THE Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has become a frequent visitor to India, was in the Indian capital yet again, in the second week of December. This is his third visit to India since taking over as prime minister. Abe had struck a good personal rapport with the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Japan and India have grown extremely close during the ten years of UPA rule. New Delhi's tilt towards the anti-China alliance led by the United States and Japan alliance had started during the UPA rule.

THE Indo-Canadian Workers’ Association (ICWA) of Canada held a public meeting in Surrey in British Columbia on December 20, 2015 and released its annual calendar of 2016. ICWA has been publishing a calendar, dedicated to the memories of Gadharites, for the past nine years. It contains all the important dates of events related the Gadhar Movement.

THE surprise victory of Mauricio Macri, a multimillionaire businessman in the presidential elections in Argentina on November 22, marks a comeback for the Right in the country's politics after a long gap. Macri won narrowly, getting just 51 percent of the votes polled. He will be taking over a highly polarised nation. All the same, the result is being viewed as not only a setback for Argentinians but also for the Left in the entire region. It is for the first time in 15 years that an incumbent Left wing government holding office has been defeated.

IT seemed that Paris would bring nations together to lay their commitment to climate change and reducing the carbon emission to ensure that there is a reduction of global greenhouse gases (GHG) to levels keeping average surface temperature rise to “well below 2 degrees Celsius” above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Finally the agreement was for 1.5 degrees Celsius. But is that true? Is this going to happen?

IT has been an electoral sweep for the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party led by the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi in the general elections held on November 8. It was the first open elections held in the country after a gap of more than twenty five years. In the last free elections held in 1990, the NLD had won a landslide victory. The military junta ruling the country at the time refused to accept the electoral outcome. Harsh political repression followed. Suu Kyi was first arrested in 1989. In all, she spent around 15 years under house arrest.