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The South China Sea is seeing increasing tension amongst the claimants. The Second Thomas Shoal is the latest addition to Beijing's 'Salami Slicing' strategy of slowly acquiring small reefs and islands to consolidate its contested claim.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to South Korea has further strengthened and expanded India-Korea strategic and economic ties. Modi's call to take the bilateral relationship to a higher level was responded positively by the South Korean leadership.

South Korea has to be realistic in its approach to North Korea, according to a Korean scholar. He says South Korea still has time to negotiate as North Korea is still far from possessing "tactically meaningful nuclear devices".

The recent South Korea-EU FTA (or the KOREU FTA) is more of a steal for the Koreans than the Europeans. While it will have a 0.08 per cent impact on the European economy, it will have a 0.84 per cent impact on the Korean economy.

The combination of Indian demography, Korean technology, its value for money aspects, and the government support has made Korean companies in India quite successful, according to the Consul-General of the Republic of Korea in Chennai, Mr. Kim Kyungsoo.

Beyond 2015, South-South cooperation will have to increase and continue to support developing countries, with a special emphasis on poor and low-income countries in Asia and Africa facing sustainable development challenges.

With the Japanese crisis triggering worldwide re-thinking on the feasibility of pursuing nuclear energy to meet growing global energy demands, it is time that India, US and others looked at the option of Space Based Solar Power (SBSP).

As efforts to develop an ICoC accelerate, states need to come up with constructive ways of debating this issue. We cannot let this issue become a stumbling block that impedes progress on the code as a whole, particularly when the immediate impact of the offending language is arguably neutral.

The Japanese perspective on the Space Code is based on its diplomatic and technological concerns, not on its military and security needs. Since MoD is not engaged in the process of decision-making for the Code, it would be difficult to assume that Japan would commit to the Code for security purposes.

Australia has announced that it supports the Space Code of Conduct initiative sponsored by the European Union. A question that might well be asked is why should Australia care about such matters?

Space debris, traffic management and orbital frequency being issues that concern both India and the US, this ideally should be on the agenda in future US-India endeavours. It might be good for both the countries if they can engage in shaping this debate that would give them ownership of the issue.

Precisely because India has an interest in the normative process and institutionalising a space code, it is important for New Delhi to sit on the high table as an active party shaping the debate.

With the U.S. having shut down one of its major Space situational awareness networks, major Spacefaring powers need to make it a priority to contemplate possible solutions to track satellites and orbital debris on a continued basis.

At the launch of the ORF Kalpana Chawla Annual Space Initiative, experts felt that space is unlikely to become an exception to the security-seeking nature of the international system. They felt States should accept space militarisation as a reality and develop institutions to regulate its use for both peaceful and military purposes.

Space, as a true global commons, must be protected for safe, secure and uninterrupted access. India and China, along with other Spacefaring powers, must therefore utilise every opportunity to push for developing norms of responsible behavior, including strengthening measures in the area of active debris removal and on-orbit satellite servicing.

The defence and foreign ministers of Japan and the US, meeting under the bilateral consultative committee, have decided to revise the 1997 Guidelines for US-Japan Defence Cooperation to make sure that the alliance continues to maintain its credibility and effectiveness in deterring conflict in Asia-Pacific.

Prime Minister Manmohan?s Singh's visit to Myanmar helped launch the construction of an enduring economic and political relationship between the two nations.

Instead of amending the AFSPA, putting the military in harm's way and then watching it unravel, the political class must have the willpower to send the military back to the barracks and let the civilian Government do its job.

Election funding is the mother of all corruption in India. Without much needed clarity in regulation of election funding or consideration of state provision of election expenses, driving out corruption in public life would be an impossible dream.

Ever since the start of the insurgency in Kashmir, the Pakistani intelligence agencies have constantly raised, mutated, emasculated and even extirpated the so-called jihadi groups active in Kashmir. The dependence of the Jihadis active in Kashmir on Pakistan for training, logistics, arms and ammunition and most of all sanctuaries, has been exploited to the hilt by the Pakistani establishment.

The Burari session of the Congress, NDA rally, JPC-PAC sparring, onion and scams, are all building up to a lively election season beginning early next year - Tamilnadu, West Bengal, Kerala, Pondicherry, Assam, leading to UP elections in 2012 and the General Elections in 2014.

A spurt in domestic demand can prove to be the most important impetus for growth of the Indian economy in 2015-16. Then India will not have to be reliant entirely on export led growth. China is also following this strategy as its dependence on the global economic forces have gone beyond its control.

The MoU between the espionage agencies of Afghanistan and Pakistan is a case of the latter showing India the finger, never mind that it flies in the face of history and logic

More than two years after the Government of Sri Lanka and the leadership of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) reached an agreement on a ceasefire in their military and para-military operations against each other, with Norway playing the role of a facilitator, and embarked on a process of negotiations in order to find a political solution to the demands of the LTTE for an independent

The continuing deadlock in the peace process and in the political equation between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe due to their failure to reach an accord on the ground rules for the smooth functioning of the co-habitation Government marked the political landscape in Sri Lanka during 2003.

After the coming UNHRC session, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group is set to meet in London in April, when they are bound to flag the issue. The Indian position at London would have to be reflective of the position that it might have to take at Geneva only weeks earlier.

It looks as if campaign fever for the January eighth presidential poll is yet to pick up a full fortnight after it all began. At this rate, the poll might conclude without the campaign reaching the conventional climax and the nation getting a new President or a President for a new term possibly without the usually high 75-per cent turnout.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, apart from writing to the Prime Minister, could also consider touching base with fellow Chief Ministers for facilitating such early release of 'innocent' Sri Lankan fishers in their prison, from time to time.

The election of a new government in Colombo provides New Delhi a great opportunity to reset its relations with Sri Lanka. Both countries need to set aside the contentious past and see how they can construct a 21st century relationship based on economic ties and the awareness of the need to understand each other's security concerns.

New Delhi must stop viewing its foreign relations with Colombo from the Chennai prism alone just as it was a mistake to view our relations with Bangladesh through Kolkata's priorities. Tamil aspirations in Sri Lanka are important but there are other abiding interests too.

The sweeping victory for the Tamil National Alliance in Saturday's first-ever Northern Provincial Council in Sri Lanka has a message for various stake-holders nearer home and afar.

Whether or not the Sri Lankan Army Chief, Lt-Gen Sarath Fonseka, was the intended target of the suicide-attack on the Army Headquarters in Colombo on Tuesday, 25 April 2006, the LTTE may have won the ¿psychological war¿, one more time. The death of 10 persons

Sri Lanka¿s worsening security situation under an undeclared war is most likely to persist. Both the LTTE and President Rajpakshe¿s government are violating the four-year-old ceasefire agreement, which, in fact, seldom was honoured seriously, but neither of them is in a position to formally break it and declare an open, all-out war. Both of them are under intense international pressure to desist from doing so.

Seeing an LTTE ghost where none may exist across the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar, the Sri Lankan authorities could be expected to act even more feverishly in the coming months -- the Geneva vote having emboldened separatist Diaspora groups to revive their failed misadventure, in a new avtar and under a 'new world order'!

Sri Lanka's poll results have shown that President-elect Sirisena's victory was made possible by the overwhelming vote of the minorities, particularly the Sri Lankan Tamils. However, the Indian concerns on ethnic issues will be addressed wholly only when the new government and its limited TNA underwriter arrive at a negotiated settlement.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa's choice of Russia for his maiden foreign visit after re-election has outlined the new set of priorities for post-war Sri Lanka

After the UNHRC meeting and the Indian vote against Sri Lanka, now it needs to go beyond Geneva, in the preservation of 'supreme national self-interest' in the case of both the countries. The ghost of Geneva would be hovering over them, yet Colombo should acknowledge the un-kept promises.

There are humanitarian and human rights issues in Sri Lanka. Yet, it is basically a political cause, still, which no one in Tamil Nadu seems to be talking about, any more.

Whether Indians have great expectations from their new Prime Minister Narendra Modi or not, India's neighbours, who see in the emergence of Modi from a grassroots-level politician to become the Prime Minister of the world's largest democracy, seem to have expectations and aspirations unmatched in the recent past.