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June 24, IndiaNet – India’s first high-speed rail line, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train, has hit yet another roadblock. Three massive tunnel-boring machines (TBMs), ordered from Germany’s Herrenknecht AG but manufactured in Guangzhou, China, have been stuck in Chinese customs for eight months. The delay has frozen progress on a critical 12-kilometer undersea tunnel, marking the project’s ninth major setback. The Stuck Machines The TBMs were supposed to arrive in India by October 2024. Instead, they sit in a bonded warehouse in Guangzhou, with no clear timeline for release. India’s National High-Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRC) blames Beijing for “deliberate obstruction,” while Chinese authorities remain silent. The Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor—India’s first bullet train, modeled on Japan’s Shinkansen—was supposed to slash travel time between the two cities from 7 hours to 2. Funded largely by a ¥1.25 trillion ($15 billion) Japanese loan at 0.1% interest over 50 years , the project was sl...

Barely 72 hours after a fragile cease-fire with Iran, Israel’s air force unleashed 15 precision airstrikes on southern Lebanon on June 27, 2025, killing at least one civilian and wounding four others. The speed and ferocity of the assault—executed in under 20 minutes—underscored a grim pattern: when deterred by Iran’s missile arsenal, Israel pivots to weaker neighbors like Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Lebanon’s Impotent Response Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the strikes as a “flagrant violation of sovereignty,” but his words carried no weight. Lacking Iran’s missile deterrent, Lebanon could only watch as Israeli jets rained JDAM-guided bombs on its soil. The asymmetry was stark: while Iran’s retaliatory missiles forced Israel to the negotiating table, Lebanon’s helplessness invited further aggression The Broader Pattern of Israeli Escalation This was no isolated incident. Since October 2023, Israel has: Struck Syria over 400 times, targeting Iranian proxies and infrast...

After years of record harvests, India now faces an ironic predicament: its granaries are overflowing . For a nation where millions still struggle with hunger, this might sound like good news. But in reality, it’s exposing deep structural flaws in India’s food security system. The Numbers Behind the Crisis India’s state-run Food Corporation of India (FCI) reports 39 million tons of rice in stock , plus 32 million tons of unmilled paddy (equivalent to another 23 million tons of rice). For a country of 1.4 billion, this might seem manageable—if not for one critical fact: India simply doesn’t have enough storage capacity. How Did This Happen? The roots of this glut trace back to 2022 , when a severe drought slashed harvests and sent food prices soaring. To stabilize domestic markets, New Delhi banned wheat exports and restricted rice and sugar sales. Then, fate intervened: the following years brought unusually favorable monsoons, leading to bumper crops. By mid-2023, India lifted its ban ...