World Focus by Abhishek Vasoo

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is likely to raise the risk of a sovereign debt default among relatively small and poor countries, according to a study China BRI will potentially span 68 countries and could have implications for each of these countries’ public debt.   China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which seeks to invest about $8 trillion in infrastructure projects across Asia, Europe and Africa, has come under intense scrutiny, not least due to suspicions over China’s intent behind the ambitious project. A study by the Centre for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank, analyses one important consequence of BRI: debt. While the study finds that it is unlikely that the BRI will be plagued with wide-scale debt sustainability problems, it is likely to raise the risk of a sovereign debt default among relatively small and poor countries. The BRI will potentially span 68 countries and could have implications for each of these countries’ public debt.

Beijing sees Washington’s punitive measures as a form of containment—and not without reason Last November, when US President Donald Trump stopped by China on his Asia tour, his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping suggested that “win-win cooperation is the only right choice and the pathway toward a better future” for the two countries. Ten months on, there isn’t a lot of cooperation going on. And with the latest round of tariffs and counter-tariffs announced this week, it will be a while yet before the dust settles enough to see if either country has done much winning. For now, markets in both countries have shrugged off the tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports imposed by Washington and Beijing’s retaliatory 5% and 10% tariffs on $60 billion of American goods. Given that this round of Trump’s tariffs has been gestating for a while, much of the risk was already priced in. Indeed, with both sides going for lower rates than their original threats of slapping a 25% tari

A strong data protection law, such as the one drafted by the Srikrishna Committee, will improve data access and quality, benefiting AI research Photo: iStock There are certain crucial periods which determine the course a country is likely to take in the foreseeable future. India has failed to capitalize and build on the industrial and manufacturing revolutions. Now, the seeds of the next major revolution in the form of big data analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI), are being sown by major economies around the world. India has the capability to partake in the benefits. AI has the potential to drastically transform a number of sectors such as transport and traffic management, health, education, agriculture, telecommunications, defence and information technology, to name a few. China is reportedly planning to invest $150 billion over the next decade in AI research and development. France is investing $1.8 billion over the next five years and the foremost private compan

Running social media—whether for an agency, on a freelance basis, or for an employer—can be a daunting and time-consuming task. But armed with the right tools, you can speed up your workflow and publish content more efficiently. In this article, we'll introduce you to the 10 best social media tools for social media managers. There are hundreds of tools to choose from, but we've only included the best in this piece. The articles featured in this piece include: Social Report : the most complete social media management platform Storyheap:  create and schedule Instagram and Snapchat stories from your browser Social Drift : automate your Instagram growth with AI IFTTT : automate your rudimentary tasks Unsplash : the best source for royalty-free images PageModo : easily hold social media sweepstakes TweetDeck : manage Twitter accounts like a pro Facebook Pages Manager : keep an eye on your Facebook pages from your smartphone

Former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Photo: AP High international politics and diplomacy was, by all accounts, former prime minister  Atal Bihari Vajpayee ’s enduring passion. A natural grand strategist, Vajpayee’s realism was tempered by restraint, leading him to craft  a pragmatic foreign policy template for India  that has endured till date. Put somewhat differently, far from being “asleep at the wheel”—as one scurrilous 2002 portrait of him put it—Vajpayee instinctively knew when to speed up India’s quest for power and when to slow down so as to not overreach. This delicate balancing became most prominent in three interrelated set of events that he shaped: India’s decision to unambiguously become a nuclear weapons state in 1998, the Kargil War of 1999, and the outreach to China soon after. To understand Vajpayee’s foreign policy philosophy of balance, one must situate it in the larger arc of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS’s) thinking on international rela

Helsinki summit hopes: As Trump and Putin shake hands today, New Delhi will pray they can hit it off and do a deal The Wild Boars notwithstanding, Russia was the world’s favourite playground this past month, with the northern giant pulling off an impeccable World Cup, the only dissonance being protests outside the Nigerian embassy by fans who had been scammed off their return tickets! Russia’s image took on a rare burnished look, and it became hard to justify making it an international pariah. We, from this corner of the world, will be cautiously optimistic as Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump get into a glad-handing summit in Helsinki today. Putin comes to the summit with some amount of prep, some sleight of hand and some hardcore diplomatic outreach behind him. Trump comes to the summit with a good idea, but little else. On the table will be Syria, Ukraine, Iran sanctions as well as US sanctions on Russia. In the past few days Putin has met Israel’s