Category: 2. World

NEW DELHI: India’s state-run refiners Indian Oil and Bharat Petroleum have bought Russian oil for September and October delivery, resuming purchases after discounts widened, two company officials aware of the matter said on Wednesday.

The refiners had halted purchases in July due to narrower discounts and after India was criticised by Washington for its purchases of Russian oil.

President Donald Trump also threatened an additional 25% levy on Indian goods, effective August 27, to penalize New Delhi for its continued buying of the oil.

US Treasury chief Bessent accuses India of profiteering on Russian oil purchases

Discounts for Russian flagship Urals crude have widened to about $3 per barrel, making the oil attractive for Indian refiners, while China has stepped up purchases, the officials said.

In addition to Urals, IOC has also bought other Russian crude oil grades including Varandey and Siberian Light, they said.

Indian companies do not comment on their crude imports.

On Monday, IOC, the country’s top refiner, told analysts that it would continue to buy Russian oil depending on economics.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened to slap new sanctions on Russia and secondary sanctions on countries that buy Moscow’s crude in efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

While Trump imposed an additional 25 percent tariff earlier this month – to a total of 50 percent – on India’s goods, citing its continued imports of Russian oil, he has not instigated similar punitive actions against China, the largest buyer of Russian energy.

So, why has the Trump administration mounted pressure on India to stop purchasing Russian oil while taking little action against China?

Who is buying Russia oil, and how does Trump want to prevent that?

As the largest purchaser of Russian oil, China imported a record 109 million tonnes of this product last year, representing nearly 20 percent of its total energy imports, Chinese customs data showed.

India, by contrast, imported 88 million tonnes of Russian oil in 2024.

As such, China has arguably been Russia’s key economic lifeline, leading to accusations that Beijing is indirectly helping Moscow in its war on Ukraine, now in its fourth year.

It is understood that lawmakers from both main US political parties are pushing for a bill – the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 – that would target any country that buys Russian oil and natural gas.

The bill would give Trump the authority to impose 500 percent tariffs against nations that are perceived to be helping Russia. US senators are reportedly waiting on Trump’s OK to move the bill forward.

What reasons has Trump cited for not imposing new tariffs on China?

Asked by Fox News on August 15 if he was considering secondary sanctions on Beijing after he and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to agree on a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire in Alaska last week, Trump said, “Well, because of what happened today, I think I don’t have to think about that.”

“Now, I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don’t have to think about that right now,” he said.

Observers suspect Trump is buying time to allow negotiations on a broad trade deal that would include rare earth minerals.

Rare earths are a group of 17 elements essential to numerous manufacturing industries, from auto parts to clean energy and military technology. China has long dominated the mining and processing of rare earth minerals.

Because numerous US industries are heavily reliant on Chinese minerals, they remain a central issue in ongoing trade talks.

Trump has other reasons for giving China an easier ride than India. In particular, he’s keen to avoid a tariff spike just as US retailers stock up on inventories of Chinese goods ahead of December’s Christmas holiday season.

For his part, Trump has taken steps to reduce trade flashpoints in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the US eased some of its export restrictions on advanced semiconductors – a key demand from China.

On August 11, Trump permitted US company Nvidia to sell advanced chips to China – even if the tech giant would have to pay 15 percent of its China sales to the federal government. Trump had previously barred the deal.

Speaking to CNBC news on Tuesday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended Washington’s decision not to impose secondary sanctions against China saying, Beijing purchased 13 percent of Russian oil before the Ukraine war, which has now increased to 16 percent. “So China has a diversified input of their oil,” he said.

He added that China had not engaged in the kind of “arbitrage” done by India.

But Bessent accused India of “profiteering”. He pointed out that before the Ukraine war, India’s import of Russian oil was less than 1 percent. But “now, I believe, it’s up to 42 percent,” he said. “This is what I would call the Indian arbitrage – buying cheap Russian oil, reselling it as product,” he told CNBC.

“They’ve made $16bn in excess profits – some of the richest families in India.”

On Monday, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro became the second senior Trump administration official to accuse India of financing Russia’s war in Ukraine. Earlier this month, Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff at the White House, said that New Delhi’s purchase of Russia crude was “not acceptable”.

What have other officials said?

On August 12, US Vice President JD Vance declined to say whether Trump would move against Beijing as he did with New Delhi the previous week, when Washington announced an extra 25 percent tariff on India’s imports over its continued purchase of Russian oil.

“The president said he’s thinking about it, but he hasn’t made any firm decisions … the China issue’s a little bit more complicated because our relationship with China, it just, it affects a lot of other things that have nothing to do with the Russian situation,” Vance said.

Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that energy prices could rise if the US imposes secondary sanctions on China for refining Russian oil.

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Rubio said, “If you put secondary sanctions on a country – let’s say you were to go after the oil sales of Russian oil to China. Well, China just refines that oil. That oil is then sold into the global marketplace, and anyone who’s buying that oil would be paying more for it.”

Meanwhile, Beijing’s embassy in Washington said China’s trade with Russia falls within the scope of international law.

“The international community, including China, has conducted normal cooperation with Russia within the framework of international law,” said Liu Pengyu, the embassy’s spokesman, on July 6.

How would heightened tariffs impact the US and Chinese economies?

A ceasefire deal in Ukraine, with the resulting reduction of sanctions on Russia, would bring greater stability to the international system and a boon for China’s economy, not least after the last subdued economic data in July.

Last month, China’s economy slowed as factory activity, investment and retail sales fell from June, suggesting that spillovers from Trump’s tariffs are casting a pall over the world’s number-two economy.

Elsewhere, China’s youth unemployment rate rose to its highest level in 11 months in July, as the urban jobless rate for the 16-24 age group, excluding students, rose to 17.8 percent – up from 14.5 percent in June.

Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia Pacific economist at Natixis in Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera that “Cracks are starting to show [in the Chinese economy] and the overall picture is not great.”

Still, she said that “Chinese banks and firms have been preparing for the possibility of secondary sanctions for a long time already. They already started worrying about this under the [Joe] Biden administration.”

In recent years, Beijing has stepped up its efforts to diversify trade routes and build greater numbers of strategic products at home, making China’s economy “harder to strangle through elevated or secondary sanctions”, said Garcia Herrero.

“Clearly,” she said, “given the high level of goods imports from China to the US, higher tariffs would also raise inflation for American consumers.”

Last year, the US trade deficit with China was $295.4bn, marking a 5.8 percent rise from 2023.

What is the current state of US-China trade?

On August 12, the US and China extended a pre-existing tariff pause – and avoided an all-out trade war – for 90 days. With the extension, the imposition of higher US tariffs on China was suspended until November 10, with all other elements of the truce remaining in place.

The two sides agreed to their first tariff pause on May 11.

In April, China was slapped with a tariff of 145 percent while Beijing slapped a reciprocal tariff of 125 percent on the US – rates that amounted to a virtual trade embargo between the countries.

High tariffs prompted the US trade deficit with China to fall to its narrowest level since 2004 in June, according to US Census Bureau data. The US trade gap with China fell by $22.2bn from March to August. That amounts to a 70 percent drop from one year earlier.

But the tariff truce agreed to in May in Geneva, Switzerland, lowered the temperature by temporarily slashing US tariffs on Chinese imports to 30 percent, while Chinese levies on US exports fell to 10 percent. Beijing also agreed to resume some rare earth exports.

“I think there will be a [trade] deal of some sort soon,” Garcia Herrero said. “Nothing dramatic, as the levels of trust on both sides are low. But the US and China both need some positive news, or they face hitting economic walls.”

The death toll from a collision between a bus carrying Afghan migrants returning from Iran and two other vehicles in western Afghanistan has risen to 76, a provincial official said on Wednesday.

“Seventy-six citizens of the country… lost their lives in the incident, and three others were seriously injured,” Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, Herat provincial government spokesman, said in a statement.

Police in Guzara district outside Herat city, where the accident took place on Tuesday night, said the bus collided with a motorcycle and a truck carrying fuel, sparking a fire.

The bus was carrying Afghans recently returned from Iran to the capital Kabul, Saeedi told AFP on Tuesday.

At least 1.5 million people have returned to Afghanistan since the start of this year from Iran and Pakistan, both of which have sought to force migrants out after decades of hosting them, according to the UN migration agency.

The state-run Bakhtar News Agency said Tuesday’s accident was one of the deadliest in the country in recent years.

Traffic accidents are common in Afghanistan, due in part to poor roads after decades of conflict, dangerous driving on highways and a lack of regulation.

In December last year, two bus accidents involving a fuel tanker and a truck on a highway through central Afghanistan killed at least 52.

India’s prime minister and China’s foreign minister have hailed “steady” progress in their countries’ fractious relationship, agreeing to resume trade and other ties, as well as work towards resolving the long-running Himalayan border dispute, amid a global geopolitical shake-up instigated by Donald Trump’s tariff regime.

According to statements from China’s foreign ministry, the two sides agreed to resume direct flights – reiterating a pledge made in January – as well as issuing visas to journalists and facilitating business and cultural exchanges.

On social media, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, noted “respect for each other’s interests and sensitiveness”, while China’s foreign ministry said the countries had entered a “steady development track” and should “trust and support” each other.

The visit by Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, to Delhi came ahead of an expected visit to Beijing by Modi to meet with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in October. It will be Modi’s first trip to China since 2018.

Relations between the two nuclear powers plummeted in 2020 when a border dispute in the remote Himalayas turned deadly. Their soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat as the worst episode of violence between the neighbours in decades left an official death toll of 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers.

Since then, the two sides have held a series of talks to de-escalate the situation. Modi and Xi last October in Russia had their first meeting in five years. Both sides have continued to fortify borders, but have agreed to a pact on border patrols, and withdrawn additional forces.

India’s foreign ministry on Wednesday said Wang and the Indian national security adviser Ajit Doval discussed “de-escalation, delimitation and boundary affairs”.

Chinese state media phrased the discussion as agreeing to “explore the possibility of advancing boundary demarcation negotiations”.

“The setbacks we experienced in the past few years were not in the interest of the people of our two countries. We are heartened to see the stability that is now restored in the borders,” Wang said on Monday.

India said its foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar raised concerns about China’s plans to build a giant dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibetan territory – set to be the world’s biggest hydropower project – which Delhi fears will impact downstream communities and areas.

The thawing of relations between Delhi and Beijing comes as Donald Trump’s unprecedented trade tariffs continue to shake up the global order.

Sana Hashmi, a fellow at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation, said the US president’s tariffs and the perception of a reduced US presence in Indo-Pacific partnerships had contributed to and accelerated efforts to stabilise the India-China relationship.

But there remained “fundamental differences” between the two.

“Core security issues and the overall nature of India-China relations will not change because of Trump’s policies, and the Indo-Pacific framework will continue to shape regional dynamics,” Hashmi told the Guardian.

“For now, India’s priority lies in managing tensions with China while navigating turbulent waters with the US.”

After India, Wang will travel to Pakistan, a close ally of China but rival of India. China’s foreign ministry said Beijing wanted to “enhance friendly cooperation with both countries”.

With agencies and additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu

The Malaysian state of Terengganu has threatened to jail men who skip Friday prayers without a valid reason for up to two years.

Under sharia law in the state, first-time offenders could be imprisoned for up to two years, and fined 3,000 ringgit (£527), or both, according to new rules that came into effect this week.

The new rules were announced by the governing Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) on Monday.

Previously, those who missed three consecutive Friday prayers faced a maximum of six months in prison or a fine of up to 1,000 ringgit (£176).

Worshippers would be reminded of the rules by mosque signage, while enforcement would rely on reports from the public and religious patrols in joint operations with the Terengganu Islamic Affairs Department.

Critics have described the measures as “shocking”.

“Laws like this give Islam a bad name,” said Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates (AHRLA).

“Freedom of religion and belief also means freedom to not believe or participate, so Terengganu authorities are blatantly abusing human rights with this draconian law,” he said, adding that prime minister Anwar Ibrahim should revoke the penalties.

Terengganu state legislative assembly member Muhammad Khalil Abdul Hadi told the local daily Berita Harian that punishments would only be imposed as a last resort.

“This reminder is important because Friday prayers are not only a religious symbol but also an expression of obedience among Muslims,” he said.

The Terengganu state government did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.

The legislation was first enacted in 2001 and amended in 2016 to include heavier penalties for offences such as failing to respect Ramadan and harassing women in public.

Muslim-majority Malaysia has a dual-track legal system, in which Islam is the official religion, but operates alongside civil law. Sharia courts hold authority over personal and family matters for Muslims, who make up about two-thirds of the country’s population of 34 million.

Recent developments in Terengganu highlight the ongoing struggle between religious rule and civil freedom.

The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), which governs Terengganu, has sought to tighten religious enforcement across four of 13 Malaysian states it controls.

The party holds all 32 seats in Terengganu’s legislative assembly, leaving no opposition.

In 2021, the neighbouring state of Kelantan attempted to expand sharia criminal law to include offences such as sodomy, incest, gambling, sexual harassment and the desecration of places of worship.

Malaysia’s federal court quashed the laws in 2024, ruling them unconstitutional, in a decision that prompted mass protests by PAS supporters, who called for protection of sharia laws.

Dr. Sonya Rehman

Every year, floods destroy communities leaving behind not only destruction of property but also a significant increase in infectious diseases. Stagnant water, poor sanitation, and displacement create fertile ground for the spread of life-threatening diseases.

 Acknowledging these flood-borne diseases and knowing how to prevent and treat them is important for public health.

1. Diarrheal Diseases

Contaminated drinking water leads to cholera, dysentery, and gastroenteritis. These conditions cause severe dehydration, particularly in children. Cure & Prevention: Access to clean water, oral rehydration salts (ORS), zinc supplements, and timely antibiotics, can definitively save lives. Hand hygiene and boiling water are key preventive steps.

2. Typhoid Fever

Floodwater often contaminates food and drinking supplies with Salmonella typhi. Fever, abdominal pain, and prolonged illness are common.

Cure & Prevention: Prompt medical attention with antibiotics is crucial. 

3. Hepatitis A and E

Viral hepatitis spreads rapidly through polluted water, causing jaundice and liver complications.

Cure & Prevention: Supportive treatment with rest and hydration is usually effective. Safe food, clean drinking water, and vaccination (where available) are important.

4. Vector-borne Diseases

Stagnant pools of water become breeding grounds for mosquitoes, hence spreading malaria, dengue.

Cure & Prevention: Insecticide-treated nets, mosquito repellents, and community fumigation help reduce transmission. Early diagnosis and antimalarial or antiviral therapy save lives.

5. Skin and Respiratory Infections

Prolonged exposure to dirty water and overcrowded shelters can lead to fungal infections, scabies, and respiratory tract infections. Cure & Prevention: Keeping skin dry, using antifungal/ antibiotic creams, and improving ventilation in camps are simple yet effective measures.

Public Health Response

Flood management authorities must go beyond relief distribution. Establishing emergency medical camps, access to clean water, distributing ORS packets,ensuring vaccination drives, and promoting community awareness are extremely important.

Conclusion

Floods may be natural disasters, but the spread of disease in their aftermath is escapable. With timely preventive measures, healthcare interventions, and collective responsibility, countless lives can be saved.

HONG KONG: Alongside a massive build-up in conventional military firepower, China has embarked on a rapid and sustained increase in the size and capability of its nuclear forces, according to the U.S. military and arms control experts.

The commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, General Anthony Cotton, told Congress in March that the directive from Chinese leader Xi Jinping that China’s military be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027 was driving a build-up of nuclear weapons that could be launched from land, air and sea.

In its 2023 national defense policy, China renewed its longstanding pledge that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons under any circumstances.

The so-called “no first use” policy also includes a promise that China will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear armed state.

In response to questions, the defence ministry in Beijing said “a nuclear war cannot be won and must not be waged.” China, it said, adhered to a “nuclear strategy of self-defense and pursues a no-first-use policy.”

In its annual report on Chinese military power, the Pentagon said despite China’s public stance, its strategy probably includes a possible first use in response to conventional attacks that threaten the viability of its nuclear forces, command and control or that approximates the effect of a nuclear strike.

Beijing would also probably consider nuclear first use if a conventional military defeat in Taiwan “gravely threatened” the Communist regime’s survival, the Pentagon said in the report published late last year.

China’s defense ministry said it opposed “any attempt to hype up the so-called ‘Chinese nuclear threat’ in an effort to smear and defame China and deliberately mislead the international community.”

China is expanding and modernizing its weapons stockpile faster than any other nuclear-armed power and has accumulated about 600 warheads, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a Chicago-based non-profit.

It said China is building about 350 new missile silos and several new bases for road mobile launchers. It estimated that China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, had about 712 launchers for land-based missiles but not all were assigned for nuclear weapons.

Of those launchers, 462 can be loaded with missiles “that can reach the continental United States,” it said.

Many of the PLA’s launchers are for shorter range missiles intended to attack regional targets but most of those were not assigned for a nuclear strike, the Bulletin’s assessment said.

In its report, the Pentagon estimated that the PLA would have more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030, as it seeks to build a bigger force ranging from low-yield precision strike missiles to intercontinental ballistic missiles with multi-megaton explosive impact.

Image: Elenarts / shutterstock.com

The US president’s erratic tariff policy is disrupting global political relations. Long-standing alliances are being called into question, and new, unexpected alliances appear possible.

Today’s geopolitical environment is worse than during the past decades. The entanglement of economics calls into question established geopolitical logics. US president Donald Trump’s fixation on tariffs has sparked a trade dispute that is calling into question old friendships and alliances and opening the door to new ones. A decision such as the imposition of tariffs at levels that are beyond rational comprehension, which has already affected many countries, has far-reaching consequences for global political and economic relations. Keeping these relations in balance or upholding the old rules-based world trade order is impossible. It’s like squaring the circle.

The surprisingly harsh US tariff policy toward India illustrates the consequences for the complex relationship, the network of shifting alliances, the strategic rivalries, and the economic frictions. Because India continues to buy Russian oil in large quantities at favourable prices, thus filling Putin’s war chest, Trump imposed punitive tariffs of 25 percent, in addition to the existing tariffs. The Indian government counters, calling Trump’s policy “unfair, unjustified, and unreasonable.”

Relations at a low point

Although Donald Trump and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi already got along well during Trump’s first term and described each other as friends, India–US relations are now at a low point. The US had cultivated and nurtured its relationship with India since the mid-2000s because Washington viewed India as a counterweight to China. India, in turn, viewed the US as a strategically important partner in its conflicts with Pakistan and, above all, with China. Is all this now called into question simply because there were frictions in the tariff negotiations and India refuses to abandon its good relations with Russia?

Strong Indo-Russian relations have existed for decades, and although India is striving to diversify its arms supply, primarily through arms and technology deliveries from the United States, France, Germany, and Israel, the Indian armed forces are still dependent on cooperation with Russia. Around 60 percent of imported weapons systems originate from Russia or the Soviet Union. India justifies its purchase of inexpensive Russian oil with economic necessity, not with the alleged support of Russia in the Ukraine war. “We are a poor country” and therefore dependent on inexpensive imports, India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has repeatedly emphasized.

Relations had already soured before Trump’s tariff sanctions against India. When Donald Trump boasted in May that he had mediated in the conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and patronizingly praised the Pakistani and Indian governments for their ‘common sense’, Modi reacted angrily and emphasized that there was no need for outside mediation. Trump then invited the Pakistani army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, to the White House. Trump’s cozying up to the unelected de facto ruler helped Munir gain legitimacy and eased Pakistan’s diplomatic isolation. The White House announcement that the army chief had been received by Trump came after Munir nominated Trump for the Nobel Prize, even though Munir had hinted at Pakistan’s nuclear weapons during the last Kashmir conflict. But US-Pakistani relations are not without friction. The not unfounded accusation of state-sanctioned terrorism in Pakistan still lingers.

Indo-Pakistani relations remain frozen. The recent conflict, with military clashes over Kashmir, resulting in losses and deaths on both sides, has thwarted all initiatives for a more relaxed relationship between the two hostile countries in South Asia. India tries to keep Pakistan politically isolated. But China continues to consistently support Pakistan diplomatically and militarily. Sino-Pakistani relations have long been described as an ‘all-weather friendship’. China is now Pakistan’s largest arms supplier. Whether the US will regain more influence in Pakistan in the future because of Trump’s charm offensive remains to be seen.

Trump is pushing Modi towards Xi Jinping

India–China relations are highly complex: limited cooperation in trade and within the BRICS group, competition and rivalry for influence in Asia, conflict over decades-disputed borders in the Himalayas, and occasional military clashes characterize the relationship between New Delhi and Beijing. Like many other countries, India has sought to reduce its import dependence on China in recent years by favouring other suppliers, primarily the US and the EU. This strategy, too, is now being called into question by Trump’s tariff policy.

The failure of the tariff negotiations between the US and India has now brought the India-China relationship back onto the agenda. Modi and Xi Jinping appear to be cautiously reconciling after persistent tensions in the wake of the 2020 military clashes on the Himalayan border. After years of diplomatic distance, the Indian foreign minister travelled to Beijing in July to reduce trade barriers, initiate the resumption of direct flights, and agree on the exchange of hydrological data. This initiative is about diplomatic normalization. Modi plans to attend the next summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in China after six years of non-participation. The Indo-Chinese relationship has been characterized by ups and downs for decades. Even now, this cautious rapprochement by no means signifies mutual trust, but rather the search for alternatives in light of the strained relationship with the US.

At the end of September, Prime Minister Modi plans to travel to New York for the UN General Assembly. Will there be a detour to Washington and a visit to the White House? Perhaps Modi will also have to nominate Trump for the Nobel Prize to mend the rifts in US-India relations.

 

Related articles:

Trump’s Tariff Offensive Against BRICS (3-minute read)

Donald Trump: Self-proclaimed peacemaker lacking fortune and expertise (3-minute read)

Donald Trump’s overwhelming force/surrender style of negotiation and governing (3-minute read) 

A rash deal on tariffs could hurt US-Korea ties in the long run (3-minute read)

The shift from smart to dumb power (3-minute read)

Herbert Wulf is a Professor of International Relations and former Director of the Bonn International Center for Conflict Studies (BICC). He is presently a Senior Fellow at BICC, an Adjunct Senior Researcher at the Institute for Development and Peace, University of Duisburg/Essen, Germany, and a Research Affiliate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand. He serves on the Scientific Council of SIPRI.