Nepal, India sign four agreements during PM Deuba’s India visit

Nepal and India signed four agreements during Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's three-day visit to India on Saturday.

The two countries signed agreements on International Solar Alliance, technical assistance related to railways, supply of petroleum products and technical expertise between Nepal Oil Corporation and Indian Oil Corporation.

Earlier, Prime Minister Deuba and his Indian counterpart held a one-on-one meeting at Hyderabad House.

The agreements were signed after the meeting between the delegation of two countries.

As per the technical assistance agreement related to railway, India will help in producing railway manpower.

 

PM Deuba, Indian PM Modi inaugurate Janakpur-Jayanagar rail service

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi inaugurated the Janakpur-Jayanagar rail service on Saturday.

The prime minister of the two countries jointly inaugurated the rail service by showing a green flag during a program organized at Hyderabad House, New Delhi this afternoon.

With the inauguration, the train will carry passengers regularly from Jayanagar to Kurtha from Sunday.

The train, which will run up to 35 km from Jayanagar of India to Kurtha of Janakpurdham, will be operated twice a day.

 

 

 

Sri Lanka imposes state of emergency amid protests

A nationwide state of emergency has been declared in Sri Lanka, a day after protests outside the president's house turned violent, BBC reported.

Protesters stormed barricades and have been accused of setting vehicles ablaze near President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's private residence on Thursday.

The military has since been deployed and now has the power to arrest suspects without warrants.

Sri Lanka is in the midst of a major economic crisis.

It is caused in part by a lack of foreign currency, which is used to pay for fuel imports.

Faced with power cuts lasting half a day or more, and a lack of fuel and essential food and medicines, public anger has reached a new high in the island nation of 22 million, according to BBC.

The protest outside President Rajapaska's house on Thursday began peacefully, but participants said things turned violent after police fired tear gas, water cannons and also beat people present.

Protesters retaliated against the police by pelting them with stones.

At least two dozen police personnel were reportedly injured during the clashes, according to an official cited by Reuters news agency.

On Friday, 53 demonstrators were arrested, and local media reported that five news photographers were detained and tortured at a police station. The government said it would investigate the latter claim.

Despite the crackdown, protests continued, and spread to other parts of the country.

Demonstrators in the capital carried placards calling for the president's resignation, BBC reported.

 

Russia aims Ukraine disinformation at Spanish speakers

Though Russia is the country that invaded its neighbor Ukraine, the Kremlin’s version relentlessly warns social media users across Latin America that the US is the bigger problem, Associated Press reported.

“Never forget who is the real threat to the world,” reads a headline, translated here from Spanish. The article, originally posted in late February on Twitter by RT en Español, is intended for an audience half a world away from the fighting in Kyiv and Mariupol.

As that war rages, Russia is launching falsehoods into the feeds of Spanish-speaking social media users in nations that already have long records of distrusting the US. The aim is to gain support in those countries for the Kremlin’s war and stoke opposition against America’s response.

Though many of the claims have been discredited, they’re spreading widely in Latin America and helping to make Kremlin-controlled outlets some of the top Spanish-language sources for information about the war. Russian outlet RT en Español is now the third most shared site on Twitter for Spanish-language information about Russia’s invasion, according to the Associated Press.

“RT’s success should be concerning to anyone worried about the success of democracy,” said Samuel Woolley, a University of Texas professor who researches disinformation. “RT is geared toward authoritarian control and, depending on the context, nationalism and xenophobia. What we risk is Russia gaining control of an increasingly large market share of eyeballs.”

US-based tech companies have tried to rein in Russian outlets’ ability to spread propaganda following the invasion, by banning apps linked to the outlets, demoting the content and labeling state-run media outlets. The European Union has banned RT and Russian state-owned Sputnik, Associated Press reported.

Yet the content thrives on Spanish-language websites, message boards and social media pages. While Russia also creates propaganda in languages including English, Arabic, French and German, it’s found particular success with Spanish-speaking users, according to recent research by Esteban Ponce de Leon, a Bogota, Colombia-based analyst with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a Washington think tank that receives funding from the US and other governments.

Russia’s discredited claims about Ukraine and the US include allegations that the invasion was necessary to confront neo-Nazis, or that the US has secretly backed biological warfare research in Ukraine. In fact, the US has long publicly provided funding for biological labs in Ukraine that research pathogens with the hope of curbing dangerous disease outbreaks, according to the Associated Press.

That type of disinformation can easily flow from Latin America into other countries — including the US— that have large Spanish-speaking communities. Sometimes it’s passed between relatives who might be sharing the claims across continents with one another. It’s another potential entry point for Russia, and a reminder of the sophistication of the Russians’ efforts.

’There’s different avenues where RT is actively engaging communities across Latin America and the United States,” said Jacobo Licona, a researcher at the Democratic firm, Equis Labs. “That’s part of the reason RT has been so effective, they’ve been building this network or community ahead of time.”

As one of the world’s most-spoken languages, Spanish is of obvious interest to any government or organization intent on shaping global public opinion. But Russia’s focus on the Spanish language goes further, reflecting the historic and strategic importance of Central and South America during the Cold War, said analyst Ponce de Leon of the Atlantic Council.

For decades, the Soviet Union sought to exploit historic tensions between the US and Latin America by supporting communist factions and larger allies including Cuba. Russia has sought to portray the US as a colonizing empire, even as the Kremlin has worked to strengthen its own ties to the hemisphere, Associated Press reported.

RT’s Spanish language service began in 2009, four years after its English language version. It has rapidly gained ground, and is now far more popular than its English counterpart. RT en Español has more than 16 million followers on its Facebook page, nearly triple the number of its English site.

High profile names in Latin America have in some cases given RT a hand. Ex-Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa began hosting a weekly political talk show for RT in 2018, less than a year after he left office. Since then he’s been convicted of corruption charges that forced him to flee Ecuador for Europe. Authorities in Ecuador have also accused him of trying to destabilize his successor’s government, according to the Associated Press.