India

WASHINGTON — Russia stood alone Friday to veto a U.N. resolution condemning its “brutal” invasion of Ukraine, killing the measure — for now. But all other members in the solemn session of the U.N. Security Council either voted in favor or abstained, testament to rounds of intensive diplomatic pleas by the Biden administration.

The U.S.-drafted measure, which demands the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of the Russian troops battering Ukraine, was approved by 11 members. Most notably, China, thought to be in Moscow’s corner, abstained. So did two U.S. allies, India and the United Arab Emirates, in a disappointment for the U.S. Russia, as one of five permanent members, holds veto power, which it exercised.

That Russia’s “isolation” was so starkly drawn was hailed as a major victory by U.S. diplomats. And they vowed they will carry a similar resolution to the full 193-member General Assembly, where there are no vetoes and only a simple majority is needed to pass.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said that she was not surprised by the Russian veto but that it would not deter efforts to rebuke and stop Moscow’s aggression.

“Russia, you can veto this resolution, but you cannot veto our voices,” she said, looking directly at the Russian representative, Vasily Nebenzya, who, in one of the peculiarities of U.N. politics, was chairing the session as rotating president of the council.

“You cannot veto the truth,” Thomas-Greenfield continued. “You cannot veto our principles. You cannot veto the Ukrainian people. You cannot veto the U.N. Charter. And you will not veto accountability.”

Nebenzya, after the vote but with the council still in session, took Thomas-Greenfield and several other Western representatives to task for what they had condemned as egregious abuses and attacks on civilians by Russian forces.

“Who are you to moralize?” he said. Thomas-Greenfield looked back at him, stone-faced.

He and the Ukrainian ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, also had testy exchanges. Nebenzya called his Ukrainian counterpart “boorish,” while Kyslytsya said Nebenzya and his comments accusing Ukraine of repression earned him a special “seat in hell.”

Friday’s vote followed senior U.S. diplomats’ intense lobbying of their counterparts from dozens of countries to back the resolution at the Security Council or at a possible later meeting of the full United Nations, where a similar condemnation could be brought.

Russia “will be shown to be isolated on the world stage,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said a couple of hours ahead of the vote.

Although the Americans were disappointed that India and the UAE did not join in the “yes” column, it was China’s decision to abstain that gave them particular relief.

Before Friday’s meeting, U.S. diplomats expressed the likelihood that Beijing would side with Moscow. They saw glimmers of hope, however: President Xi Jinping has been publicly measured in support for the invasion. Although he values a growing relationship with Moscow, he may also be reluctant to pick too bitter a fight with the U.S. and NATO.

The Chinese representative to the Security Council, Zhang Jun, explained his country’s vote saying that although China did not support violating the sovereignty of another nation, as Russia has done, the resolution might add “fuel to the fire” rather than contributing to a diplomatic path to peace. He also said Russia’s “legitimate security aspirations” had to be addressed.

“Ukraine should become a bridge between East and West, not an outpost for confrontation among major powers,” Zhang said.

Similarly, the UAE and India said that although they abhorred Russia’s actions, they feared the resolution would shut the door to diplomacy and dialogue. Both countries, especially India, also have strong ties to Russia.

The Security Council vote came after increased economic sanctions the Biden administration imposed on Russia on Thursday — and on Putin himself on Friday — which had been augmented by a series of measures by the European Union.

Rallying broader support for a condemnation of Russia, however, had been a surprisingly difficult task for U.S. diplomats.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and his deputy, Wendy R. Sherman, as well as other officials, had been on the phone to counterparts from a host of nations, including Portugal, Turkey, Moldova, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Those efforts followed months of in-person and virtual consultations and warnings among allies about Russia’s designs on Ukraine.

India had been an especially prickly case. In addition to historical ties with Moscow, New Delhi in recent years has built a defense and diplomatic partnership with Washington.

But India was tepid in its initial response to Russia’s aggression. During a Security Council session that unfolded in New York on Wednesday night as President Vladimir Putin unleashed Russian troops on Ukraine, India’s representative called for de-escalation but did not condemn Moscow. So, while not a “yes,” India’s abstention Friday could have been worse, diplomats said.

A Biden administration official who briefed reporters on the U.S. strategy for the Security Council rejected any suggestion that the difficulty in putting together a united front reflected the impotence of consensus-based global organizations like the United Nations and especially the Security Council, where Russia and China are permanent members, along with the United States, France and Britain. Russia currently holds the rotating president’s seat on the council.

“It’s important that we send a message to Ukraine, to Russia and to the world that the Security Council will not look away,” said the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss behind-the-scenes deliberations. “The council was established to respond to precisely this scenario: a stronger country waging war against a weaker neighbor in violation of the U.N. Charter and the principles of the U.N. Charter.”

But U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who spoke to reporters after the Security Council meeting, was clearly disappointed.

The United Nations “was born out of war, to end war,” he said. “Today that objective was not achieved.”

Bitter rivals India and Pakistan will face off in Group A at next year’s 20-team competition.

Archrivals India and Pakistan will clash in a politically-charged Twenty20 World Cup match in Colombo on February 15, the International Cricket Council (ICC) said as it announced the draw on Tuesday.

The 20-team tournament will be played across eight venues – five in India and three in Sri Lanka – between February 7 and March 8, the ICC said in a statement.

Pakistan will play all their games in Sri Lanka because of their soured political relations with India.

The March 8 final is scheduled for the western Indian city of Ahmedabad but would be moved to Colombo if Pakistan reach it.

A military conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours in May overshadowed the subsequent Asia Cup 2025 in which India refused to accept the winners’ trophy from Asian Cricket Council chief Mohsin Naqvi, who is Pakistan’s interior minister.

The teams in the tournament have been divided into five groups of four, with the top two advancing to the Super Eight phase. The top four in that will qualify for the semifinals.

Defending champions India will begin their Group A campaign against the United States in Mumbai on February 7.

Sri Lanka and Australia are in Group B, which also includes Ireland, Zimbabwe and Oman.

England and West Indies, both twice winners, will face first-timers Italy and Asian sides Bangladesh and Nepal in Group C.

New Zealand, South Africa, Afghanistan, Canada and the United Arab Emirates make up Group D.

Ahead of flawed elections according to informed sources, New Delhi is engaged in high-level negotiations with the Myanmar military regime to establish new security measures, including cooperation of security firm. This measure aims to protect the security of Sittwe Port and ensure the rapid advancement of the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project and the Trilateral Highway. These discussions could pave the way for further collaboration between India and the junta, providing India with a strategic foothold in the region to counter China’s long-standing influence.

India’s strategic ambitions in Myanmar currently focus on critical mineral resources and regional connectivity. Although India publicly supports the military’s election plans, the reality is that it has no choice but to engage with resistance organizations, as all of its strategic projects fall within territories controlled by these groups. Restricted by China’s rare earth policies, India has been actively seeking alternatives.

According to a Reuters report, India may agree to collaborate with the United States to extract rare earth minerals from Kachin State for processing before exporting them to the U.S. It is reported that India has already made contact with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) to explore and collect rare earth samples from the region and discuss the feasibility of establishing transport routes. In Dawki, Meghalaya, trucks line up beside a clear river, waiting for customs clearance. Hundreds of kilometers to the east, workers are laying tracks and pouring concrete for roads that may one day connect to Myanmar and beyond.

If India’s northeast is to become a true gateway to the Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asia, India and the U.S. must jointly develop a practical framework—an interconnected network integrating roads, railways, waterways, and fiber optics—to link “Act East” initiatives with the broader Indo-Pacific. Complex Challenges For India, the primary and most formidable challenge is to complete and remove bottlenecks from key cross-border transit corridors: the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway (from Moreh to Mae Sot via Myanmar) and the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project, which connects Mizoram to the sea at Sittwe, then continues inland via river and road.

However, progress on these ambitious Indian strategic projects in Myanmar has been slow. The Modi government has shown signs of impatience, beginning limited engagement with ethnic armed organizations. Although the KIA controls key rare earth deposits in Kachin State, the region’s rugged terrain and underdeveloped infrastructure pose immense logistical challenges.

Myanmar expert Bertil Lintner has remarked that attempting to extract Myanmar’s rare earths under China’s watch, given the difficult topography and poor logistics, seems “completely insane.” The India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway, proposed as early as 2002, has progressed sluggishly. To date, only 70% of the highway has been completed. While the Indian and Thai sections were finished in 2023, progress reports on the Myanmar portion remain consistently delayed.

However, local sources reveal that Indian contractors have already begun construction in parts of Sagaing Region, operating under the protection of resistance forces and with tacit approval from the military. As for the Kaladan Project, Mizoram Chief Minister Lalduhawma stated on Wednesday that the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project (KMMTTP) is expected to be completed by 2027. The project will link southern Mizoram through Myanmar to the Bay of Bengal. He added that the Indian central government is taking steps to extend the railway line to Hmawngbuchhuah in Lawngtlai district, Mizoram’s southernmost point on the border with Myanmar.

The Key Factor: The Upcoming Election According to the military’s Global New Light of Myanmar, India will send teams to monitor the war-ravaged Myanmar election scheduled for December. With parties opposing the military excluded or boycotting the poll, Western governments and human rights organizations view the election as an attempt by the military to consolidate control by paving the way for proxy rule.

India’s current push to secure its interests in Myanmar through security firms not only aims to advance U.S.-Myanmar relations and secure junta support to propel project implementation but also to gain a first-mover advantage and avoid post-election disruptions. It also serves to divert attention from India’s new arrangements in Myanmar amid the election focus. Should India cooperate with a U.S.-linked security firm, it would undoubtedly enhance its resilience to Myanmar’s conflict risks, further solidify the U.S.-India alliance, and boost coordinated efforts to address China’s challenges. However, this approach also carries the risk of provoking domestic backlash within Myanmar. 

The unions demand the laws be withdrawn before nationwide protests they plan to hold on Wednesday.

Ten large Indian trade unions have condemned the government’s rollout on Friday of new labour codes, the biggest such overhaul in decades, as a “deceptive fraud” against workers.

The unions, aligned with parties opposing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanded in a statement late on Friday that the laws be withdrawn before nationwide protests they plan to hold on Wednesday.

One of the trade unions, Centre of Indian Trade Unions, organised protest marches on Saturday in the eastern city Bhubaneswar, where hundreds of workers gathered and burned copies of the new labour codes.

Modi’s government implemented the four labour codes, approved by parliament five years ago, as it seeks to simplify work rules, some dating to British colonial rule, and liberalise conditions for investment.

It says the changes improve worker protections. While the new rules offer social security and minimum-wage benefits, they also allow companies to hire and fire workers more easily.

Unions have strongly opposed the changes, organising multiple nationwide protests over the past five years.

The Labour Ministry did not immediately respond on Saturday to a Reuters news agency request for comment on the union demands. The government has held over a dozen consultations with unions since June 2024, an internal ministry document on the labour codes shows.

The rules allow longer factory shifts and night work for women, while raising the threshold for firms that need prior approval for layoffs to 300 workers from 100, giving companies greater flexibility in workforce management.

Businesses have long criticised India’s work rules as a drag on manufacturing, which contributes less than a fifth to the country’s nearly $4 trillion economy.

But the Association of Indian Entrepreneurs expressed concern that the new rules would significantly increase operating costs for small and midsize enterprises and disrupt business continuity across key sectors.

It asked the government for transitional support and flexible implementation mechanisms. Not all unions oppose the overhaul.

The right-wing Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, aligned with Modi’s party, called on states to implement them after consultations on some of the codes. Indian states are expected to craft rules aligning with the new federal codes covering wages, industrial relations, social security and occupational safety.

Four new labour codes come into force as India seeks to attract investment and strengthen manufacturing.

India has announced a sweeping set of labour reforms, saying it will implement four long-delayed labour codes that the government says will modernise outdated regulations and extend stronger protections to millions of workers.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on X on Friday that the overhaul would provide “a strong foundation for universal social security, minimum and timely payment of wages, safe workplaces and remunerative opportunities”.

He said the changes would spur job creation and lift productivity across the economy.

The labour ministry echoed that message, saying the reforms place “workers, especially women, youth, unorganised, gig and migrant workers, firmly at the centre of labour governance”, with expanded social security and portable entitlements that apply nationwide.

The government says replacing 29 fragmented laws with four unified codes covering wages, industrial relations, social security and occupational safety will simplify compliance and make India more attractive for investment.

Many of India’s existing labour laws date back to the British colonial era and have long been criticised by businesses as complicated, inconsistent and a barrier to scaling up manufacturing, an industry that still accounts for less than 20 percent of India’s nearly $4-trillion gross domestic product (GDP).

The new rules formalise changes approved by parliament in 2020 but stalled for years due to political resistance and pushback from several states and unions.

The reforms introduce significant shifts in how factories operate. Women can now legally work night shifts, firms have greater room to extend working hours, and the threshold for companies requiring prior approval for layoffs has been raised from 100 to 300 workers.

Union opposition

Officials argue this flexibility will encourage employers to expand operations without fear of lengthy bureaucratic delays.

For the first time, the codes also define gig and platform work, offering legal recognition and expanding social protection to a fast-growing segment of the labour force.

Government estimates suggest the gig economy could reach more than 23.5 million workers by 2030, up sharply from about 10 million in 2024/25.

Economists say the changes may initially strain small and informal firms but could strengthen household incomes over time.

“In the short term, they may hurt small, unorganised firms, but in the long run … with minimum wages and increased social security, it could be positive for both working conditions and consumption,” said Devendra Kumar Pant of India Ratings & Research, speaking to the Reuters news agency.

Trade unions, however, remain fiercely opposed. “The labour codes have been implemented despite strong opposition from the trade unions and it will snatch the workers’ rights, including fixed-term jobs and rights available under the earlier labour laws,” said Amarjeet Kaur of the All India Trade Union Congress.

EXPLAINER

At least five people killed in deadly earthquake close to the capital city Dhaka on Friday.

A powerful earthquake shook Bangladesh close to the capital city, Dhaka, on Friday, killing at least five people and injuring many others, the government said.

Here is what we know so far.

What happened?

An earthquake of magnitude 5.5 hit Bangladesh at 10:38am (04:38 GMT), the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The shaking lasted for 26 seconds.

Dhaka resident Shadman Sakif Islam told Al Jazeera that “small ripples” he noticed in his coffee were followed by a “massive shake that started occurring without any warning” as the earthquake took hold.

“My chair and the table started shaking wildly, and I was stuck there 10-15 seconds without processing what was going on,” he added.

“I never felt anything like this in my whole life … I felt like riding on a boat, riding massive waves one after another,” he added.

Where in Bangladesh did the earthquake hit?

The tremor was felt near the city of Narsingdi, which is 33km (16 miles) from Dhaka. Many buildings in Dhaka sustained damage from the resulting quake.

The epicentre was in Narsingdi’s Madhabdi district, according to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department.

The tremors were felt as far away as in the neighbouring Indian city of Kolkata, more than 325km (about 200 miles)  from the epicentre. No casualties have been reported there.

Narsingdi is famous for its textile craft and garment industry.

What do we know about the casualties?

According to government figures, at least five people have been killed and roughly 100 people have been injured.

Local media has reported higher death toll figures, but these have not been confirmed.

On Friday, Dhaka-based DBC Television reported that at least six people had died in the capital – three when a building roof and wall collapsed and three pedestrians who were struck by falling railings.

Are earthquakes common in Bangladesh?

Earthquakes do not take place in Bangladesh very frequently, despite the country being close to the boundaries of the Indian, Eurasian and Burmese tectonic plates and thus, seismically vulnerable.

In 2023, an earthquake of magnitude 5.8 struck near Sylhet in northeastern Bangladesh, according to the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ). There were no reports of casualties or major damage from the quake.

In 2021, a magnitude-6.1 earthquake hit the border between India and Myanmar. Tremors were felt in Bangladesh’s Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar. There were no confirmed deaths in Bangladesh.

Magnitudes are based on a logarithmic scale, meaning for each whole-number increase on the scale, the magnitude is increased by a factor of 10.

Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka, said, “It was one of the biggest earthquakes in recent history and was very close to the capital city. The entire city was in panic. Social media videos have shown buildings shaking.”

Indian-administered Kashmir – On the night of September 2, Shabir Ahmad’s home was swallowed by mud and swept into the river after relentless rains triggered a landslide in Sarh village in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Reasi district.

“I had been building my house brick by brick since 2016. It was my life’s work. Only less than a year ago, I had finished constructing the second floor, and now there is nothing,” the 36-year-old father of three children told Al Jazeera.

Ahmad’s was among nearly 20 houses in Sarh lost to the Chenab River that night, including one belonging to his brother, as dozens of families helplessly watched their farmlands, shops and other properties worth millions of rupees vanish without a trace.

“We don’t even have one inch of land left to stand on,” said Ahmad from a government school in Sarh, where his family and other villagers were sheltering after the deluge.

The tragedy at Sarh was among the latest of increasingly frequent climate disasters across India that destroy lives and livelihoods, and displace millions of people to an uncertain future.

According to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), climate-related disasters forced more than 32 million people from their homes in India between 2015 and 2024, with 5.4 million displacements recorded in 2024 alone – the highest in 12 years. This makes India one of the three nations most affected by internal displacements due to climate change in that period, with China and the Philippines being the top two.

Moreover, in the first six months of 2025, more than 160,000 people were displaced across India due to natural disasters, as the country received above-average rainfall, triggering huge floods and landslides, and submerging hundreds of villages and cities.

Zero adaptation money for two years

To help millions of people like Ahmad who are vulnerable to the climate crisis, India’s Ministry for Environment, Forest and Climate Change launched a National Adaptation Fund on Climate Change (NAFCC) in 2015. Its goal was to finance projects that help communities cope with floods, droughts, landslides, and other climate-related stresses across India.

Managed by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), the flagship scheme supported interventions in agriculture, water management, forestry, coastal protection, and climate-resilient infrastructure. Between 2015 and 2021, it financed more than two dozen projects, benefitting thousands of vulnerable households.

During a roundtable in Brazil’s Belem city last month – before the 30th United Nations climate change conference, or COP30, which officially opened on Monday – India’s minister for environment, forest and climate change, Bhupender Yadav, said the global meet should be the “COP of adaptation”.

“The focus must be on transforming climate commitments into real-world actions that accelerate implementation and directly improve people’s lives,” he said, according to a statement released by the Indian government on October 13. He highlighted “a need to strengthen and intensify the flow of public finance towards adaptation”, said the statement.

In another statement last Tuesday, a day after COP30 opened, India said climate “adaptation financing needs to exceed nearly 15 times current flows, and significant gaps remain in doubling international public finance for adaptation by 2025”.

“India emphasised that adaptation is an urgent priority for billions of vulnerable people in developing countries who have contributed the least to global warming but stand to suffer the most from its impacts,” said the statement.

But the actions of the Indian government back home do not match those words at the climate summit.

Government records show NAFCC received an average of $13.3m annually in the initial years of its launch. But the allocation steadily declined. In the financial year 2022-2023, the fund’s spending was just $2.47m. In November 2022, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change moved NAFCC from the category of a government “scheme” to a “non-scheme”, providing no clear outlay for funds.

Since the financial year 2023-2024, zero money has been earmarked for the crucial climate adaptation fund.

As a result, several climate adaptation projects in areas prone to floods, cyclones and landslides have been stalled even as widespread climatic devastation continued to kill and displace people. While presenting the federal budget in parliament in February this year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman did not even include the words “climate change” and “adaptation” in her hour-long speech.

“Announcing lofty adaptation goals abroad while starving the fund that safeguards our own citizens is misleading and a moral failure,” Raja Muzaffar Bhat, an environmental activist in Indian-administered Kashmir, told Al Jazeera, calling Yadav’s statements in Brazil “a gross distortion of reality and a dangerous distraction”.

Al Jazeera reached out to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for their comments on cutting NAFCC funds, but has not received any response.

An official in the Environment Ministry, however, defended the government’s shift in funding priorities, claiming the authorities have not abandoned climate adaptation efforts.

“Funds are now being channelled through broader climate and sustainability initiatives rather than standalone schemes like the NAFCC,” the official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

‘Climate injustice at its most blatant’

Meanwhile, climate crises continue to kill and displace people across India.

In the Darbhanga district of Bihar, India’s poorest state, 38-year-old Sunita Devi has been displaced five times in seven years as floods in the nearby Kosi River repeatedly destroyed her mud house built on bamboo stilts.

“We live in fear every monsoon. My children have stopped going to school because we shift from camp to camp,” she said, holding on to the family’s only lifeline: A government ration card that allows them to buy food grains at subsidised rates or get them for free.

This year saw one of the worst monsoons across India, as above-average rains killed hundreds and displaced millions. In Bihar alone, floods affected more than 1.7 million people, killed dozens and submerged hundreds of villages.

In Odisha, another impoverished eastern state, fisherman Ramesh Behera*, 45, watched his house in Kendrapara district’s Satabhaya village collapse into the Bay of Bengal in 2024, as rising seas continue to erase entire hamlets. “The sea swallowed my home and my father’s fields. Fishing is no longer enough to survive,” he told Al Jazeera.

Behera was forced to give up his family’s traditional livelihoods – fishing and farming – and was driven into distress migration to survive. He now works as a manual labourer in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-administered Kashmir.

In West Bengal state’s Sundarbans Islands, one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, rising seas and coastal erosion have consumed lands and homes, forcing thousands of families in the fragile ecosystem to relocate.

In the southern state of Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam district, 29-year-old Revathi Selvam says saltwater intrusion from the Bay of Bengal has poisoned her farmland and their paddy harvest has collapsed.

“The soil is no longer fertile. We cannot grow rice any more. We may have to leave farming altogether,” she told Al Jazeera, adding that many in her village are considering migrating to the state capital, Chennai, to work as construction workers.

In the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, 27-year-old hotel worker Arjun Thakur saw his livelihood vanish when a cloudburst in 2024 buried the small tourist lodge where he worked. “The mountain broke apart. I saw houses collapse in seconds,” he recalled.

Thakur now stays with his relatives in the state capital Shimla, unsure if he can ever return to his native place.

Yet, with funds for NAFCC gone, people like Devi, Behera, Selvam and Thakur have no access to a government scheme that helps them cope with their tragedies.

A government official, who previously worked with NAFCC, told Al Jazeera several schemes approved by the government under NAFCC were never implemented after funds began to dry up as early as 2021, exposing thousands of households to a recurring climate crisis.

“The fund was created to help vulnerable communities adapt before disasters struck, and to reduce the kind of repeated displacement we are now witnessing,” the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

“Once the allocations stopped, states lost a key channel to protect people living on the front lines of floods, landslides, and droughts. Now, these families are left to rebuild on their own, again and again.”

Activist Bhat said the government’s attitude to the NAFCC “signals that adaptation is no longer a priority, even as India faces record internal displacement from climate extremes”.

“People are losing homes, farms, and livelihoods, and the government has left them entirely to their fate. If this continues, the next generation will inherit a country where climate refugees are a daily reality,” he said.

“This is climate injustice at its most blatant.”

‘Migration no longer a choice but a survival strategy’

Climate Action Network South Asia is a Dhaka-based coalition of about 250 civil society organisations, working in eight South Asian countries to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change. Its estimate says roughly 45 million people in India could be forced to migrate by 2050 due to the climate crisis – a threefold increase over current displacement figures.

“We are a vast nation with hot and cold deserts, long coastlines, and Himalayan glaciers. From tsunamis on our shores to flash floods, cloudbursts, and landslides in the mountains, we face the entire spectrum of climate extremes,” Bhat told Al Jazeera.

Bhat said it is not just nature causing displacement, but also unchecked “development” of vulnerable areas.

“Earlier, floods or cloudbursts were occasional, and population density was low. Now, haphazard construction around mountain passes, waterways and streams, along with rampant deforestation, has amplified these disasters,” he said.

“People who once fled New Delhi’s air pollution to settle down in [the Himalayan states of] Himachal Pradesh or Uttarakhand now find themselves living under a constant threat of landslides. Migration is no longer a choice but a survival strategy.”

Bhat warned that neglecting people affected by climate-related displacement could cause the world’s largest climate migration crisis.

“We are no longer behaving like the welfare state promised in our constitution. We pay taxes like a developed country but get services that leave people to die in a climate crisis… We are utterly unprepared for the mass migrations that will inevitably come from both our mountains and our plains,” he said.

Back at the temporary government shelter in Kashmir’s landslide-hit Sarh village, Ahmad fears an uncertain future for him and his family.

“If land and shelter are not provided, we will not merely be homeless; we will become refugees in our own land, cast aside without place or protection,” he said.

“When the state neglects the consequences of climate change, it issues a declaration: You are free to drown, but not free to rebuild.”

A suspect accused of having links to a deadly car bomb in the Indian capital New Delhi, was seen being led into court. The suspect is one of three men accused of involvement in the attack.

South Africa secured their first Test victory in India since 2010 as they triumphed in a low-scoring thriller inside three days in Kolkata.

The Proteas, who won the World Test Championship at Lord’s in the summer, had trailed by 30 runs on first innings – but reversed that to pull off a 30-run victory as the hosts, needing only 124 to win, were bowled out for 93 in 35 overs.

Veteran spinner Simon Harmer, 36, did the damage with four wickets in each innings for match figures of 8-51.

India were a batter short in their second innings after captain Shubman Gill suffered a neck injury on day two.

Gill remains in hospital for observation, with India having announced before play on Sunday that he would take no further part in the game.

More to follow.

Explosives reportedly detonate during forensic investigation as part of probe into earlier blast in India’s capital New Delhi.

At least seven people have been killed and 27 more injured after a cache of confiscated explosives detonated in a police station in Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir’s main city.

The stockpile exploded late on Friday night at a police station in the Nowgam area in the south of Srinagar.

Most of those killed were policemen and forensic team officials who were examining the explosives at the time of the detonation, unnamed sources told Indian broadcaster NDTV. Two officials from the Srinagar administration also died in the blast.

With five people still in critical condition, the death toll could continue to climb, according to the media outlet.

“Not a terror attack. Police say it’s a very unfortunate incident,” NDTV’s senior executive editor Aditya Raj Kaul said in a post on social media.

“The blast happened when a forensics team and the police were checking the explosive material stored at the police station,” he said.

#BREAKING: J&K Police Top Officials tell me that the massive blast at Nowgam Police Station around 11:20pm tonight happened when FSL team along with Police and Tehsildar were inspecting the large Ammonium Nitrate explosive which was confiscated earlier. Casualties in the blast.… pic.twitter.com/67U143jOFg

— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) November 14, 2025

The huge blast comes days after Monday’s deadly car explosion in New Delhi, which killed at least 12 people near the city’s historic Red Fort and which officials have called a “terror” incident.

The explosion in the Indian capital occurred just hours after police arrested several people and seized explosive materials as well as assault rifles.

Police said the suspects were linked to Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), a Pakistan-based group that is seeking to end Indian rule in Kashmir, and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, a Kashmir offshoot linked to JeM.

Police in Indian-administered Kashmir also detained more than 650 people as part of their investigation following the New Delhi car blast.

According to reports, the Nowgam police station, where the blast took place on Friday, had led an investigation into posters that were displayed around the area by JeM, warning it would carry out attacks on security forces and “outsiders”.

Police said their investigation into the posters exposed a “white-collar terror ecosystem, involving radicalised professionals and students in contact with foreign handlers, operating from Pakistan and other countries”.

Police also recovered nearly 3,000kg (3 tonnes) of ammonium nitrate, a commonly used material in bomb making, saying the armed group was stockpiling enough explosives to carry out a major attack in India.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and both claim the Himalayan territory.

The two countries have fought three wars over Kashmir since the nations were partitioned in 1947, and tensions remain high between New Delhi and Islamabad over the status of the territory.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is heading for a sweep in the legislative assembly elections in the eastern state of Bihar.

The election in India’s third-most populous state, with 74 million registered voters across 243 assembly constituencies, has been viewed as a key test of Modi’s popularity, especially among Gen Z: Bihar is India’s youngest state.

Vote counting concluded on Friday after two phases of voting on November 6 and November 11.

Here is more about the election results and what they mean.

What was the result of the Bihar election?

As of 5:30pm (1200 GMT) on Friday, the NDA had won two seats and was leading in 204 out of 243, while the opposition Mahagathabandhan, or the Grand Alliance, with the Indian National Congress and the regional Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) as the main parties, was leading in just 33 seats, according to the Election Commission of India (ECI).

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which is currently not part of either alliance, was leading in one seat. The All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), another party that does not belong in either major alliance, had won or was leading in the remaining five seats.

BJP and allies

• Within the NDA, the BJP had won or was leading in 93 seats with a 20.5 percent overall vote share. 
• The regional Janata Dal (United) or JD(U), a key NDA constituent, had won or was leading  in 83 seats, with 19 percent votes overall.
• Another local NDA ally, the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) or LJPRV, had won or was ahead in 19 seats.
• The Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RSHTLKM) was leading in four seats.
• The Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular), or HAMS, had won or was leading in five seats.

Opposition alliance

• The Congress, India’s main opposition party, had won or was leading in five seats with 8.7 percent of the overall vote.
• The Grand Alliance’s biggest party, RJD, had or was leading in 26 seats with 22.8 percent of the vote.
• The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation), or CPI(ML)(L), was leading in one seat.
• The Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), was ahead in one seat.

How are Tejashwi Yadav and Maithili Thakur doing?

As votes were being counted, two of the most watched constituencies were Raghopur and Alinagar.

Raghopur has long been an RJD stronghold. But for some time during counting, Tejashwi Yadav, the son of RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav and the party’s de facto chief now, was trailing behind BJP candidate Satish Kumar in the Yadav family bastion. This had switched to a 13,000 vote lead for Yadav by 1200 GMT, with most votes counted. If Yadav were to still lose, it will be a historic defeat for what was, many years, the first family of Bihar. He previously won the seat in 2015 and 2020. His father has also won from Raghopur twice in the past, while his mother, Rabri Devi, has won it three times.

Popular folk singer, Maithili Thakur, representing the BJP, was leading in the Alinagar seat, with the RJD’s Binod Mishra trailing by 8,588 votes — another close contest.

What is driving the results?

Female voters

Political analysts attribute the gains for the key governing party in this election to the appeals Modi’s party has made to female voters.

In September, the BJP transferred about $880m to 7.5 million women – with 10,000 rupees ($112.70) paid directly into their bank accounts – under a seed investment programme called the Chief Minister’s Women Employment Scheme. Modi’s office said: “The assistance can be utilised in areas of the choice of the beneficiary, including agriculture, animal husbandry, handicrafts, tailoring, weaving, and other small-scale enterprises.”

Women make up nearly half of all eligible voters in Bihar, where women’s political participation is on the rise. Female representation in the state has historically been low. But in 2006, Bihar reserved 50 percent of seats on local bodies for women, which has boosted their political representation.

Female voter turnout in the state has often surpassed that of men since 2010. The turnout among women this time was 71.6 percent, compared with 62.8 percent for men.

Voter ID checks

The opposition has also accused the ECI of deliberately revising the official voter list to benefit the BJP via a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls over the past few months. Registered voters were required to present documents proving they were Indian nationals and legal residents of the constituency in which they voted.

As Al Jazeera reported in July, however, many of the poorest people in Bihar do not hold any of the several documents that the ECI listed as proof of identity.

The opposition argues, therefore, that this new requirement could disenfranchise poor and vulnerable groups, including disadvantaged castes and Muslims, who typically vote for the RJD-Congress alliance.

In September, the ECI removed 4.7 million names from Bihar’s rolls, leaving 74.2 million voters. In Seemanchal, a Muslim-majority area, voter removals exceeded the state average.

What is the significance of these results?

Bihar is India’s third most populous state, home to 130 million people. It sends the fifth-highest number of legislators to parliament.

The latest vote has been viewed as a key popularity test for Modi, who was sworn in for his third premiership after he won the national elections in June 2024.

But the BJP failed to secure a majority in the national election on its own, forcing it to rely on regional allies such as the JD(U) to form the government.

Since the national election, the BJP has won most major state elections, and the streak seems to be continuing in Bihar.

New Delhi, India – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet late Wednesday described the car explosion which jolted New Delhi earlier in the week as a “heinous terror incident, perpetrated by antinational forces”.

The Indian government’s words, two days after a slow-moving car blew up near the Red Fort, an iconic 17th-century monument in New Delhi, killing at least 13 people and wounding several, have since led to questions about how it might respond, raising concerns over the prospect of a new spike in regional tensions.

Earlier this year, in May, the Indian government had declared a new security doctrine: “Any act of terror will be treated as an act of war.”

That posture had come in the aftermath of an intense four-day air war between India and Pakistan, after India blamed Islamabad for an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 civilians.

Now, six months later, as India grapples with another attack – this time, in the heart of the national capital of the world’s most populous country – the Modi government has so far avoided blaming Pakistan.

Instead, say political analysts, New Delhi’s language suggests that it might be veering towards intensifying a crackdown on Kashmir, at a time when Islamophobia and anti-Kashmiri sentiments have skyrocketed across India in the aftermath of the car explosion.

A crackdown in Kashmir

Even before the blast in New Delhi, police teams from Indian-administered Kashmir had been carrying out raids across the national capital region, following a lead from Srinagar, which led to the seizure of a significant amount of explosives and arrests of nearly a dozen individuals.

Among the suspects are several Kashmiri doctors – including Umar Nabi, a junior doctor who is suspected of being the driver of the car that exploded – who were serving in hospitals in satellite towns outside New Delhi.

Since the explosion near the Red Fort, police in Indian-administered Kashmir have detained more than 650 people from across the Valley as they dig deeper into what sections of the Indian media are describing as a “white-collar terror module” that had gathered enough explosives for the biggest attack on India in decades, if members hadn’t been arrested.

Police teams have raided several locations, including the residences of members of banned sociopolitical outfits.

Indian forces on Thursday also demolished the home of Nabi, the alleged car driver. In recent years, Indian authorities have often demolished homes of individuals accused of crimes without any judicial order empowering them to do so, even though the Supreme Court has ordered an end to the practice. Rights groups have described the act of demolishing the homes of suspects as a form of collective punishment.

Students of medicine and practising doctors in Kashmir are also increasingly facing scrutiny – more than 50 have been questioned for hours, and some have had their devices seized for investigation.

“There is a sense of complete disbelief among all of us,” said a junior doctor at a government-run hospital in Srinagar, the capital of the federal territory of Indian-administered Kashmir.

The doctor requested anonymity to speak, fearing repercussions from the police.

The 34-year-old has seen conflict in Kashmir up close, treating injured protesters firsthand for weeks on end, during previous clashes with security forces. “But I never thought that we would be viewed with suspicion like this,” he said, adding that the explosion that killed 13 in New Delhi was “unfortunate and should be condemned”.

“It is unreal to us that a doctor can think of such an attack,” the doctor said. “But how does that malign our entire fraternity? If a professional defects and joins militants, does it mean that all professionals are terrorists?”

‘Away from Pakistan, towards an enemy within’

India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir since the nations were partitioned in 1947 as the British left the subcontinent. Today, India, Pakistan and China all control parts of Kashmir. India claims all of it, and Pakistan seeks control of all of Kashmir except the parts held by China, its ally.

After the April attack in the resort town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, India had launched missiles deep inside Pakistan. Modi claimed that the attacks killed more than 100 “terrorists”. Pakistan insisted that civilians and soldiers, not armed fighters, were killed. Pakistan, which had rejected Indian accusations of a role in the April killings in Pahalgam, hit back.

Over four days, the nuclear-armed neighbours fired missiles and drones across their contested border, striking each other’s military bases.

When the Modi government agreed to a ceasefire on May 10, it faced domestic criticism from the opposition – and some sections of its own supporters – for not continuing with attacks on Pakistan. The government then said Operation Sindoor is “only on pause, not over”.

Six months later, though, New Delhi has been significantly more cautious about who to blame for the Delhi blast.

“There is a lot of due outrage this time, but there is no mention of Pakistan,” said Anuradha Bhasin, a veteran editor in Kashmir and author of a book, A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370, about how the region changed under the Hindu majoritarian Modi government. The Kashmir administration has banned her book in the region.

“This time, it is not about a crackdown on Pakistan,” she told Al Jazeera. “The public anger is being directed away from Pakistan, towards ‘an enemy within’.”

She said the Modi government appeared to be aware that finger-pointing at Pakistan “would create pressure from the public to take [military] action” against the neighbour.

Instead, she said, “public anger can be assuaged by creating any enemy.”

‘Pandering to domestic gallery’

Analysts point to the Modi government’s use of the term “antinational forces” to describe the alleged perpetrators of the Delhi attack.

That’s a phrase the Modi government has previously used to describe academics, journalists and students who have criticised it, as well as other protesters and dissidents. Since Modi took office in 2014, India has continuously slid in multiple democracy indices for alleged persecution of minorities in the country and its crackdown on press freedom.

To Sumantra Bose, a political scientist whose work focuses on the intersection of nationalism and conflict in South Asia, the Indian cabinet resolution was significant in the way that it shied “away from naming and blaming Pakistan, which was a rather reflexive reaction for decades”.

After the fighting in May, the Indian government learned, the hard way, Bose said, that “there is no appetite and indeed no tolerance anywhere in the world for a military escalation in South Asia.”

Bose was referring to the lukewarm global support that India received after it bombed Pakistan without providing any public evidence of Islamabad’s links with the attackers in Pahalgam.

Instead, India was left disputing the repeated assertions of United States President Donald Trump that he had brokered the ceasefire between New Delhi and Islamabad, even as he hosted Pakistan’s army chief, praised him, and strengthened ties with India’s western neighbour. India has long held the position that all disputes with Pakistan must be resolved bilaterally, without intervention from any other country.

The contrast in New Delhi’s response to this week’s blast, so far, appears to have struck US State Secretary Marco Rubio, too.

Reacting to the Delhi blast, Rubio said “it clearly was a terrorist attack,” and “the Indians need to be commended. They’ve been very measured, cautious, and very professional on how they’re carrying out this investigation.”

India’s new security doctrine – that an act of terror is an act of war – “was a dangerous, slippery slope”, said Bose, who has also authored books on the conflict in Kashmir. His last work, Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict, published in 2021, is also banned in Kashmir.

The doctrine, he said, was aimed at pandering to Modi’s “domestic gallery” – a way of showing muscular strength, even at the risk of “serious military escalation” between India and Pakistan.

Now, by using terms like “white-collar terrorism”, analysts said Indian officials risked blurring the line between Kashmiri Muslims and armed rebels fighting Indian rule.

“The term doesn’t make sense to me, but it does put the needle of suspicion on young, educated Muslim professionals,” said Bose.

“The fact has been for decades that militants come from all sorts of social backgrounds in Kashmir – from rural farming families, working-class backgrounds, to educated professionals,” Bose argued. “If anything, it reflects the discontent that has been in the society across the groups.”

Bhasin, the editor from Kashmir, said the Indian government’s posture would lead to “adverse economic impact for Kashmiri Muslims and further ghettoisation, where they find it harder to get jobs or a place to rent”.

‘Everyone is so scared’

Kashmiris across India are already facing the brunt of hate and anger following the Delhi blast.

Since the bomb exploded on Monday in New Delhi, Indian social media platforms have been rife with rampant hate speech against Muslims.

Nasir Khuehami, the national convener of a Kashmiri student association, has spent four days fielding calls from Kashmiri Muslims.

“Across northern Indian states, Kashmiris are being asked to vacate their homes, there is active profiling going on, and everyone is so scared,” Khuehami told Al Jazeera, speaking from his home in Kashmir.

This is only the latest instance of this pattern playing out: An attack in Kashmir, or by a Kashmiri armed rebel, has often led to harassment and beating of Kashmiri Muslims – students, professionals, traders, or even labourers – living in India.

Khuehami said “to end this endless cycle of crises for Kashmiris” – where they are detained at home and abused outside – “the government needs to take confidence-building measures.”

Otherwise, Khuehami said, the Modi government was marginalising Kashmiris in India. By doing that, he said, India would be playing into the hands of the very country it accuses of wanting to grab Kashmir: Pakistan.

Islamabad, Pakistan – Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has blamed India for the “suicide attack” that struck outside the district and sessions court building in Islamabad on Tuesday afternoon.

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said at least 12 people were killed and hospital authorities confirmed more than 30 wounded, including at least five in critical condition.

The blast occurred as Islamabad hosted several international conferences and while sports events were also under way nearby. The Sri Lankan cricket team, which was attacked in March 2009 by gunmen in Pakistan, was playing a one-day international match in Rawalpindi, about 10km (6 miles) from the court.

The suicide attack marked a dramatic escalation of violence at a time when the military was focused on rescuing hundreds of cadets held by fighters in a separate incident at Cadet College in South Waziristan, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, near the Afghan border.

The assault on the college in Wana, the district capital, occurred a day earlier when an explosives-laden car rammed the campus entrance. Security forces say at least 300 cadets have been rescued so far and that operations to free the remainder are ongoing.

On Tuesday, another bomb in Dera Ismail Khan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, injured at least 14 security personnel.

Sharif blamed India for both the Islamabad and Wana incidents without offering evidence. “Both attacks are the worst examples of Indian state terrorism in the region. It is time for the world to condemn such nefarious conspiracies of India,” he said.

A day earlier, a car explosion in New Delhi killed at least 13 people. India’s Home Minister Amit Shah said on X that India would “hunt down each and every culprit behind this incident”.

Here is what we know so far about the Islamabad blast.

Where did the blast happen?

The suicide bomber struck after 12:30pm (07:30 GMT) at the entrance of the District Judicial Complex on Srinagar Highway, one of Islamabad’s main arteries.

Opened three years ago, the complex handles thousands of litigants and draws large numbers of lawyers daily. The complex has several gates, with a side entrance used primarily by judges and a main gate for litigants.

Key political and civic institutions – the Parliament, Supreme Court, and offices of the president and prime minister – are about 15km (9 miles) away.

Has anyone claimed responsibility?

The Jamaa-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) armed group, claimed responsibility for the attack.

The TTP, an ideological ally of the Afghan Taliban, itself denied any role in the Islamabad attack.

Pakistan has suffered a series of attacks from the TTP in recent years that have led to the deaths of hundreds of security officials and civilians. Pakistan has repeatedly accused the Afghan Taliban of sheltering the TTP, a charge Kabul denies. The TTP are at the centre of recent tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, including a series of deadly cross-border clashes.

Pakistan’s capital, however, has largely stayed peaceful in recent years. The last major attack in Islamabad was in December 2022, when a car rammed a police post and a police officer died. The TTP had claimed responsibility for that attack.

What did witnesses see?

As Islamabad’s main district court, the judicial complex sees thousands of litigants visiting the court premises for their various cases. Thousands of lawyers also come to the complex for their daily duties.

Raja Aleem Abbasi, a member of the Islamabad Bar Council, was taking a break in the main courtyard when the blast shook the compound.

“It was a deafening blast, and complete chaos and panic set in. As we regained composure, I saw the head of the suicide bomber, which had flown from outside, rolling just in front of me, merely a few feet away,” a shaken Abbasi told Al Jazeera.

Abbasi, 60, said hundreds tried to flee, but the main entrance was blocked. “Soon, the entrance used for the judges was open for the public, allowing us to escape,” he added.

He estimated about 2,000 people were on the premises when the device detonated.

Mushahid Dawar, another lawyer, said he had left the compound on his motorcycle minutes before the blast but returned when he heard it.

“I had left for the office from the court when I heard the blast, and instinctively I turned back. However, as I saw so many bodies strewn on the road, I just could not bear the sight and decided to leave,” Dawar told Al Jazeera.

What is the wider context?

The attacks coincide with a fraught period in Pakistan-Afghanistan ties. The two neighbours were locked in a week of clashes last month before Qatar and Türkiye mediated a ceasefire in Doha on October 19.

Follow-up talks in Istanbul have, however, failed to resolve differences, and negotiations collapsed again over the weekend following the third round of talks.

Pakistan long enjoyed close ties with the Afghan Taliban and many Pakistanis welcomed the militants’ return to power in August 2021.

But relations have soured, largely over Pakistan’s accusations that Kabul has provided sanctuary to the TTP, an armed group that emerged in 2007 and has waged a sustained campaign against Islamabad.

Besides the TTP, Pakistan also accuses Afghanistan of sheltering the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and the ISIL affiliate in Khorasan Province (ISKP). The Taliban government denies responsibility for Pakistan’s internal security concerns.

Regional powers including China, Iran and Russia have urged the Taliban to act against the TTP. That message was reiterated at the Moscow Format consultations in early October, attended by Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s foreign minister.

Shortly after the blast, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif wrote on X that the country was “in a state of war”.

“Anyone who thinks that the Pakistan Army is fighting this war in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and the remote areas of Balochistan should take today’s suicide attack at the Islamabad district courts as a wake-up call: this is a war for all of Pakistan, in which the Pakistan Army is giving daily sacrifices and making the people feel secure,” he wrote.

Why is India being blamed?

The year 2025 has seen shifting regional alignments. Relations between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban, once close, now stand at a breaking point, despite the current year seeing several attempts to patch up the relationship.

Pakistan appointed an ambassador to Kabul and engaged in multiple diplomatic dialogues, but relations have deteriorated.

India, which long treated the Taliban as a Pakistani proxy and shunned contact, has, on the other hand, strengthened its diplomatic and strategic ties in recent years, as witnessed by a visit by Afghanistan’s foreign minister to India last year.

Islamabad has historically accused New Delhi of stoking unrest in Balochistan and has more recently alleged Indian support for the TTP, charges India rejects.

What do experts say?

Analysts warn that if tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan remain unresolved, instability is likely to spill across borders and provoke further attacks inside Pakistan’s cities.

Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, a security analyst in Islamabad, said the TTP has the capability to strike major cities but has largely concentrated its operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“The Pakistani Taliban believe that if they continue attacking security personnel in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, they can weaken the control of administration and that will allow them opportunity to capture parts of the province, where they can make their bases,” Mehsud told Al Jazeera.

Referring to the recent Pakistan-Afghanistan clashes and the failed talks, Mehsud warned of a possible surge of violence in major cities. “If there is a war to take place against Afghanistan, Pakistan must be ready for the blowback, and to suffer losses,” he said. “There can be attacks against its key installations and symbols.”

HONG KONG — Vaishnavi Srinivasagopalan, a skilled Indian IT professional who has worked in both India and the U.S., has been looking for work in China. Beijing’s new K-visa program targeting science and technology workers could turn that dream into a reality.

The K-visa rolled out by Beijing last month is part of China’s widening effort to catch up with the U.S. in the race for global talent and cutting edge technology. It coincides with uncertainties over the U.S.’s H-1B program under tightened immigrations policies implemented by President Trump.

“(The) K-visa for China (is) an equivalent to the H-1B for the U.S.,” said Srinivasagopalan, who is intrigued by China’s working environment and culture after her father worked at a Chinese university a few years back. “It is a good option for people like me to work abroad.”

The K-visa supplements China’s existing visa schemes including the R-visa for foreign professionals, but with loosened requirements, such as not requiring an applicant to have a job offer before applying.

Stricter U.S. policies toward foreign students and scholars under Trump, including the raising of fees for the H-1B visa for foreign skilled workers to $100,000 for new applicants, are leading some non-American professionals and students to consider going elsewhere.

“Students studying in the U.S. hoped for an (H-1B) visa, but currently this is an issue,” said Bikash Kali Das, an Indian masters student of international relations at Sichuan University in China.

China wants more foreign tech professionals

China is striking while the iron is hot.

The ruling Communist Party has made global leadership in advanced technologies a top priority, paying massive government subsidies to support research and development of areas such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors and robotics.

“Beijing perceives the tightening of immigration policies in the U.S. as an opportunity to position itself globally as welcoming foreign talent and investment more broadly,” said Barbara Kelemen, associate director and head of Asia at security intelligence firm Dragonfly.

Unemployment among Chinese graduates remains high, and competition is intense for jobs in scientific and technical fields. But there is a skills gap China’s leadership is eager to fill. For decades, China has been losing top talent to developed countries as many stayed and worked in the U.S. and Europe after they finished studies there.

The brain drain has not fully reversed.

Many Chinese parents still see Western education as advanced and are eager to send their children abroad, said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore.

Still, in recent years, a growing number of professionals including AI experts, scientists and engineers have moved to China from the U.S., including Chinese-Americans. Fei Su, a chip architect at Intel, and Ming Zhou, a leading engineer at U.S.-based software firm Altair, were among those who have taken teaching jobs in China this year.

Many skilled workers in India and Southeast Asia have already expressed interest about the K-visa, said Edward Hu, a Shanghai-based immigration director at the consultancy Newland Chase.

With the jobless rate for Chinese aged 16-24 excluding students at nearly 18%, the campaign to attract more foreign professionals is raising questions.

“The current job market is already under fierce competition,” said Zhou Xinying, a 24-year-old postgraduate student in behavioral science at eastern China’s Zhejiang University.

While foreign professionals could help “bring about new technologies” and different international perspectives, Zhou said, “some Chinese young job seekers may feel pressure due to the introduction of the K-visa policy.”

Kyle Huang, a 26-year-old software engineer based in the southern city of Guangzhou, said his peers in the science and technology fields fear the new visa scheme “might threaten local job opportunities”.

A recent commentary published by a state-backed news outlet, the Shanghai Observer, downplayed such concerns, saying that bringing in such foreign professionals will benefit the economy. As China advances in areas such as AI and cutting-edge semiconductors, there is a “gap and mismatch” between qualified jobseekers and the demand for skilled workers, it said.

“The more complex the global environment, the more China will open its arms,” it said.

“Beijing will need to emphasize how select foreign talent can create, not take, local jobs,” said Michael Feller, chief strategist at consultancy Geopolitical Strategy. “But even Washington has shown that this is politically a hard argument to make, despite decades of evidence.”

China’s disadvantages even with the new visas

Recruitment and immigration specialists say foreign workers face various hurdles in China. One is the language barrier. The ruling Communist Party’s internet censorship, known as the “Great Firewall,” is another drawback.

A country of about 1.4 billion, China had only an estimated 711,000 foreign workers residing in the country as of 2023.

The U.S. still leads in research and has the advantage of using English widely. There’s also still a relatively clearer pathway to residency for many, said David Stepat, country director for Singapore at the consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates.

Nikhil Swaminathan, an Indian H1-B visa holder working for a U.S. non-profit organization after finishing graduate school there, is interested in China’s K-visa but skeptical. “I would’ve considered it. China’s a great place to work in tech, if not for the difficult relationship between India and China,” he said.

Given a choice, many jobseekers still are likely to aim for jobs in leading global companies outside China.

“The U.S. is probably more at risk of losing would-be H-1B applicants to other Western economies, including the UK and European Union, than to China,” said Feller at Geopolitical Strategy.

“The U.S. may be sabotaging itself, but it’s doing so from a far more competitive position in terms of its attractiveness to talent,” Feller said. “China will need to do far more than offer convenient visa pathways to attract the best.”

Ho-Him writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Fu Ting in Washington and researchers Yu Bing and Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed to this report.

At least 13 people were killed and 20 injured when a car exploded near the Red Fort metro station in India’s capital New Delhi on Monday evening. Police say the blast, believed to have originated from a Hyundai i20 car, is being investigated under anti-terrorism laws.

The planned delivery of three AH-64E Apache Guardian attack helicopters to the Indian Army has taken an unusual turn. The Antonov Airlines An-124 cargo aircraft carrying the rotorcraft to India returned to the United States with the Apaches still onboard, after a long stopover in the United Kingdom. A Boeing spokesperson told TWZ that the company was looking into “logistical issues” that they said had interrupted the transportation.

The unexpected movements were tracked by plane spotter @KiwaSpotter, who noted the heavy-lift An-124 serial UR-82008 arriving at Mesa Gateway Airport, also known as Phoenix–Mesa Airport, in Arizona, on October 30, after a flight from its operating base in Leipzig, Germany.

After being moved from the nearby Boeing facility in Mesa, the Apaches were loaded aboard the An-124, which then departed the United States on November 1 and flew to East Midlands Airport in England. When loaded, the helicopters were already painted in their distinctive Indian Army desert camouflage scheme. At least one of the Apaches could be identified in the photos, as serial IA-7105.

The An-124 and its Apache cargo then remained on the ground at the British airport for eight days before the aircraft departed, not headed toward India but returning over the Atlantic to its original point of departure at Mesa Gateway Airport, where they touched down on November 8.

The Apaches were later seen after being unloaded, now under tow, with their rotors removed.

The Indian Army has already received its first three AH-64Es in July this year, part of a six-aircraft deal worth $796 million that was signed back in February 2020, during U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to New Delhi.

The first trio of rotorcraft was flown by Antonov Airlines An-124 to Air Force Station Hindon.

“These … helicopters will enhance the Army Aviation wing’s operational effectiveness, especially in challenging terrains,” Indian Minister of Defense Rajnath Singh said at the time.

#WATCH | The first batch of Apache attack Helicopters for the Indian Army has reached India. The choppers will be deployed in Jodhpur by the Indian Army: Indian Army officials

(Source: Indian Army) pic.twitter.com/zvSC5pXvgZ

— ANI (@ANI) July 22, 2025

These AH-64s are currently being used to train crews at Nashik, in Maharashtra state, western India, home of the Indian Army Aviation Training School. Ultimately, the Indian Army Apaches are expected to be stationed at Nagtalao Army Aviation Base, north of Jodhpur, in northwestern India.

The latest batch of three helicopters would have completed the Indian Army deliveries… had they arrived.

TWZ approached Boeing for more information, and a company spokesperson provided the following statement:

“We are currently addressing logistical issues caused by external factors to complete the delivery process for the remaining aircraft. We remain closely engaged with the U.S. government and Indian Army and continue working to execute our contract as expeditiously as possible to meet India’s needs and fleet requirements.”

It remains unclear what the exact nature of the problem was, and whether it was related to the Apaches, the An-124 carrying them, or some other factor in their long aerial transport to India. Potentially, “logistical issues” could involve something technical, relating to any of the aircraft involved, but they might also involve something more mundane, perhaps related to customs or other paperwork. There’s even the potential for some kind of diplomatic or political interference in the transport process, although it would be a little surprising if this wasn’t signaled in advance.

Unusually, New Delhi has ordered AH-64Es for two different armed services.

Previously, 22 Apaches were ordered by the Indian Air Force, and all have been successfully delivered.

The current delay in delivery comes amid New Delhi’s increasing willingness to buy new military aircraft from the United States. Other aircraft acquisitions in this category include the C-130J Hercules transport aircraft, the CH-47F Chinook heavy-lift helicopter, and the P-8I Neptune maritime patrol aircraft (as the Poseidon is locally known).

At the same time, there have been increasing strains in U.S.-India politics of late. Within India, there have been growing questions about the reliability of the United States as a strategic partner. Tensions worsened after the terrorist attack in India in April and the ensuing India-Pakistan military clashes, after which the Trump administration imposed a 50 percent tariff against India. These penalties also reflected U.S. displeasure about continued Indian purchases of Russian oil.

What is clear is the Indian Armed Forces’ urgent need to bolster its attack helicopter capabilities, especially as it seeks to better counter its increasingly high-tech adversaries — chiefly China and Pakistan.

The same Boeing spokesperson told TWZ that the company plans to complete the delivery of the remaining Apaches on order for the Indian Army as soon as possible. We will continue to track this story and the eventual fate of the three AH-64s that the service is still waiting for.

Contact the author: [email protected]