A fiction writer, Lahiri's debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, received the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Addison M Metcalf Award and the New Yorker magazine's Debut of the Year.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's New York-based daughter Amrit Singh, who has been one of the fiercest critics of former United States President George W Bush and his administration for its alleged condoning of torture and other abuse of prisoners, on Wednesday turned her guns on President Barack Obama for his decision to fight to block the court-ordered release of photographs of detainee abuse by US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and several other prisons.
Observing that amazing things have happened over the last 10 years, the former US President Barack Obama on Friday said that all this could be accomplished because of the hope and believe that his country had in him.
US President Barack Obama on Thursday said his administration is upping effort to remove trade barriers and create new market for American businesses, especially their presence in "some of the most dynamic markets in Asia".
Amid controversy generated by the release of secret cables by WikiLeaks, including those from United States embassy in New Delhi, the Barack Obama administration has said that American diplomats in India are doing their job just like their counterparts in the US. "Our diplomats do what diplomats do, and what we do in a country like India is no different than what Indian diplomats do in our country," State Department spokesman P J Crowley said at his daily news conference.
United States Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, has profusely apologised and expeditiously gone on damage control mode after stating that 'a rising India' is a grave threat to the US. The Senator from Texas states that the F-22's are "important to our national security because we're not just fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We're fighting --we have graver threats and greater threats than that: From a rising India, with increased exercise of military power'.
In an interaction that followed his keynote speech at a conference on US-India Relations, Barack Obama administration's point man for South Asia, Robert Blake was asked how he saw the Indo-US partnership playing out in the UN Security Council in the wake of the US endorsement.
Reaffirming that United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to India will expand the areas of cooperation, a top Barack Obama administration official said Washington intends to deepen and strengthen the strategic partnership with New Delhi. "India is a global power. I think, as the Secretary reflected earlier this week and will certainly do so when she is in India, there is an opportunity to expand the areas of cooperation," he said.
India this week made operational its new consulate in Atlanta, the fifth in the US, but the original plan was to have a new consulate each in Atlanta and Seattle.
"There's nothing we see that indicates that Mullah Omar will, in fact, change his stripes; as a result, we don't see that he qualifies to play a constructive role in Afghanistan's future," State Department spokesman P J Crowley told media persons.
Close on the heels of the Barack Obama administration approving reconciliation efforts with the moderate elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the United States has categorically ruled out any similar settlement with the al Qaeda. "We have no interest in any kind of reconciliation or any rapprochement by anyone with al Qaeda," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. "Only the Taliban, we never said al Qaeda," she said.
Barack Obama has indicated to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that he would be happy to play any role India and Pakistan may want him to play, to reduce tensions between the two countries, the United States President said on Monday.
US President Barack Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs said on Wednesday that he would step down next month and boost his boss's 2012 re-election bid from outside the White House.
The United States has said that it will vote against an exemption for China to sell two civil nuclear reactors to Pakistan at the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting, in a new move to step up pressure to get the controversial deal annulled. Making it clear that the US will oppose the recent decision of China to sell two nuclear reactors to Pakistan, a top Barack Obama administration official told lawmakers that Washington will vote against the China-Pakistan deal.
United States President Barack Obama will attend a Diwali reception on Friday, the White House has said. "In the evening, the President will attend a Diwali reception in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building," the White House said on Thursday. While a Diwali reception at the Eisenhower Executive building, which is part of the White House office complex, was started during the George W Bush administration, Obama was the first US President to attend the celebrations.
An Asia Society task force -- working on advancing relations between India and United States -- on Friday urged the incoming Barack Obama administration to pursue deeper collaboration with New Delhi for mutual benefits on a host of global challenges raging from security and economic growth to climate change, education and tackling HIV/AIDS.
India should carve out a policy response that protects India and its interests from the negative externalities of the US strategy in Afghanistan, writes Harsh V Pant.
A US-based Sikh rights group has filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act seeking documents relating to the Obama administration's decision to invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a meeting at the White House in September.
Rediff.com brings you some of the pictures which show the other side of the American president.
Noting that the Barack Obama administration is keeping a close watch on the Hamid Karzai government, the White House on Wednesday said that the Afghanistan president should not expect a blank cheque in his second term. "I think you heard the President speak clearly at West Point (at New York in December 2009) and since then about the need to take governance seriously; that there was not an open-ended blank cheque for waste and abuse going forward in Afghan," said an official.
Naveed Musharraf, the president's brother, and Irum Bilal Musharraf, his daughter-in-law, have reportedly given donations to Obama instead of Bush's Republican Party's presumptive candidate Senator John McCain.
United States President Barack Obama on Monday ordered a probe into allegations that the Bush administration resisted efforts to investigate a Central Intelligence Agency-backed Afghan warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum over the massacre of hundreds of Taliban prisoners in 2001.
A senior official from the Protocol Department, who is involved in the preparations for Obama's visit to Mumbai and Delhi, said that there have been requests from a large number of chief ministers. But no such meeting has been granted.
The Barack Obama administration is facing a dilemma with respect to Pakistan as unlike Afghanistan, it cannot send its troops there to fight Al Qaeda and Taliban and needs to find other means, top United States Special Envoy for the region Richard Holbrooke has said. "The dilemma is that the leadership of both the Al Qaeda and the Taliban are in a neighbouring country (of Afghanistan) where our troops cannot fight. And therefore we have to find other means," he said.
United States President Barack Obama is leading over his potential Republican challenger Mitt Romney by six points, a latest opinion poll has said. Romney, who won his third primary state over the weekend, is the frontrunner among the four Republican presidential candidates. The poll was conducted last week. Obama leads Romney 51 per cent to 45 per cent among registered voters.
Hoping to end nearly three decades of distrust and strained ties, US President Barack Obama reached out on Friday to the Iranian people, saying the US wants to have "honest" engagement with the Islamic Republic but made it clear that this process will not be advanced by threats.
Bharatanatyam dancer and teacher Ranee Ramaswamy, 60, has been nominated by United States President Barack Obama as a member to the National Council of Arts, a key administration position.
Amidst reports that North Korea has invited top American diplomats to Pyongyang for a bilateral dialogue, the United States has asserted that there is no such plan for its officials to travel to the country. The Barack Obama administration also reiterated its condition for having any bilateral dialogue with North Korea within the framework of six-party talks.
The United States is the worst affected country in the world from the coronavirus infection. There are 1.3 million coronavirus cases in the country and the death toll stands at 78,000.
United States President Barack Obama has appointed yet another top Indian American legal mind to a senior position in his administration. Rashad Hussain, 30, who recently served as a trial attorney at the US Department of Justice, was named by Obama as Deputy Associate Counsel to the President.Before his stint with the DOJ, Hussain was working as a law clerk to Damon K Keith on the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Detroit, Michigan.
'There has been an almost palpable change in the black community. There is a energy in the air that wasn't there before; there's a spark and a light now that was previously missing. I look around and I see a change in the way we carry ourselves, the way we speak to each other and treat each other,' says Jann Marie Hodge, one of the thousands of African Americans who have arrived to witness the Barack Obama's historical swearing-in as America's first black president.
United States President Barack Obama was in his elements over a whopping $85 billion forced spending cuts his administration was facing, saying, "My joke writers have been placed on furlough."
It is in Prime Minister Narendra Modi Modi, officials in Washington believe, US President Barack Obama has found an Indian leader who is willing to walk the talk to realise the common goals of the two countries. Lalit K Jha reports
The payment of $1,90,000 to a high-profile lobbyist firm in Washington, BGR Holding, was made by RIL in the first quarter of 2009, and is the first instance of any lobbying by the Indian company with the US lawmakers.
Leading Indian-American lawyer Preeta Bansal has been appointed as the General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Management and Budget in the upcoming administration of Barack Obama.
Currently Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, Krueger plans to return to his position as Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University at the end of the summer.
Noting that the international community is united around Iran's misbehaviour, United States President Barack Obama has said it will be worth watching how China operates at the United Nations Security Council where his administration is likely to propose additional sanctions against Tehran.
The United States may seek to gain leverage from the WikiLeaks disclosures about the Inter Services Intelligence's links with the Taliban and the Al Qaeda to make Islamabad act tougher on militant groups on its soil. "This is now in the open," a senior Barack Obama administration official said, referring to the 92,000 documents of the US defence department's war in Afghanistan made public by the online whistleblower WikiLeaks.
United States President Barack Obama has appointed Cliff Sloan, a high-powered lawyer with extensive experience in all three branches of the government, as his special envoy for the closure of the much-criticised terrorist detention centre at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
The buying of the aircraft was 'seen as a misuse of money at a time when the bank is reliant on public support'. The report said that Citi, which earlier insisted that it would go ahead with the purchase of the jet, backed out after officials acting for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, expressed strong opposition to the move.
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