Cambodia-Thailand border situation eases: PM Hun Manet
In a post on his official social media platforms, Hun Manet said, "The frontline has eased after a ceasefire took effect from Monday midnight in accordance with the spirit of the agreement between Cambodia and Thailand at a special meeting in Malaysia."
"A sooner cessation of hostilities will also allow affected people, such as evacuees, to return to their homes and resume normal livelihoods sooner," he said.
"This ceasefire and peace agreement is yielding positive and effective results," Cambodian Senate President Samdech Techo Hun Sen said on Tuesday morning in a post on his official social media platforms.
Thai and Cambodian leaders have agreed to implement a ceasefire starting midnight on Monday, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said following a meeting on Monday hosted by him in Malaysia, Xinhua news agency reported.
Cambodia and Thailand agreed on Monday to an "immediate and unconditional" ceasefire, following talks in Kuala Lumpur that were mediated by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
According to a joint press statement, the special meeting was chaired, hosted, and witnessed by Prime Minister Ibrahim in Putrajaya city of Malaysia. Prime Minister Manet and Thailand's Acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai participated in the discussions.
The talks were held amid escalating border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand which disturbed regional peace tremendously.
The exchange of gunfire between Cambodian and Thai soldiers over disputed border areas began on July 24, with both sides accusing each other of violating international law.
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Time of India
2 hours ago
- Time of India
On Russian oil, India and China speak the same language to Trump
Live Events China's framing India's tone: Different pitch, same tune From marginal to essential Oil keeps flowing The oil wildcard Sanctions hit, but not hard enough Enter Trump BRICS and the Global South Parallel defiance (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel When the United States demanded that China and India stop buying Russian oil, it likely didn't anticipate triggering a geopolitical alignment between two long-time that's what's unfolding. While far from coordinated, and certainly not allies, Beijing and New Delhi are responding in strikingly similar fashion: with mounting pressure from the Trump administration to cut off what Washington calls 'Putin's war machine,' both countries are choosing energy security over two of the world's largest oil importers, India and China wield enormous influence over global crude demand. That clout is now under direct has warned of imposing tariffs of up to 100% on countries that continue purchasing Russian oil, unless Moscow agrees to a peace deal with Ukraine by August 7–9. To complicate things further, a new bipartisan bill in the US Senate is calling for a 500% tariff on goods from countries that keep buying Russian oil and gas while refusing to back the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025, the bill has been introduced by Senators Lindsey Graham (Republican) and Richard Blumenthal (Democrat), with support from over 80 co-sponsors across party lines, enough to potentially override a presidential proposed law would slap steep tariffs, up to 500%, on imports from countries that continue buying Russian crude, gas, petroleum products, or uranium and don't actively support on Monday, Trump said he will be "substantially" raising the tariff paid by India to America, accusing the country of buying massive amounts of Russian oil and selling it for big profits."India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian Oil, they are then, for much of the Oil purchased, selling it on the Open Market for big profits. They don't care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine. Because of this, I will be substantially raising the Tariff paid by India to the USA. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!"Following two days of high-stakes trade talks in Stockholm, China made its position unambiguous. On X, the Foreign Ministry wrote: 'China will always ensure its energy supply in ways that serve our national interests... Coercion and pressuring will not achieve anything.'The message wasn't just for Washington, it was for the Global South, where many governments share China's resentment of what they see as unilateral American sanctions and demands. By framing its energy choices as a matter of sovereignty, China positioned itself not as Russia's backer but as a nation defending its right to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, reflecting after the talks, acknowledged China's posture with a mix of frustration and resignation.'The Chinese take their sovereignty very seriously… We don't want to impede on their sovereignty, so they would like to pay a 100% tariff,' Bessent told reporters after wrapping up two days of US-China trade talks in Stockholm, as per last part, analysts believe, is pure brinkmanship. Talking to Reuters, Gabriel Wildau of Teneo called the tariff threat 'a move that would derail all the recent progress.'As Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted, Beijing is playing a long game, waiting out Washington's bluster, leaning on ambiguity, and sticking to its strategic relationship with imports from Russia reflect that approach. In April 2025 alone, oil shipments from Russia to China surged 20%, crossing 1.3 million barrels per day. China is also Iran's largest oil customer, purchasing up to 90% of Tehran's exports, according to US Energy Information Administration the Himalayas, India's tone is different, but the message is the Minister Narendra Modi has framed India's refusal to halt Russian oil imports as an assertion of economic a rally in Uttar Pradesh, he said, 'Now, whatever we buy, there should be only one scale: we will buy those things which have been made by the sweat of an Indian.'The line plays directly into his government's 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' (self-reliant India) campaign, but it also doubles as a message to Washington - don't has been under pressure since Trump imposed a 25% tariff on Indian exports and hinted at further penalties if oil purchases from Russia state and private refiners are still sourcing Russian crude, and there's been no official instruction to change per Reuters, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal reinforced this stance. 'Our bilateral relationships with various countries stand on their own merit and should not be seen from the prism of a third country,' he the world's third-largest oil importer, has become the biggest buyer of Russian crude since 2022, snapping up as much as 2 million barrels per day, roughly 2% of global supply. Other major buyers include China and shift began in 2022, when India started ramping up its purchases of Russian oil, stepping into a void left by Europe, which had previously been Russia's top customer before banning most of its oil in response to the Ukraine the world's second-largest oil exporter, redirected volumes to Asia, and India quickly became a key destination. Its energy ties with Moscow have deepened, with Rosneft holding a major stake in one of India's largest to official data, India now depends on Russian oil for 35% of its total crude needs, worth $50.2 billion in FY2024–25. Imports from Russia have surged from negligible levels in early 2022 to nearly a third of India's overall oil imports in 2025, making it the largest buyer of Russian seaborne purchases a wide range of Russian crude grades, including Urals from Western ports, ESPO and Sokol from the Pacific, and even Arctic grades, as per LSEG India cuts back, urals crude would bear the brunt. India currently accounts for up to 70% of Russia's exports of that grade. While India's oil minister has said the country can secure alternative supply if needed, analysts warn of short-term disruptions.'Indian refiners will still struggle to replace the heavy quality of Russian crude, so they may end up paring runs,' Neil Crosby of Sparta Commodities told India, this isn't about siding with Moscow; it's about securing affordable fuel and shielding its economy from inflation sweeping Western sanctions, Russia has kept its oil flowing since 2022, albeit at discounted rates compared to global benchmarks.A sharp drop in global crude prices is already hitting Moscow's wallet. According to its finance ministry, oil and gas revenues in June fell 33.7% year-on-year to their lowest since January 2023. Reuters estimates show a deeper 37% plunge in July, driven by softer prices and a stronger say if Russia loses 2 million barrels per day in exports, it may eventually be forced to cut production from the current 9 million bpd, volumes that are still governed by OPEC+ quotas, as reported by Morgan believes Russia could reroute around 800,000 bpd to markets like Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan, Peru, Brunei, South Africa, and Indonesia. But that's not enough to offset the impact of major buyers like India walking also has a more disruptive card to play - the CPC pipeline. It moves up to one million bpd and is critical for Western oil majors such as Exxon, Chevron, Shell, ENI, and TotalEnergies. With a total capacity of 1.7 million bpd, any interruption would be felt globally."If we get a visible and substantial difficulty in clearing Russian crude and Putin shuts off CPC, oil prices might get well over $80 per barrel, possibly a lot more," said CPC line, which runs through Russian territory, has already seen clashes between the consortium and Moscow. In both 2022 and 2025, operations were temporarily suspended over claims of environmental and tanker CPC flows are cut and India halts purchases, the global oil market would lose about 3.5 million bpd, roughly 3.5% of total supply."The Trump administration, like its predecessors, will likely find sanctioning the world's second-largest oil exporter unfeasible without spiking oil prices," JP Morgan Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) estimates Russian fossil fuel revenues fell 18% year-on-year in Q2 2025, marking the weakest quarter since the Ukraine invasion. This drop came despite an 8% rise in export volumes compared to Russian fossil gas exports to Europe continued their steady decline. Following the end of gas transit through Ukraine in Q1, exports fell further in Q2, dropping 9.4% from April (3.32 bcm) to June (3.01 bcm).A significant share of Russia's oil is still moving aboard G7+ tankers. In June, over 56% of seaborne oil exports used vessels from G7 or allied nations, up from 36% in of the oil price cap remains patchy, but it's showing potential. CREA estimates that rigorous implementation since the sanctions began could have cut Russian export revenues by 11%, or EUR 39.51 billion. In June alone, full enforcement would have trimmed revenues by around EUR 550 European Commission is now proposing to lower the price cap to $45 per barrel. CREA's modelling suggests that at that level, Russian revenues for June would have dropped by 28%, a loss of EUR 3.1 billion. Donald Trump 's approach to diplomacy, loud, transactional, and often antagonistic, is a key reason this convergence administration's rhetoric has been unforgiving. Stephen Miller, Trump's senior adviser, put it bluntly on Fox News: 'People will be shocked to learn that India is basically tied with China in purchasing Russian oil.'He went on to call India's actions 'unacceptable,' accused New Delhi of imposing 'massive' tariffs on American goods, and even dragged immigration into the this time, the pressure is not one-sided. China is under the same threat, tariffs, isolation, diplomatic friction. And that's where the real shift is happening. Neither India nor China is adjusting course. Both are pushing back, not in coordination, but in BRICS bloc, now expanded to include Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, and the UAE, is steadily positioning itself as a platform for collective pushback against Western dominance. Official statements from recent BRICS finance meetings have repeatedly criticised 'unilateral' trade measures and championed financial cooperation that bypasses Western systems.'You know, they have BRICS, which is basically a group of countries that are anti-US, and India is a member of that... It's an attack on the dollar, and we're not going to let anybody attack the dollar,' Trump said at the White House last from recent gatherings, including the 17th BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro in July 2025, back this view. These communiqués openly challenge the use of tariffs and non-tariff barriers they see as incompatible with WTO rules. The bloc continues to frame itself as a defender of multilateralism and a rules-based trade order, one not dictated by Washington or its is also making concrete moves to reduce dependence on the US dollar and SWIFT. Initiatives like BRICS Pay and the New Development Bank (NDB), which lends in local currencies, are central to this shift. The July summit also launched a new 'New Investment Platform' (NIP) to deepen financial ties among member and China, despite their bilateral tensions, remain pivotal within the bloc. What they do agree on is resisting Western economic pressure, and Trump may be accelerating that remark that India and Russia can 'take their dead economies down together' wasn't just inflammatory; it underlined how seriously Washington now views the potential for coordinated economic isn't a formal alliance. It's not even a soft partnership. India and China remain rivals, their border remains tense, and their visions for Asia are fundamentally right now, their interests overlap in a meaningful way: both want autonomy. Both want access to cheap oil. Both reject being told what to do, especially by world's two most populous nations are making energy decisions based on national need, not diplomatic pressure.
Economic Times
2 hours ago
- Economic Times
Tom Friedman: The America we knew is rapidly slipping away
NYT News Service US President Donald Trump Of all the terrible things Donald Trump has said and done as president, the most dangerous one just happened Friday. Trump, in effect, ordered our trusted and independent government office of economic statistics to become as big a liar as he is. He fired Erika McEntarfer, the Senate-confirmed head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for bringing him economic news he did not like, and in the hours immediately following, the second most dangerous thing happened: The senior Trump officials most responsible for running our economy -- people who in their private businesses never would have contemplated firing a subordinate who brought them financial data they did not like -- all went along for the ride. Instead of saying to Trump, "Mr. President, if you don't reconsider this decision -- if you fire the top labor bureau statistician because she brought you bad economic news -- how will anyone in the future trust that office when it issues good news?" they immediately covered for him. As The Wall Street Journal pointed out, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer had actually gone on Bloomberg TV early Friday and declared that even though the jobs report that had just been released was revised downward for May and June, "we've seen positive job growth." But as soon as she got the news hours later that Trump had fired the very BLS director who reports to her, she wrote on X: "I agree wholeheartedly with @POTUS that our jobs numbers must be fair, accurate, and never manipulated for political purposes." As the Journal asked: "So were the jobs data that were 'positive' in the morning rigged by the afternoon?" Of course not. The moment I heard what Trump had done, I had a flashback. It was January 2021, and it had just been reported that Trump, after losing the 2020 election, had tried to pressure Georgia's Republican secretary of state to "find" him enough votes -- exactly 11,780, Trump said -- to overturn the presidential election and even threatened him with "a criminal offense" if he didn't. The pressure came during an hourlong telephone call, according to an audio recording of the difference, though, is that back then there was something called a Republican official with integrity. And so Georgia's secretary of state did not agree to fabricate votes that did not exist. But that species of Republican official seems to have gone completely extinct in Trump's second term. So Trump's rotten character is now a problem for our whole forward, how many government bureaucrats are going to dare to pass along bad news when they know that their bosses -- people like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, the Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer and the U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer -- will not only fail to defend them but will actually offer them up as a sacrifice to Trump to keep their jobs?Shame on each and every one of them -- particularly on Bessent, a former hedge fund manager, who knows better and did not step in. What a coward. As Bessent's predecessor, Janet Yellen, the former Treasury secretary and also the former chair of the Federal Reserve -- and a person with actual integrity -- told my Times colleague Ben Casselman of the BLS firing: "This is the kind of thing you would only expect to see in a banana republic."It is important to know how foreigners are looking at this. Bill Blain, a London-based bond trader who publishes a newsletter popular among market experts called Blain's Morning Porridge, wrote Monday: "Friday, Aug. 1 might go down in history as the day the U.S. Treasury market died. There was an art to reading U.S. data. It relied on trust. Now that is broken -- if you can't trust the data, what can you trust?" He then went on to imagine how his Porridge newsletter will sound in May 2031. It will begin, he wrote, with "a link to a release from Trump's Ministry of Economic Truth, formerly the U.S. Treasury: 'Under the leadership of President Trump, the U.S. economy continues to grow at record speed. Payrolls data from the Ministry of Truth, a subsidiary of Truth Social, show full employment across America. Tensions in the inner cities have never been so low. All recent graduates have found highly paid jobs across America's expanding manufacturing sector, causing many large companies in Trump Inc to report significant labor shortages.'" If you think this is far-fetched, you clearly have not been following the foreign policy news, because this kind of tactic -- the tailoring of information to fit Trump's political needs -- has already been deployed in the intelligence May the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, fired two top intelligence officials who oversaw an assessment that contradicted Trump's assertions that the gang Tren de Aragua was operating under the direction of the Venezuelan regime. Their assessment undermined the dubious legal rationale Trump invoked -- the rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act -- to allow the suspected gang members to be thrown out of the country without due now this trend toward self-blinding is spreading to further corners of the of America's premier cyberwarriors, Jen Easterly, who was the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during the Biden administration, had her appointment to a senior teaching position at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point revoked last week by Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll after Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist, posted that Easterly was a Biden-era that sentence again very slowly. The Army secretary, acting on the guidance of a loony Trump acolyte, revoked the teaching appointment of -- anyone will tell you -- one of America's most skilled nonpartisan cyberwarriors, herself a graduate of West when you are done reading that, read Easterly's response on LinkedIn: "As a lifelong independent, I've served our nation in peacetime and combat under Republican and Democratic administrations. I've led missions at home and abroad to protect all Americans from vicious terrorists . I've worked my entire career not as a partisan, but as a patriot -- not in pursuit of power, but in service to the country I love and in loyalty to the Constitution I swore to protect and defend, against all enemies."And then she added this advice to the young West Pointers she will not have the honor of teaching: "Every member of the Long Gray Line knows the Cadet Prayer. It asks that we 'choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.' That line -- so simple, yet so powerful -- has been my North Star for more than three decades. In boardrooms and war rooms. In quiet moments of doubt and in public acts of leadership. The harder right is never easy. That's the whole point."That is the woman Trump did not want teaching our next generation of that ethic -- always choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong -- is the ethic that Bessent, Hassett, Chavez-DeRemer and Greer know nothing of -- not to mention Trump is why, dear reader, though I am a congenital optimist, for the first time I believe that if the behavior that this administration has exhibited in just its first six months continues and is amplified for its full four years, the America you know will be gone. And I don't know how we will get it back. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Time of India
2 hours ago
- Time of India
Tom Friedman: The America we knew is rapidly slipping away
Of all the terrible things Donald Trump has said and done as president, the most dangerous one just happened Friday. Trump, in effect, ordered our trusted and independent government office of economic statistics to become as big a liar as he is. He fired Erika McEntarfer, the Senate-confirmed head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for bringing him economic news he did not like, and in the hours immediately following, the second most dangerous thing happened: The senior Trump officials most responsible for running our economy -- people who in their private businesses never would have contemplated firing a subordinate who brought them financial data they did not like -- all went along for the ride. Productivity Tool Zero to Hero in Microsoft Excel: Complete Excel guide By Metla Sudha Sekhar View Program Finance Introduction to Technical Analysis & Candlestick Theory By Dinesh Nagpal View Program Finance Financial Literacy i e Lets Crack the Billionaire Code By CA Rahul Gupta View Program Digital Marketing Digital Marketing Masterclass by Neil Patel By Neil Patel View Program Finance Technical Analysis Demystified- A Complete Guide to Trading By Kunal Patel View Program Productivity Tool Excel Essentials to Expert: Your Complete Guide By Study at home View Program Artificial Intelligence AI For Business Professionals Batch 2 By Ansh Mehra View Program Instead of saying to Trump, "Mr. President, if you don't reconsider this decision -- if you fire the top labor bureau statistician because she brought you bad economic news -- how will anyone in the future trust that office when it issues good news?" they immediately covered for him. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like It's Genius for Learning Languages [See Why] Talkpal AI Undo As The Wall Street Journal pointed out, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer had actually gone on Bloomberg TV early Friday and declared that even though the jobs report that had just been released was revised downward for May and June, "we've seen positive job growth." But as soon as she got the news hours later that Trump had fired the very BLS director who reports to her, she wrote on X: "I agree wholeheartedly with @POTUS that our jobs numbers must be fair, accurate, and never manipulated for political purposes." As the Journal asked: "So were the jobs data that were 'positive' in the morning rigged by the afternoon?" Of course not. Live Events The moment I heard what Trump had done, I had a flashback. It was January 2021, and it had just been reported that Trump, after losing the 2020 election, had tried to pressure Georgia's Republican secretary of state to "find" him enough votes -- exactly 11,780, Trump said -- to overturn the presidential election and even threatened him with "a criminal offense" if he didn't. The pressure came during an hourlong telephone call, according to an audio recording of the conversation. The difference, though, is that back then there was something called a Republican official with integrity. And so Georgia's secretary of state did not agree to fabricate votes that did not exist. But that species of Republican official seems to have gone completely extinct in Trump's second term. So Trump's rotten character is now a problem for our whole economy. Going forward, how many government bureaucrats are going to dare to pass along bad news when they know that their bosses -- people like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, the Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer and the U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer -- will not only fail to defend them but will actually offer them up as a sacrifice to Trump to keep their jobs? Shame on each and every one of them -- particularly on Bessent, a former hedge fund manager, who knows better and did not step in. What a coward. As Bessent's predecessor, Janet Yellen, the former Treasury secretary and also the former chair of the Federal Reserve -- and a person with actual integrity -- told my Times colleague Ben Casselman of the BLS firing: "This is the kind of thing you would only expect to see in a banana republic." It is important to know how foreigners are looking at this. Bill Blain, a London-based bond trader who publishes a newsletter popular among market experts called Blain's Morning Porridge, wrote Monday: "Friday, Aug. 1 might go down in history as the day the U.S. Treasury market died. There was an art to reading U.S. data. It relied on trust. Now that is broken -- if you can't trust the data, what can you trust?" He then went on to imagine how his Porridge newsletter will sound in May 2031. It will begin, he wrote, with "a link to a release from Trump's Ministry of Economic Truth, formerly the U.S. Treasury: 'Under the leadership of President Trump, the U.S. economy continues to grow at record speed. Payrolls data from the Ministry of Truth, a subsidiary of Truth Social, show full employment across America. Tensions in the inner cities have never been so low. All recent graduates have found highly paid jobs across America 's expanding manufacturing sector, causing many large companies in Trump Inc to report significant labor shortages.'" If you think this is far-fetched, you clearly have not been following the foreign policy news, because this kind of tactic -- the tailoring of information to fit Trump's political needs -- has already been deployed in the intelligence field. In May the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, fired two top intelligence officials who oversaw an assessment that contradicted Trump's assertions that the gang Tren de Aragua was operating under the direction of the Venezuelan regime. Their assessment undermined the dubious legal rationale Trump invoked -- the rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act -- to allow the suspected gang members to be thrown out of the country without due process. And now this trend toward self-blinding is spreading to further corners of the government. One of America's premier cyberwarriors, Jen Easterly, who was the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during the Biden administration, had her appointment to a senior teaching position at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point revoked last week by Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll after Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist, posted that Easterly was a Biden-era mole. Read that sentence again very slowly. The Army secretary, acting on the guidance of a loony Trump acolyte, revoked the teaching appointment of -- anyone will tell you -- one of America's most skilled nonpartisan cyberwarriors, herself a graduate of West Point. And when you are done reading that, read Easterly's response on LinkedIn: "As a lifelong independent, I've served our nation in peacetime and combat under Republican and Democratic administrations. I've led missions at home and abroad to protect all Americans from vicious terrorists . I've worked my entire career not as a partisan, but as a patriot -- not in pursuit of power, but in service to the country I love and in loyalty to the Constitution I swore to protect and defend, against all enemies." And then she added this advice to the young West Pointers she will not have the honor of teaching: "Every member of the Long Gray Line knows the Cadet Prayer. It asks that we 'choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.' That line -- so simple, yet so powerful -- has been my North Star for more than three decades. In boardrooms and war rooms. In quiet moments of doubt and in public acts of leadership. The harder right is never easy. That's the whole point." That is the woman Trump did not want teaching our next generation of fighters. And that ethic -- always choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong -- is the ethic that Bessent, Hassett, Chavez-DeRemer and Greer know nothing of -- not to mention Trump himself. That is why, dear reader, though I am a congenital optimist, for the first time I believe that if the behavior that this administration has exhibited in just its first six months continues and is amplified for its full four years, the America you know will be gone. And I don't know how we will get it back. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
