Having drawn over $3 billion investment this year alone in car manufacturing facilities, Chennai and its suburbs will in the next five years become a key automobile exporting hub, with investments expected to reach $15bn, the Tamil Nadu government says.

Tamil Nadu presently makes almost 1.3 million vehicles per year, the Economic Times reports.

“Rapid progress is expected in industrialisation over the next decade,” Chief Minister M Karunanidhi says, adding, “the State will rank highly with newly industrialised countries in the next five years.”

Currently, US automaker Ford, Korea’s Hyundai, German luxury car manufacturer BMW, and Franco-Japan automakers Renault-Nissan and amongst those who have set up manufacturing facilities in the area. Mitsubishi owns a plant in Chennai making SUVs and sedans, and Nissan is to produce a new MPV at its plant there.

Against the backdrop of senior Israeli politicians and army officers avoiding visits to European countries fearing arrests for war crimes under universal jurisdiction laws, a new website has published names and photographs of 200 soldiers whom it said were involved in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza two years ago.

The site, which Israeli media reported was initiated by anonymous British activists and hosted by a US-based internet service, dubbed the soldiers listed as ‘war criminals’.

The website drew wide coverage in Israel because, unusually, it listed not only the army's top-ranking officers, but also commanders of battalions, companies and platoons, and even conscripted soldiers, The National newspaper said.

"From now on, European travel may entail some risk even to a young platoon commander from the paratroopers' brigade, who may have in the meantime been released from the army and was considering studying abroad," wrote Amos Harel, a commentator in the Haaretz newspaper.

“Modern diasporas challenge notions of how political life should be organised. … Such transnational engagement is likely to grow as a part of political life in the coming decades.”

“A rising India - with its robust democracy, thriving entrepreneurial capitalism, and expanding global interests - is bound to acquire a new identity as a champion of liberal international order”.

“A whole generation of young people who have grown up in a grid of checkpoints, bunkers, army camps and interrogation centers, whose childhood was spent witnessing ‘catch and kill’ operations, whose imaginations are imbued with spies, informers, ‘unidentified gunmen,’ intelligence operatives and rigged elections, has lost its patience as well as its fear.”

Japan and the Tamil Nadu government have signed a memorandum of understanding to take forward the Chennai-Bangalore industrial corridor project.

Since 2000, Japanese companies have invested around US$5.3 billion in Tamil Nadu.

In the past five years, the Sino-India Education and Technology Alliance (Sieta) has worked to place Chinese students into universities in south India, with a special focus on Tamil Nadu’s Vellore Institute of Technology, which admitted at least 360 Chinese students this year alone.

China favours “democratic and patient consultations” on the question of reforming the United Nations Security Council, the government said a day after United States President Barack Obama endorsed a permanent seat for India, The Hindu newspaper reported Tuesday.

US President Barack Obama Monday criticised India for shying away from condemning rights abuses in repressive states, saying those states with global aspirations should not remain silent and ignore "gross violations" in other countries.

"If I can be frank, in international fora, India has often shied away from these issues," Mr. Obama said.

“Speaking up for those who cannot do so for themselves is not interfering in the affairs of other countries. It is not violating the rights of sovereign nations, it is staying true to our democratic principles."

New Delhi has an 'overriding strategic interest' in developing better relations with China, Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon said this week.