The lab leak theory pertaining to the origin of  SARS-Cov-2—the pathogen that causes Covid-19—is now gaining traction  after being dismissed as a conspiracy theory last year. With fingers pointed at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, there have been calls to probe the origin of the pandemic. China is really not interested in finding out the source, says Dr. Tun-Hou Lee, Professor of Virology  (Emeritus) at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston, USA.  It's pretty much a repeat of what happened with SARS in 2002-2003 and  China needs to reform its top-down political system that is quite unhealthy for control of infectious diseases, he told StratNews Global.  Listen in for more.

Podcast Producer:Manas R. Tarai 

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s recent meetings with key officials   in the United States have showcased not the strength but the extent of  India-US relations. As StratNews Global Editor-in-chief Nitin Gokhale tells Ashwin Ahmad the publicising of Jaishankar’s meeting with the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines will be viewed with keen interest as normally the US national intelligence would be expected to speak to the national security establishment in India rather than the MEA. The fact that the news of the meeting was tweeted by the External Affairs Minister himself is a sign of the growing confidence by both sides in the India-US strategic partnership. Such signals will not be lost on the world, especially China.

Podcast Producer :Manas R. Tarai 

As India’s new IT rules kicked in on Wednesday, WhatsApp took the government to court. Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Union Minister of Communications and IT, tried to allay fears by saying the government is committed to ensuring the right to privacy for its citizens but it also has to maintain law and order and ensure national security. Traceability of problematic content is a contentious issue as it could mean compromising end-to-end encryption and user privacy. If you are opening an entire system of communications, you are leaving it vulnerable to hackers, says Kazim Rizvi, founding director of policy think-tank ‘The Dialogue’. There are methods that are privacy-focused, less intrusive, and can help the government meet its target without violating the privacy of users, he told StratNews Global. Listen in for more.

Podcast Producer: Manas R. Tarai 

The recent announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is good news and could perhaps pave the way for a more durable peace. Former ambassador and West Asia analyst Anil Trigunayat tells Ashwin Ahmadthat if the ceasefire holds for the next 10-12 days it could pave the way for direct negotiations. But he also adds that any lasting peace would be conditional on an alliance or a unity government between Hamas and Fatah. Without this any further negotiation on an Israel-Palestinian solution will be impossible.

Podcast Producer : Manas R. Tarai 

For over 14 months, Taiwan was seen as a role model when it came to containing the pandemic. That changed in the past couple of weeks, with over 1500 cases of community transmission detected. How did that happen? A combination of factors led to the surge in infections, as Professor Chunhuei Chi, Director, Center for Global Health at Oregon State University told StratNews Global. Add to that shortage of vaccines and the earlier reluctance of people to get inoculated as they saw no need. Listen in for more.

Podcast Producer : Manas R. Tarai

Given their strong relations, the recent China Bangladesh tit-for-tat was a surprise to many. The Chinese warning to Dhaka that its bid to get closer to the Quad would “substantially damage relations” was followed up by an equally strong but polite response from Bangladesh asking China to refrain from “interference” in its foreign policy. In an in-house discussion    StratNewsGlobal Editor-in-chief Nitin Gokhale told Ashwin Ahmad that Bangladesh’s recent economic development over the past two years had ensured the deferential attitude Dhaka has shown towards Beijing for the past decade or so was slowly changing. Such an attitude has ramifications for China as it may now realise that its ‘wolf-warrior diplomacy’ has its limits.

Podcast Producer : Manas R. Tarai 

China may have defended the uncontrolled re-entry of its rocket, instead blaming the West for running a ‘smear campaign’ against it but not everyone is convinced. This is irresponsible behaviour, says former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly who has logged over 500 hours in space. There are agreements that stipulate rockets of the size as big as the Chinese one must have a controlled re-entry but China designed the rocket without that capability, he told StrateNews Global. There should be consequences for not playing by the rules, added Kelly. He also talked about space junk, which he says is a bigger problem that’s getting worse. Listen in for more.

Podcast Producer : Manas R. Tarai

Some experts have suggested that a nationwide lockdown  in India now may help provide some relief from the exponential surge in  Covid-19 cases. But Dr Raman Gangakhedkar, former head of the Division  of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases, Indian Council of Medical  Research (ICMR), advises against any such move. I think the best  solution is calibrated lockdown and micro-containment zones as a  nationwide lockdown would result in massive collateral damage, he told  StratNews Global. We need to decentralise our approach, use our testing  resources judiciously and push for massive vaccination rollout, he  added. Listen in for more.

Podcast Producer : Manas R.Tarai

The current spike in the number of Coronavirus cases in India can be attributed to a number of factors, including new variants of the pathogen, says Ravi Gupta, Professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge. There’s no evidence yet of any of the mutated strains being more dangerous than the original one, he told StratNews Global.

Prof.  Gupta, who was named last year as one of Time Magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People of the Year’ in recognition of his work to bring about the second-ever cure of an HIV-infected person (The  London Patient), has been focused on Covid-19 of late, drawing from his research on HIV. “SARS is not like influenza which causes a short infection. SARS is more like HIV in that it can cause long-term infections because it’s able to infect different cell types, not just in the lungs but in other parts of the body,” he said. Listen in for more.

Podcast Producer: Manas R. Tarai 

Japan’s decision to release treated water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant has been met with stiff opposition from China, Taiwan and South Korea. China has even dared Japan’s leaders to drink that water if they feel it’s safe. Japan says the water will be free of radioactive materials barring small amounts of tritium (an isotope of hydrogen), extremely diluted and then gradually released into the Pacific Ocean over decades. The U.S. and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have backed Japan’s stand. Brent Heuser, Professor in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says what Japan has decided is reasonable and it will have no negative impact on the environment or marine life. The opposition is not based on scientific reasoning and logic and I don’t agree with it, Prof. Heuser told StratNews Global. “There’s radiation in the environment. The largest repository of uranium in the world are the oceans. There is Carbon-14 and Potassium-14 in our bodies. Every time you eat a banana, you eat radioactivity. There’s radon in soil and in building material.” For the critics, he offers an analogy. Listen in for more.

Podcast Producer : Manas R. Tarai