China’s president for life under the pump: Trade, economy, Uighurs will test Xi

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India votes Modi back with landmark mandate

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New Delhi, India – Prime Minister Narendra Modi ‘s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP ) is on course to a landslide victory in the Indian elections and is set to return to power. The BJP, which ran a presidential-style campaign with Modi as its mascot and based its campaign on a hardline Hindu agenda, won 208 seats and was leading on 95 seats out of the 542 seats it contested. The party has improved its performance compared with the 2014 elections when it won 282 seats. “It is not Modi’s victory, but a win of people’s hope and aspirations,” Modi said, addressing supporters at party headquarters in New Delhi. “Whatever happened in these elections is in the past, we have to look ahead. We have to take everyone forward, including our staunchest opponents.” The return of the right-wing party on Thursday, with a bigger mandate, has caused concern among the country’s Muslim community, who suffered attacks by Hindu vigilante groups over the past five year...
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US Democratic debate night two: What did the candidates say?

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The second night of the first United States  2020 Democratic debate took place on Thursday night with a another 10 candidates taking the stage in Miami, Florida.  Thursday’s debate round saw a few more confrontations than the first night , including one between Senator Kamala Harris and former Vice President Joe Biden. In an emotional exchange, Harris challenged Biden’s stance on busing to desegregate public schools during the 1970s, telling the former vice president that she was bused as a child two decades after the Brown v Board decision to end the separate but equal policy in the US education system. Harris told Biden on Thursday that she did not believe he is a racist, but that his recollection of working with segregationist senators a generation ago in discussing partisan gridlock in Washington today was “hurtful”. Biden said Harris was mischaracterising his position. Harris asked Biden, “Do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose busing in America?” Biden s...
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Merkel: No knowledge of nationalist song played at Croatia rally

Following a wave of negative media reaction, German Chancellor Angela Merkel ‘s office has denied any knowledge of a controversial song played at a campaign rally by the Croatian ruling party which she attended last week in Zagreb. The song in question – Lijepa li si (How beautiful you are) – describes love for the different regions of Croatia , but it also includes a verse glorifying “Herceg-Bosna”, an unrecognised wartime para-state founded on Bosnian territory in 1991. Led by Croatia, six of its leaders were convicted of war crimes in 2017 by the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague . They were found guilty of participating in a “joint criminal enterprise”, which expelled the Muslim population in Bosnia  during the war in the early 1990s with the aim of creating a “Greater Croatia”, according to the ICTY. Written in 1998, the song is regularly performed by the Croatian ultra-nationalist singer Marko Perkovic Th...
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