Normally a star-studded display teeming with celebrities, the Tokyo Olympics ceremony was low-key, with fewer than 1,000 people in attendance, strict social distancing rules and signs calling on spectators to "be quiet around the venue."
Markets are assuming that by the second half of 2021, the world will be approaching some type of normalcy, points out Akash Prakash.
'What Kamala Harris' rise and rise underscores is that our old ways of identifying the Indian-American Diaspora need to change...' 'None of this detracts from her Indian-American identity, which makes us feel as if we are Americans too,' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Leaders of India, Australia and the United States -- countries that make up the Quad with Japan -- expressed shock at the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, saying he played a 'formative role' in the founding of the partnership and worked tirelessly to advance a shared vision for a free and open strategically-important Indo-Pacific region.
Hitting hard on the three and half years of the Trump administration during her first appearance after being picked as the vice presidential nominee of the Democratic party on Tuesday, Harris, 55, presented a long list of missteps taken by the current United States government.
More than India's alignment with the Quad, India's defence cooperation and partnership with the USA is of critical importance, notes Rup Narayan Das.
The state funeral on Monday will take the form of an elaborate ceremony that will see Her Majesty's coffin transported from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey and finally to Windsor Castle.
The provisions do not apply to Trump, "since he is no longer 'President,'" his lawyers say.
Time's profile of Modi says that in its 74 years as an independent nation, India has had three pivotal leaders -- Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Modi. "Narendra Modi is the third, dominating the country's politics like no one since them."
In this moment there has to be honest acknowledgement of how so many in our community willingly voted for another four years of Trump, based on the morally flimsiest of reasons, points out Suleman Din.
'They say 'a picture paints a thousand words', so seeing Rishi Sunak PM at the door of Number 10 can never be taken from us.'' 'It is a symbol that will go down in the history books.' 'It is the very embodiment of me saying to my boys, "You can be who you want to be",' notes James Salins in this must-read feature.
Here are some of the striking moments captured by Reuters photographers as United States voters went to the polls and the stories behind the images.
Kamala Harris is now the first woman, the first Black American and the first Asian American to hold the country's second highest office, and is now in a strong position to run for the top job four years from now.
India's most powerful prime minister in five decades gets publicly admonished -- if gently -- by the US vice-president. The question is, would this make him reflect on how and why, or which ones of his government and party's missteps exposed his flank like this? asks Shekhar Gupta.
Brazil soccer great Pele died on Thursday, aged 82, after a long battle with cancer.
Harris is known for many firsts. She has been a county district attorney; the district attorney for San Francisco -- the first woman and first African-American and Indian-origin to be elected to the position.
Prime Minister Modi, who is in Japan on a two-day visit to attend a summit of the Quad leaders at the invitation of his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida, penned an op-ed on the vibrant relations between India and Japan in the Yomiuri Shimbun.
'If Trump is out, Modi is going to find himself in a hotspot, having to reset his relations with the new US President with whom he will have to co-exist for well-nigh his full term,' notes B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant.
The former first lady urged those who did not come out to vote in 2016 to make their vote count this time.
An alert government in Delhi should have begun government-to-government discussions with Moscow the moment it came to know that Russians were developing a vaccine. That is to say, almost an year's time has been lost, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Even though we may have voted a President out of office, that does not mean those who loyally supported him will be silenced. Nor should they be. While we may not agree with our neighbour's opinions, we can never stop fighting for their right to voice them, asserts Urvashi Banerjea.
A former White House aide has claimed that the couple's 15-year marriage is over and that Melania is "counting every minute until he is out of the office and she can divorce."
China is going to be an indispensable partner in Russia's ongoing crisis with the US, while on its part, China cannot remain indifferent if Russia gets crushed by the US, lest it loses 'strategic depth', observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Eleven countries voted in favour of the resolution while three countries - India, China and the UAE abstained.
'Dr Shashi Tharoor by far is a much better choice.'
"As we have discussed, Joe has outlined our plan for vaccinations, our plan for recovery, and in particular relief for working people, for families. And there is a lot to do. Some of them say that ours are ambitious goals, but we do believe with hard work and with the cooperation and collaboration of the members of the United States Congress that we can get it done," Harris said in response to a question.
'This, together with Chinese revisionism, will constitute the major test of the international system.'
Pelosi and House Democrats had pressed Pence and the Cabinet to remove Trump from office in the aftermath of the January 6 breach of the US Capitol by thousands of the president's loyalists.
India has the ability in all respects to be a great power and address our security challenges in the best national interests, says Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
Gopalan Balachandran recalls his eldest sister Dr Sushila Gopalan and her daughter Kamala who is now the US vice-president-elect.
A series of recent scandals engulfing officials working on the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Games
Gopalan Balachandran, Harris' maternal uncle, said she will script many firsts if she wins and expressed the hope her top-level position will give Indians in the US "greater access" in interacting with the US administration.
From 2014 to 2017, Gupta served as the assistant attorney general for civil rights under President Barack Obama, where she advanced criminal justice reform, prosecuted hate crimes, protected voting rights and fought against discrimination.
From now on, the Taliban will be responsible for the "honour, wealth and preservation" of Afghanistan's people, Ghani said.
'I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter, or how we got here. After a clear warning we'd take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter. Was this correct?'
'All actions for COVID-19 should be the same as for other routine health conditions.' 'There is no need to report the matter in the media all the time; not on front page please.'
'We lost our place in being first in the epidemic, when it hit India so hard, but we were actually the epicentre of the epidemic from essentially April 2020, for almost an entire year. We had such high cases. We were the country that had the most mixed response.'
China remains the elephant in the room and has to be tamed, which the United States alone is unable to do and therefore calls allies to come on board.
Musings on love, life and everything in between.
'They are starting to move more quickly and we would just like to continue to see bold action being taken.'
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