作者： bharat.cn

An Indian airport has devised a highly creative – and reportedly effective – method to keep vexatious langurs off their runway: have an employee dress up as a bear and scare them off.
An extremely busy international airport in India’s western Ahmedabad city deployed the unorthodox tactic after struggling to prevent langurs from swarming the grounds of the air hub – and creating a potential safety hazard for passengers. The idea was reportedly hatched after the airport’s management learned that langurs are terrified of bears. The airport already has a team dedicated to chasing off birds and wildlife, so using a bear costume to increase results was perhaps a logical – and more fun – decision.

Pakistani premier Imran Khan has rebuffed his Indian counterpart’s claims that it would take 10 days at most to take down Pakistan, citing the past failures of French general Napoleon Bonaparte and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
“Narendra Modi, you need to brush up on your history. It seems your degree was fake,” Imran Khan said on Thursday, before showing off his own knowledge on the subject.

Leaders who have shown such pride have always been defeated in the past … [take] the failure of Hitler’s and Napoleon’s forces to permeate Russia.

Even the world’s most powerful military – namely, the American one – failed to win the Vietnam War and made no gains during the 19-year war in Afghanistan, he added.

The bizarre comparison – though not unusual for Khan’s rhetoric on Modi – came after the Indian premier maintained that it “won’t take more than a week – 10 days to make Pakistan bite the dust” if a war breaks out between the rival neighbors.

Another waiver for India?
The US has been keen to promote strategic partnerships with Indian in the Indo-Pacific region to counter rapidly-growing Chinese influence. To that end, it has so far been lenient when it comes to India’s ‘transgressions’ regarding US sanctions.

For instance, it has seemingly overlooked New Delhi’s decision to go ahead with the procurement of Russia’s S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, which some expected might earn the wrath of Washington and invite new sanctions ‘to punish’ both Russia and India.

Meanwhile, Turkey – a NATO ally – which also procured the S-400 systems from Russia – faced punitive actions from the Trump administration resulting in the cancellation of the the delivery of around 100 fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft from the US.

So far, it’s unclear whether India will manage to extract further concessions from Washington to continue to do business with Iran over the INSCT, improving connectivity with Afghanistan and allowing it to make inroads into the EAEU markets — but the question will likely figure prominently in upcoming discussions between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump when he visits New Delhi later this month.