Vehemently opposing the Human Rights violation report submitted by the UN Human Rights Commissioner Navnanethem Pillay, the Sri Lankan (SL) government has recently rejected her call for establishing ‘an international inquiry mechanism to further investigate the alleged rights violations (both Human Rights and Humanitarian Law) and for monitoring any domestic accountability process in Sri Lanka.

At a time when irregularities in defence procurement deals have hit headlines in the media and thereby raised issues of probity and transparency in recent times, one can not help but wonder as to how the political parties and their leaders look at larger issues of probity in and concepts of national defence and security.

The Year of Friendly Exchanges between India and the People’s Republic of China kicked off with the 17^th Special Representatives’ Meeting on the Boundary Question in New Delhi on 10-11 February, 2014, to forge closer and stronger ties between the two neighbours. India’s National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon discussed the issue with the Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi to come up with viable means to settle face-offs in the disputed border territories of India and China.

After a tumultuous year marked by massive protest rallies and violent confrontations between moderate secularists and Islamic radical forces, Bangladesh’s tryst with religious and political turmoil seems enduring. The detoriating situation has led to fear of the revival of Islamic militancy.

Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation) is a transnational Islamic religious-political organization which has presence over 20 countries across the world. HT was founded in Jerusalem in 1953 by Tokiuddin Al Nakhani. HT believes in Ummatic concept. Its website openly declares that: "It aims to revive the Islamic Ummah from the severe decline that it had reached, and to liberate it from the thoughts, systems and laws of Kufr, as well as the domination and influence of the Kufr states.

For the third year running, Maoists also known as Naxalites (Indian version of left-wing-extremism) related fatalities and incidents have come down in the affected provinces of India. The Maoist conflict review reports indicated that in the year 2013 a total 1,129 incidents took place as compared to 1,415 incidents in 2012. Similarly, the number of fatalities across the country came down to 394 in the review period from 415 in previous year.