Play The Diplomat’s Quiz: April 2, 2016 Edition

The Thailand-China railway, a high-speed line originally designed to connect southern China through landlocked Laos to Thailand’s industrial eastern coast, is now officially untracked. Thai Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha announced the cancellation on March 23 after nearly two years of protracted bilateral negotiations that stuck on myriad terms and conditions, including investment-sharing, total cost, interest rates on concessionary loans, and development rights to land, depots, and stations along the envisioned 845-kilometer line.

Momentum for India’s bid to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 48-nation group that sets guidelines for global nuclear exports, seems to have stalled.

In 2010, the Obama Administration announced its intention to support India’s “full membership” in the nuclear export control regimes, and Washington now claims that India is “ready” for NSG membership. Yet, critics continue to question Delhi’s commitment to nonproliferation.

The failure of the United States and India to convince skeptics that the country should be admitted on the strength of its nonproliferation actions to date may become evident at the June 2016 NSG Plenary. The months remaining before this meeting provide the Obama Administration a final opportunity to make progress toward the goal of securing India’s NSG membership. To do so, it needs a new plan.

On May 9, the Philippines will hold its presidential election. Philippine presidents are limited to one, six-year term, which makes them powerful and weak at the same time. They enjoy a long term in office, removing them from the regular grind of campaigning that is common in many other democracies. But, as soon as they are inaugurated, they become a kind of lame duck.

Under President Benigno Aquino III, the Philippines has reached a plateau of economic and political stability not seen since the presidency of Fidel Ramos nearly two decades ago. Aquino has made significant inroads into fighting corruption, has overseen an economy that has become one of the fastest-growing in East Asia and drawn increasing levels of interest from foreign investors, has pushed through population planning programs (the country has one of the highest fertility rates in Asia), and has inked a framework agreement for a permanent peace deal in the southern Philippines.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spent Wednesday in Brussels, Belgium, where he attended the 13th European Union-India Summit in addition to a bilateral summit with Belgian officials. Modi additionally met one-on-one with his Belgian counterpart Charles Michel and offered India’s support in the wake of last week’s devastating terror attack in the Belgian capital that killed 32 and injured more than 300 people. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, and Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, met Modi in Brussels and presided over the 13th summit. The last EU-India summit took place in 2012.

The summit, like preceding iterations, resulted in a broad joint statement that captured the full gamut of India-EU ties. Though India’s relations with individual EU member states vary in closeness, India considers the European Union as a whole a “global partner.” The document covers a range of topics, including trade and investment ties, security cooperation, climate and energy cooperation, science and technology, and even people-to-people ties, but doesn’t contain any landmark accomplishments that would suggest that the EU-India relationship has broken out of relative stagnation.

The senseless, reprehensible terrorist attack on those gathered at Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park in Lahore on last Sunday underscores the enormity of the challenge that militancy and extremist ideologies pose to the state of Pakistan. The attack claimed the lives of over 70, many of whom were children and women, and injured over 230. The Jamaat ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack and in a statement released shortly thereafter, explained that the attack had been planned to coincide with Easter.

Addressing his countrymen after the attack, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to “fight the menace of terrorism till it is rooted out” and issued a warning to terror groups to not mistake “the government’s leniency…for [the] state’s weakness.”

Over the last several years, Japan has seen a panoply of new political parties appearing and evaporating. On March 27, this trend culminated in the launching ofMinshin-To (Democratic Party, DP), which consolidated the Minshu-To (Democratic Party of Japan, DPJ) and Ishin no-To (Japan Innovation Party).

Though the new party has barely launched, it is already facing a significant challenge: the public’s expectations of the DP are extremely low. According toan opinion poll taken by Kyodo News in late March, a whopping 67 percent of the poll respondents replied that they are not expecting much from the new party, with only 8 percent saying they support the DP.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the Czech Republic, the first stop on an overseas tour that will also bring him to Washington, D.C. for the Nuclear Security Summit later this week. Xi arrived in Prague on Monday and will depart on Wednesday for the United States.

Xi’s visit to the Czech Republic comes amid a broader push to deepen China’s relations with Central and Eastern European countries. Working under the China-Central and Eastern Europe 16+1 platform, China and the CEE states have held an annual leaders’ meeting each year since 2012. Last year, for the first time, the summit was held in China rather than Europe, with Premier Li Keqiang welcoming his counterparts to Suzhou. That summit saw China sign deals to construct a high-speed railroad linking Budapest and Belgrade, as well as promising to invest in unnamed “ports and industrial parks of the coastal areas of the Adriatic Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea.”

From A RAW Row: Did Pakistan Accuse Iran of Abetting Indian Espionage?:

This Sharif-Rouhani encounter should be a reminder that even though Pakistan’s borders with India and Afghanistan produce more headline-grabbing instability, the Balochistan border between Iran and Pakistan is far from stable. Violent Sunni militant groups have made the most of a governance vacuum in the province andregularly harass Iranian border authorities. In 2014, Iran and Pakistan even exchanged mortar fire. That same year, Iranian officials had publicly threatened to “send forces into Pakistan” to retrieve five Iranian soldiers that had been taken hostage by the radical Sunni militant group Jaish al-Adl. Balochistan’s internal instability is a major source of concern for Islamabad, but the border with Iran has been less of a priority.

With one of the highest tuberculosis (TB) infection rates in the world, Papua New Guinea’s TB pandemic is referred to by national health authorities as a “national emergency.” With approximately 30,000 people in the country newly infected with the TB bacteria every year, increasing incidences of drug-resistant strains, and limited access to adequate healthcare, the nation has seen a recent resurgence of support from international governments and medical humanitarian agencies.

TB is a communicable, airborne infection that is caused by the bacteria mycobacterium tuberculosis. It can lie dormant within the body for many years. However, for those with compromised immunity, TB develops into a disease that destructs organ tissue – most commonly in the lungs. It presents symptomatically as a fever-like condition and can be fatal if left untreated.