China, India sign deal to sooth border tensions

China and India signed a border defense cooperation agreement on Wednesday designed to streamline border patrols in the Himalayas and reduce tensions over border disputes, Reuters reported. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang signed the deal in Beijing in the hope of breaking a decades-old stalemate on overlapping claims to an unsettled Himalayan border known as the Line of Actual Control. The agreement states that both sides will give notice of patrols along the border to ensure patrols don’t “tail” each other, mitigating potential confrontation, and will exercise “maximum self-restraint” in face-to-face meetings where the line of control is unclear.