International and Bilateral Issues:

Russia has supplied ship-killer missiles to Syria in defiance of the growing western demands for an arms embargo against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
The fire-and-forget Yakhont with a 300-km range is the Russian version of the Indo-Russian Brahmos missile. The only difference is that Brahmos uses the Indian computer and navigation system.
Under a 2007 contract, Russia was to supply two Bastion complexes with 72 Yakhont missiles.
A United Nations commission of inquiry on Monday called for an arms embargo on Syria, but Russia rejected the demand.

Indian-born American physician Siddhartha Mukherjee's Pulitzer-winning “biography” of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies , has won the £10,000 prestigious Guardian First Book award
The judges hailed the book for its “lively” and “moving” treatment of a subject that people normally dread to talk about.
Dr. Mukherjee, who is assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and is now writing a second book, called it “a great and distinct honour”.

In a message to the troops, Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Ashfaq Parvez Kayani released them from the ‘chain of command' that necessitates orders from the top for responding to attacks from any quarter.
They now had full liberty of action to respond when under attack and could use all capabilities available. “This will require no clearance at any level.''
COAS said any act of aggression will be responded with full force, regardless of the cost and consequences.
He added: “The response could have been more effective if PAF [Pakistan Air Force] had also joined in.

India goes into the Bonn conference with the tag of being the only country with which Afghanistan has signed a security pact. The U.S., which has invested the most, is still finalising the contours of a similar pact.
A few days back, an Indian consortium was given mining rights to the region's biggest untapped iron ore deposits south west of Kabul.
And if the confrontation between the west and Iran deescalates over time, India would be the only country with an alternative route largely in place for bringing in men and material for construction and exporting steel from the Hajigak mine.
At a conference early last year on Afghanistan in Turkey, while France and Japan managed to get invited, India was kept out
The conference has three themes — managing the transition as the West prepares to pull back the bulk of its forces, the political process that ought to be fashioned and long term engagement of the international community in Afghanistan.
China has been successful with the Aynak copper mine but unlike India it does not have a visible political role.
These developments add to the soft power India has always enjoyed in Afghanistan through its soap operas and films.