micro-plan to prevent leakage into other non-containment areas.   In an exclusive chat with IANS, Guleria said the wave of Covid cases ma

Leh, June 24 (IANS) Ringzin is 65 years old but keen to report for duty on the LAC and help the Indian Army in whichever way possible.   He is one of the many porters in Ladakh who volunteered to carry material to themountain tops during the Kargil conflict in 1999 to evict the Pakistani intruders from the heights - a feat he is proud of and ready to repeat anytime.   Ringzin had retired from the army years before the Kargil conflict, but a strong urge to serve th

BY SANJEEV SHARMA  New Delhi, June 24 (IANS) In an interview with IANS, Preetha Reddy Vice Chairperson, Apollo Hospitals and President, NATHEALTH said that there is an urgent need to revamp the Indian healthcare system today.   Reddy said there is a need to provide solutions to short terms problems caused due to COVID-19 and alongside, addressing the long-standing structural gaps in our healthcare systems.   "We are doing everything possible to supp

New Delhi, June 22 (IANS) Amid intense Chinese propaganda and 'wolf warriors' aggressive approach to cover up its culpability in spreading coronavirus pandemic, the world powers are joining hands to counter China which is increasingly trying to divert attention by implementing its expansionist design from land to maritime domain.   The Galwan incident is just one such example of its policy of intimidation and aggressive move in maritime has already come as a warning

Targeted for their East Asian looks, people from region bordering China suffer discrimination and harassment   NEW DELHI, June 20(Thomson Reuters Foundation) - One after another, people came, took one look at her face and then walked off. In the end, student Rachungailiu Gonmei gave up on finding anyone willing to share a rickshaw with her in New Delhi, and travelled alone.   Like many Indians from Northeast India - a vast region that borders China, Gonmei has not

Joint Myanmar-Finland project will venture into conflict zones to better protect Southeast Asian nation's forests   KUALA LUMPUR, June 19 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A new five-year project in Myanmar will for the first time document all forests in the Southeast Asian nation - including places affected by ethnic tensions - to pinpoint deforestation risks and boost conservation, the United Nations said.   The joint Myanmar-Finland project, launched this week w

To many among Chile's indigenous Mapuche, the demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd recall their own confrontations with police over land rights   BOGOTA, June 18 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Watching the U.S. anti-racism protests from a rural town in southern Chile, 19-year-old Belen Curamil, an indigenous youth leader, has felt a sense of shared experience.   Curamil's indigenous peers have endured years of police violence: some have been j

'In South Asia, unlike Southeast, East, or Central Asia, there is a natural hegemon: India. China cannot cast it aside easily'   New Delhi, June 18 (PTI): Amidst the Chinese incursion into Indian territories in Ladakh, an influential United States think-tank has said that China's "immediate goal" in South Asia is to limit any "defiance" from India and hinder its burgeoning partnership with the US.   The report titled A Global Survey

New Delhi/Beijing, June 18 (IANS) China had sought to settle the border dispute with India by finalising its boundary in Tibet in 2001, but the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee government failed to respond, as per a recent book published by HarperCollins.   Sarosh Zaiwalla, the Indian-origin founder of and senior partner at Zaiwalla & Co., a prominent law firm in London, in his recent memoir, "Honour Bound -- Adventures of an Indian Lawyer in the English Courts", has

Sparked by the murder of healer Domingo Choc, the #GuateRacista movement is an attempt to bring discussions of race and identity into the open   BOGOTA, June 17 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Hundreds of Guatemalans have shared their experiences of everyday racism on social media after the murder of an indigenous healer by a mob who accused him of witchcraft and set him on fire.   The killing of Domingo Choc, 56, provoked outrage among indigenous Guatemalans, who

New Delhi/Beijing, June 17 (IANS) China had sought to settle the border dispute with India by finalising its boundary in Tibet in 2001, but the then Atal Bihari Vajpayee government failed to respond, as per a recent book published by HarperCollins.   Sarosh Zaiwalla, the Indian-origin founder of and senior partner at Zaiwalla & Co., a prominent law firm in London, in his recent memoir, "Honour Bound -- Adventures of an Indian Lawyer in the English Courts", has

BY NIKHILA NATARAJAN  New York, June 15 (IANS) Driven by a common passion to build world class digital public goods for India, a clutch of 10 mostly reclusive computer scientists are launching the country's most detailed and first public domain COVID19 predictive model indiacovidmodel.in, which unleashes the power of granular district, state and national level visualisation to the public starting mid week.   The predictive model arrives at crucial time amid a b

BY VISHNU MAKHIJANI New Delhi, June 15 (IANS) Life is so fragile that even a virus could bring the world to its knees, says London-based author of Indian-origin Vish Dhamija who has eight works of crime-fiction to his credit in the last decade, besides straddling the worlds of marketing and entrepreneurship. He also urges citizens across the world to introspect during these difficult times and think, plan and look after each other.   "The uncertainty of it all made