IN the third week of July, the conservative government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, took another decisive step towards abandoning the post war pacifist Constitution of Japan. Using the brute majority in the lower house of the parliament, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) passed a raft of laws that will allow the deployment of Japanese troops on foreign soil. The government has sought to justify its move on the basis of the “collective security” agreement it has with the United States and a few other countries.

YEMEN, among the poorest countries in the Arab world has been subjected to unprovoked aggression by its wealthier neighbour, Saudi Arabia since the last week of March. The Saudi Kingdom has assembled an alliance that includes all the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states barring the honourable exception of Oman. The other non GCC monarchies in the region like Jordan and Morocco have been participating in cowardly air raids targeting heavily populated Yemeni cities. A Moroccan F-16 fighter jet was shot down over Yemen in the first week of May.

IT has been one of the biggest crises to hit the region since the exodus of Vietnamese boat people in the 1970's. The sight of helpless Rohingya refugees packed in rickety boats floating on the high seas with nowhere to go has finally grabbed the attention of the international community. In the first fortnight of May, hundreds of Rohingya refugees were found abandoned in the waters off the coast of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Thousands more remain unaccounted for.

IT has been one of the biggest crises to hit the region since the exodus of Vietnamese boat people in the 1970's. The sight of helpless Rohingya refugees packed in rickety boats floating on the high seas with nowhere to go has finally grabbed the attention of the international community. In the first fortnight of May, hundreds of Rohingya refugees were found abandoned in the waters off the coast of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Thousands more remain unaccounted for.

THE centennial commemoration to mark the mass killings of Armenians was observed in many parts of the world on April 24. In Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, there was a solemn ceremony attended by world leaders, including the Russian and French presidents. Armenians all over the world remember the killings and mass deportations of Armenians from Turkey a hundred years ago as “the great calamity”. The Armenian government as well as the Armenian diaspora  have been working tirelessly to make the international community recognise the terrible fate that had befallen their people.