One looks upon the coming new year with foreboding as current wars in Ukraine and Gaza spill over and escalate and new ones erupt in incipient fault lines across the world, notes former foreign secretary Shyam Saran.
The United States has rejected the idea of appointing a special envoy to resolve differences between India and Pakistan, saying American ambassadors in the two nations have reached out to the host governments to encourage dialogue while ruling out any change in its Kashmir policy.
In his first trip to the US in 1960, Atal Bihari Vajpayee befriended a young IFS officer posted in the permanent mission of India to the UN and explored New York with him, visiting museums, art galleries and even nightclubs, says a new biography of the former prime minister.
Indian-origin Republican leader Nikki Haley on Wednesday asserted that like the erstwhile Soviet Union, Communist China will also end up on the "ash heap of history."
Garcetti, 50, who served as the co-chair of Biden's presidential campaign, was initially considered for the Cabinet.
Richard Rahul Verma, the first Indian American to serve as US Ambassador to New delhi, quips that surviving the first month in India is his first goal.
'The prime minister is talking to his Chachaji and he is crying in the PM's lap, it was such an emotional scene.'
Defence is at the heart of the India-United relationship, so it is interesting that General Lloyd Austin, the US secretary for defense, was not among the officials present when Joe Biden met Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi for their first meeting since Biden became president in January.
An online White House petition demanding the Obama administration drop the visa fraud case against Devyani Khobragade has been launched in Washington, DC by a group of Indian-Americans who said the senior Indian diplomat's public humiliation hurts the sentiments of the community.
If confirmed by the US Senate, Haley, 44, would be the first Indian-American to serve in a Cabinet-level position in any presidential administration.
Kamala succeeded as she identified herself with the larger minority groups rather than narrow ethnicity, prodded by her mother who did not want to return to India, observes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan, who has done multiple stints in India's embassy in Washington, DC.
Prime Minister Narendra D Modi's itinerary for his June 21-24 US visit could include an address to a fledgling business advocacy group, the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum.
'Israel has received an extremely hard and rude reminder that it cannot go ahead and talk of normalisation of relations with other Arab countries without addressing the issues pertaining to Palestine.'
In a televised screening for Indian journalists on Wednesday, the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi held a screening that revealed horrific and chilling videos of October 7, the day when over 2,000 terrorists entered Israel from the Gaza Strip and carried out what is being considered the biggest terror attack against the Jewish nation.
Five longtime Republicans -- K V Kumar, Puneet Ahluwalia, Suhail Khan, Ajay Kuntamukkala and Harry Walia -- have been named to the GOP's Asian Pacific American Advisory Council.
'There's no pro-China tilt in BRICS.' 'All these countries want to be close to China, but they are all good friends of India also.'
'It's vital that over the next 10 years, that India, the US and the Artemis Accords family of nations come together to ensure that we not only return humanity to the moon, but that we build the technology that will allow us stay there permanently.' 'And then go on to Mars.'
Seema Verma, who was confirmed by the Senate on a vote of 55-43, will play a key role in the government's bid to repeal and replace" Obamacare and head the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services that provides health services to 130 million people.
The timing of these transfers, while being projected as routine, is significant in both strategic and political terms, asserts Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
From the US, Modi will travel to Egypt at the invitation of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
Garcetti suggested that the two countries are working on certain agreements to bolster defence cooperation and they are likely to be firmed up when Modi visits the US or President Joe Biden comes to India in September for the G20 summit.
Blinken was expected to meet with his Chinese counterpart, and potentially with President Xi Jinping.
In January last year, the US signed the first phase of the trade deal with China, which former President Donald Trump described as historic, concluding more than a year of tough negotiations including several months of suspension of talks between the two largest economies of the world.
A group of Khalistan supporters gathered in front of the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC and many of their speakers tried to incite violence, but timely intervention by an alert United States Secret Service and local police prevented a repeat of London and San Francisco incidents of vandalism at the mission.
The team visited several locations in Arunachal Pradesh to determine if the reported sites can be definitively correlated with known crash sites involving missing US servicemen.
29 years ago this August, Pakistan's dictator, the general who made jihad part of Pakistani State policy, died in a mysterious air crash. Did the KGB, the then USSR's dreaded espionage agency, assassinate Zia-ul Haq? Was India's RA&W responsible for blowing Zia's military aircraft out of the skies? Was it Zia's many enemies in Pakistan's military? Was it a box of mangoes as Mohammad Hanif speculated in his fascinating novel about Zia's death? Or was the assassin someone else?
29 years ago this August, Pakistan's dictator, the general who made jihad part of Pakistani State policy, died in a mysterious air crash. Did the KGB, the then USSR's dreaded espionage agency, assassinate Zia-ul Haq? Was India's RA&W responsible for blowing Zia's military aircraft out of the skies? Was it Zia's many enemies in Pakistan's military? Was it a box of mangoes as Mohammad Hanif speculated in his fascinating novel about Zia's death? Or was the assassin someone else?
29 years ago this August, Pakistan's dictator, the general who made jihad part of Pakistani State policy, died in a mysterious air crash. Did the KGB, the then USSR's dreaded espionage agency, assassinate Zia-ul Haq? Was India's RA&W responsible for blowing Zia's military aircraft out of the skies? Was it Zia's many enemies in Pakistan's military? Was it a box of mangoes as Mohammad Hanif speculated in his fascinating novel about Zia's death? Or was the assassin someone else?
On Thursday, November 6, the Washington Post newspaper reported that controversial American diplomat, Ambassador Robin Raphel, had her office and home searched by the FBI. This most unusual development likely raised much cheer at India's ministry of external affairs, in whose flesh Raphel had been a thorn through much of her tenure in the first Bill Clinton administration in the early and mid-1990s by her anti-India and pro-Pakistan stand. Seventeen years ago, as she was about to step down as Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, Raphel granted an exclusive interview to Aziz Haniffa and India Abroad, the leading Indian-American weekly newspaper, which is now owned by Rediff.com The July 1997 interview, which provoked a raging controversy in both capitals, Washington, DC and New Delhi, is reproduced here...
'You know why? Because they know they can't vet them, and they don't want Hamas in their neighbourhood'
Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, the first Hindu lawmaker in the US Congress, met president-elect Donald Trump amidst speculation that she is being considered to be made the American Ambassador to the United Nations.
Beckham handed over his Instagram account on Sunday to a doctor helping women give birth in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
The dinner Jill Biden and her husband US President Joe Biden hosted for Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, June 22, at the White House brought together, Indians and Americans from so many firmaments.
'Biden's promise of returning to 'normalcy' after Trump appears to mean that the same old politicians, who are responsible for the 'endless wars' in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, are being brought out of the woodwork after four years,' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Indian employees of the United States embassy and consulates in India are being grossly underpaid in comparison to their American counterparts working in these missions, according to information made available to the government.
Today, with China centrally seated and located, the Global South has an intriguing road ahead. Odds of it becoming a Chinese bloc in the emerging new bipolar world are higher than we'd wish them to be, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Rejecting Biden's comments, Pakistan foreign minister Bilawal at a press conference here said that Pakistan was following the global standards.
'It did not vote against America, or for Russia.' 'If we had voted for the American motion, it would have spoilt our relationship with Russia without any change in Russia's behaviour.'
'Evacuating' Devyani's maid's family from India on T visas -- associated with severe sex or labour trafficking... The maximum number of persons thus evacuated by the US from foreign countries last year was from India... A thorough investigation of this is required at India's end,' says former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal, 'with the US warned that such interference in India's judicial system will not be tolerated.'
Iraq is on the verge of collapsing and foreign military intervention is inevitable. But for those who follow the developments in Iraq and the Middle-East will understand the current situation is nothing but a culmination of US and western policies toward the region, says Dr Waiel Awwad
