N matter who we are, where we live and how old we happen to be or what we do for living, a daily visit to the bathroom, restroom, washroom, comfort room or whatever else one may wish to call it, is a must for as long as we live.

The recent denial of a Chinese visa to an Indian IAS officer of the Arunachal Pradesh cadre has been portrayed in India as evidence of continued Chinese intransigence on resolving the border dispute.

The India-Nepal relations have always been both intimate as well as complex. India has long been counting on the Himalayan barrier of northern Nepal as its natural defense against China. In recent times, however, India has been concerned that anti-Indian terrorist groups could use Nepal as a base of operations.

Two years before India's independence, one of the greatest heroes of India's freedom fight was reported killed in an air crash in Taiwan. The story was disbelieved then and till today there is no conclusive evidence of such an air crash. (See picture caption inside)

The Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project (IPI) may jeopardize the India-US nuclear deal. Top US officials are worried that IPI will prop up the regime in Iran which is suspected of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program and accuse it of sponsoring international terrorism.

Acommon theme running through all the speeches of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Kashmir has been the absolute necessity of minimizing human rights violations.

By all accounts the current status of the most important foreign policy initiative jointly taken by President George Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Indo-US Nuclear Deal, is that it is on the rocks.

During the run-up to the cancelled January elec-tions, one opinion cut through the political polarization and achieved some consensus among non-partisan Bangladeshis.

It was in August 2001 that the idea of establishing a Com-pact Revolutionary Zone (CRZ), from the forest tracts of Adilabad (Andhra Pradesh) to Nepal, traversing the forest areas of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar, was conceptualized at Siliguri in a high-level meeting of the Maoist leaders from India and Nepal

Intervention by states in each other's internal affairs was highlighted in Rahul Gandhi's inadvertent electioneering remarks on his family's role in splitting Pakistan, which has, unsurprisingly, stirred controversy both internally in India, and abroad.