India | Pakistan

United States President Donald Trump on Friday said India and Russia seem to have been “lost” to China after their leaders met with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, highlighting his split from New Delhi and Moscow as Beijing pushes a new world order. “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!” Trump wrote in a social media post accompanying a photo of the three other world leaders together at Xi’s summit in China. Asked about Trump’s post, the Indian foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters in New Delhi that he had no comment. Representatives for Beijing and Moscow could not be immediately reached for comment on Trump’s post on his Truth Social platform. Xi hosted more than 20 leaders of non-Western countries for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Putin and Modi were seen holding hands at the su...

The Foreign Office (FO) has said that India failed to provide Pakistan with complete details regarding the recent floods through established diplomatic procedures.

Authorities in India banned the X account of an Austrian economist after he shared a map showing Khalistan having been carved out of India and called for “dismantling India”, the local media reported on Friday. The Khalistan movement is a Sikh separatist movement seeking an independent state for the religious minority carved out of Indian territory. It is considered a security threat by the Indian government. The economist, Gunther Fehlinger-Jahn, appeared to be calling for the creation of Khalistan in his post on X, stating: “I call to dismanlte India into ExIndia. Narendra Modi is Russia’s man. We need friend of freedom for @KhalistanNet.” The map also seemed to be implying the separation of various other regions of India. According to NDTV, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology “flagged the viral post and directed X to withhold access to the account for Indian users. The account has since been disabled in India”. The report added that the post resulted in “...

Neeraj Chopra does not usually worry about distance as long as he gets on the podium but the poster boy of Indian athletics knows he may have to throw beyond the 90 metres mark if he is to defend his javelin world title in Tokyo this month. A mop-haired Chopra became India’s first track-and-field athlete to win Olympic gold in the Japanese capital four years ago, and has since added a Diamond League trophy, world championships gold and a silver medal at the 2024 Paris Games. In November last year, the 27-year-old brought in three-time Olympic champion Jan Zelezny as his coach in a bid to throw even farther. Six months into the partnership, Chopra registered a personal best of 90.23m in Doha earlier this year. But the Indian has fallen well short of 90m in his last five outings and threw a modest 85.01m in the Diamond League Final in Zurich last week, finishing a distant second behind German Julian Weber’s monster throw of 91.51m. While a string of high 80m throws have kept him in the top two in each of his la...

Flooding across northern India killed at least five people on Wednesday, officials said, with more thunderstorms expected and local media reporting that 10,000 people have been evacuated from the river banks in capital Delhi. The monsoon season in India has been particularly intense this year, killing at least 130 people in August alone in north India, wiping out villages and destroying infrastructure. The latest round of flooding has hit northern areas of occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Punjab, where the Chenab and Tawi rivers have risen above the danger mark at several spots. The swollen rivers have triggered landslides and damaged many roads, disconnecting parts of the mountainous regions of Jammu and Himachal from the rest of India. At least five people were killed today after landslides battered Rajouri and Mandi districts in Jammu and Himachal Pradesh, respectively, officials said. The India Meteorological Department warned of heavy to very heavy rain in the region today, w...

The River Chenab entered a high flood situation on Wednesday at Marala Headworks after India released large volumes of water into the Chenab and Sutlej rivers from upstream.

The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), brokered by the World Bank in 1960, has been a cornerstone of transboundary water cooperation between India and Pakistan for over six decades.

United States President Donald Trump said on Monday that India has offered to reduce its tariffs on US goods to zero amid deteriorating ties between the two countries. While calling the US’s relationship with India “one-sided”, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “They have now offered to cut their tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago.” The Indian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to Trump’s comments, which follow the implementation of total duties as high as 50 per cent on Indian goods. Relations between the two countries have plummeted, with 50pc levies on many Indian imports into the US taking effect last week as punishment for New Delhi’s massive purchases of Russian oil, a part of US efforts to pressure Moscow into ending its war in Ukraine. Since his return to the White House this year, Trump has wielded tariffs as a wide-ranging policy tool, with the levies upending global trade. Amid this dispute, India has grown closer to Beijing and Moscow. Indian Pr...

Punjab Minister for Information and Culture Azma Bokhari said on Monday that India has issued another flood warning to Pakistan after releasing more water into the Sutlej River, intensifying the crisis across Punjab.

PDMA warns of fresh wave of 800,000 cusecs entering Chenab from India; 'Super flood' breaches riverbanks

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said New Delhi was committed to improving ties with Beijing in a key meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping on Sunday, as both countries resolved to put aside differences from a years-long border standoff. Modi is in China for the first time in seven years to attend a two-day meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders from Central, South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East in a show of Global South solidarity. “We are committed to progressing our relations based on mutual respect, trust and sensitivities,” Modi told Xi during the meeting on the sidelines of the summit, according to a video clip posted on the Indian leader’s official X account. The bilateral meeting took place five days after Washington imposed punishing 50 per cent tariffs on Indian goods due to New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil. Analysts say Xi and Modi are looking to present a united front against Western pressure. Modi s...

United States President Donald Trump has scrapped plans to attend an upcoming summit of the ‘Quad’ grouping in India amid deteriorating ties between Washington and New Delhi, US newspaper The New York Times (NYT) reported on Saturday. Relations between the two countries have plummeted, with 50 per cent levies on many Indian imports into the US taking effect this week as punishment for New Delhi’s massive purchases of Russian oil; a part of US efforts to pressure Moscow into ending its war in Ukraine. As ties between both nations deteriorate, NYT reported on Saturday that the breakdown in relations was caused after a phone call on June 17. “After telling [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi that he would travel to India later this year for the Quad summit, Mr Trump no longer has plans to visit in the fall, according to people familiar with the president’s schedule,” the NYT reported, citing “interviews with more than a dozen people in Washington and New Delhi”. The NYT mentioned how Trump’s repeated claims ab...

The Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) has warned that over 70,000 cusecs of additional water may flow into Pakistan from India in the coming days, heightening the risk of fresh flooding in Punjab.

India will not “bow down” and instead focus on capturing new markets, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said in his first public remarks since Washington imposed steep tariffs on Indian goods. The 50 per cent levies on many Indian imports into the United States took effect this week as punishment for New Delhi’s massive purchases of Russian oil, part of US efforts to pressure Moscow into ending its war in Ukraine. Since his return to the White House this year, US President Donald Trump has wielded tariffs as a wide-ranging policy tool, with the levies upending global trade. Speaking at a construction industry event in New Delhi on Friday, Goyal said India was “always ready if anyone wants to have a free trade agreement with us”. But, the trade minister added, India “will neither bow down nor ever appear weak”. “We will continue to move together and capture new markets.” The latest tariffs salvo from Trump has strained US-India ties, with New Delhi earlier criticising the levies as “unfair, unjustified and unreas...

ISLAMABAD: The flooding in Punjab was made worse by New Delhi’s suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty and the collapse of the gates on an Indian barrage. The middle section of Madhopur barra­­ge, which spans the Ravi River in India, was washed away by surging water, the Reu­ters news agency reported, referring to video broadcast by Indian media a day earlier. Pakistani officials said that this damage unleashed an uncontrolled flow across the border, flooding some parts of Lahore on Friday. An Indian government source, while confirming that two gates of Madhopur barrage had broken, denied there had been any deliberate attempt to flood Pakistan. Indian authorities say they are trying to stem the flow on the Ravi, despite the damage to the barrage, and the flow was being controlled by the Ranjit Sagar Dam upst­ream, Reuters quoted a source as saying. The official claimed that India was doing whatever it could, blaming incessant rain for causing the flood. Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2025

Canada and India announced new high commissioners to each other’s countries on Thursday, in the latest sign of improving ties frayed by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegation that India was linked to the killing of a Sikh separatist leader on Canadian soil. India’s previous high commissioner left Canada in October. Ottawa said he was among six diplomats who were expelled after they were linked to the murder of separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, while India said it had withdrawn the envoy. India also said that same day that it had ordered the expulsion of six high-ranking Canadian diplomats, including the then-acting high commissioner. Trudeau’s successor, Mark Carney, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed to reinstate senior diplomats when they held their first bilateral meeting in Canada in June. Canada’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday that veteran diplomat Christopher Cooter would take up the post, which had been vacant since the previous incumbent left last year. “The ap...

Heavy rain swept across the Himalayas, killing at least 36 people in India over the past 24 hours and forcing authorities to open major dams, in turn triggering flood alerts on three rivers in neighbouring Pakistan. In the deadliest single disaster, a landslide killed 33 people near the Hindu mountain shrine of Vaishno Devi on a pilgrim route in India-occupied Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday afternoon, officials said. Three more people died as floodwaters burst the banks of rivers in the district of Doda and swamped low-lying areas, authorities added. A view of a houseboat on the overflowing Jhelum River following heavy rain, in Srinagar, Indian-occupied Kashmir, on August 27. — Reuters About 200 children were stranded on Wednesday after flood water engulfed a school building in the northern state of Punjab, local media said. Vehicles tumbled off the Madhopur barrage over the Tawi river when parts of it collapsed after being lashed by heavy rain overnight into Wednesday morning, video images showed. There were n...

The Pakistan Army has been called in to assist the civil administration in Punjab after India released water into the River Ravi, triggering a sharp rise in water levels and creating a potential flood situation.

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) on Tuesday issued a high-flood alert for the Ravi River after India released additional water into the tributary. A devastating monsoon season marked by record rainfall, glacier melt, and widespread flooding has exposed Pakistan’s extreme vulnerability to climate change. The “high flood” warnings this week have put Punjab on high alert and prompted mass evacuations in various places. In a high flood alert posted at 5:40pm, the NDMA said: “Heavy rainfall expected in the upper regions of Ravi over the next 48 hours. The Indian dam Thein is 97 per cent full, and its spillways may be opened at any time. Due to potential discharge, a high-level flood is expected in the Ravi River. High-level flow is also expected in Pir Panjal, Bain, Basantar and Deek.” The NDMA cautioned citizens to stay away from rivers, drains and low-lying areas, along with avoiding unnecessary travel. It also issued instructions to agencies and emergency services to remain on high alert. A sta...

India on Tuesday released additional water into the Sutlej River, prompting a flood alert in Punjab as water levels continue to rise.