It appears India is in a perpetual search for the acquisition of fighter aircraft – an important arsenal for the Indian Air Force (IAF), which is woefully short of its sanctioned strength (39.5 squadrons). Although calculations available in public domain vary – ranging from sanctioned 39.5 to ambitious 42 / 46 squadrons for the IAF to maintain its combat edge – slightly over 30 current squadrons with fast depleting MiG fleet put the IAF in a difficult spot, despite braggart assertions from highest-level military commanders about India’s growing military aerospace prowess.

With the evolution of space technology, various space-faring nations and some private agencies have readied their plans to colonize the outer space. Currently, a few are working towards sending people to the Moon and Mars in order to understand the nuances behind colonizing the planets in the near future. All these grandiose proposals will actually depend upon how swiftly and successfully people will develop the heavy satellite launch vehicles in order to deliver heavier payloads in the range of different orbits and even into the deep space.

In an attempt to clip Pakistan’s terror charity Jamaat ud Dawa’s (JuD) financial wings further, the U.S. Department of the Treasury on 25 June (2014) has once again targeted the leadership and financial networks of the organization. The JuD (formerly Markaz Dawat-ul-Irshad-MDI) which is a social charily front for the deadly Jihad group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has been operating with impunity inside Pakistan since its inception.

In his famous 1990 essay in Foreign Affairs, Charles Krauthammer had declared that the unipolar moment had arrived. He had listed a few reasons to support his argument; there was no challenging power, nor was there likely any in the few decades, there was no power dispersion at the international level at that moment, the former Soviet Union’s capacity was in a decline. Thus, Krauthammer emphasised, at that time there was no first-rate power in the world that could match the capacity of the US.

Syrian crisis has achieved the unachievable. It has compelled a communist country to talk peace and democratic/capitalist countries to talk war. Fortunately, it appears that the invasion of Syria by the US forces has been stopped, at least, temporarily. An agreement on chemical weapons stockpiled in Syria has been reached following the talks held in Geneva between the Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergey V. Lavrov, and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

There is good news from the Arctic for the shipping industry.  According to data released by the Northern Sea Route Administration, the nodal agency of the Russian Federal Government which manages the Northern Sea Route (NSR), 330 applications from ships have been received since April 2013 informing the agency of their plans to transit through the NSR this summer. Of these, 213 applications were approved and 51 rejected. The reasons for rejection of applications and the fate of the balance 66 applications have not been made public.

Pakistan has been struggling to cope with a multitude of predicaments ranging from political instability to sectarian intolerance which often prompts the international community to tag this South Asian nation as a failing state. The homegrown neo-Talibanism in the tribal areas adjoining Afghanistan and Jihadi proxies in areas bordering India continues to pose myriad security challenges for Pakistan’s internal security as well as physical integrity.

The Indian Navy announced plans to dispatch a flotilla of four warships to the Asia Pacific region in March-April this year. These vessels will make goodwill visits to ports in the region and also engage in joint exercises with a number of regional navies: Singaporean Navy for the exercise Simbex in South China Sea; Malabar with the US Navy and the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force (JMSDF) off the Okinawa coast; and Indra with Russian Navy off Vladivostok.