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Sullurpeta, in the southern Indian state  of Andhra Pradesh is an average Indian town with a busy local market  area, rudimentary tea and coffee shops, and an occasional cow roaming the streets. Located on the country’s eastern coast, a little over an hour’s train journey north of the bustling city of Chennai, Sullurpeta is the gateway to the Indian Space  Research Organisation’s (ISRO) main rocket launch facility: the Satish  Dhawan Space Centre, or the Sriharikota Range.

On Friday evenings, vans and tuk-tuks  usually form long queues before Jaffna’s only shopping mall. There’s a hint of exquisite perfume in the air... Even as the boisterous crowd inside the mall swells, hundreds of tradesmen and shopkeepers around the city perform a peculiar ritual:  they kindle little bonfires in front of their stores, symbolically seeking the good by burning the bad. 

The increasingly militarized sea that China claims at the expense of its Asian neighbours could be compared to a minefield. While escalation would not be in anyone's interest, it could be triggered by accident...

When in mid-August, port customs officers in Ningbo, eastern China confiscated thousands of maps intended for export, there was no widespread publicity. The Chinese customs became interested in the maps because they did not mark Beijing's claims to the waters of the South China Sea...

The largest independence protests in years are taking place in the strategic Indonesian region of Papua.

'We are not red and white, we are the Morning Star', the demonstrators shouted. Red and white are the colors of Indonesia. The star features on the Papuan flag, which has been long banned in the country. 

More than six years after the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka, hundreds of political prisoners remain behind bars, tens of thousands of people live in temporary camps, and large areas of the country are strewn with ruins and filled with troops. The island nation is finding it difficult to close the war chapter of its history for good.

European diplomats are stepping up pressure on Indonesia to look into  the case of a Polish man who has been jailed in its easternmost region for more than a year, amid reports of his declining health. Jakub Skrzypski is the first foreigner to be found guilty of an attempt to overthrow the Indonesian government.

The Catholic Church is becoming more visible and positively perceived in Vietnam - says archbishop Marek Zalewski, the pope's first permanent envoy in Hanoi who has just begun his mission. What does the Holy See want to achieve in Vietnam?

A Slovak international relations expert called on the United States to persuade Ukraine to accept a ceasefire with Russia. His op-ed was published by the English-language daily "South China Morning Post". But in reality, the expert from the Slovak Academy of Sciences does not exist and his face was AI-generated.

It was a Saturday night in Delhi's Hauz Khas Village. Full of bars and restaurants, the area was populated by boisterous crowd of westernized Indian youth in their twenties ...   'Mentality of north Indian clients is to show that they spend a lot on their parties and hiring white-skinned manpower is the best way to stress their social status,' wedding planner Gaurav Khera explains.

'My guru is very good. She often lets me go out to cafes and shopping', Sita speaks slowly, mixing simple Hindi and broken English. As proof, she presents her latest treasure: a black handbag made of shiny artificial leather with a large gold zipper. She is wearing her best sari and carmine lipstick. She makes herself comfortable and is now ready to tell the story.

The leaders of the largest economies are meeting in the capital of India. They are to discuss the global economy, climate and changes in the international order. The hosts of this year's G20 summit want to use it to present themselves in a new role of a world's superpower and the leader of the Global South.

The West has lost its dominant position and is unable to adapt to the new situation. On the one hand, they are outraged by the fact that they no longer rule the world, on the other, Western actions are the opposite of what would serve their interests. ... The decline of the West will continue in the coming years. China, in turn, will play an increasingly larger role and everyone will have to learn to live with it, says Mahathir Mohamad, the 97-year-old former Prime Minister of Malaysia.