No prizes for guessing what the BJP's election campaign is going to be, and who will provide important inputs for it.
US President Donald Trump has extended the freeze on the most sought-after H-1B visas along with other types of foreign work visas by three months to protect American workers, saying while therapeutics and COVID-19 vaccines are recently available, their effect on the labour market and community health has not yet been fully realised. The decision will impact a large number of Indian IT professionals and several American and Indian companies who were issued H-1B visas by the US government for the fiscal year 2021 beginning October 1. The freeze on various categories of work visas was ordered by Trump through two proclamations on April 22 and June 22 last year.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday described India and America as "natural partners" as he held the first in-person meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House during which they decided to further cement the Indo-US strategic partnership and discussed global issues of common interest, including threats to democracy and the Indo-Pacific.
Participating in an online session, a panel of Hindu-American women, from different walks of life, expressed their strong views in favour of President Trump.
"The largest displacements in the context of disasters in 2021 occurred in China (6.0 million), the Philippines (5.7 million) and India (4.9 million). Most disaster displacements during the year were temporary," it said.
Embargo on imports from a neighbouring country would send a chilling signal to foreign investors who look for transparency and companies with manufacturing units in India had requested the government to publish any change in port policy "to provide the business community with the visibility they need to function", says United States-India Strategic Partnership Forum.
The same team of scientists had last year dismissed the lab leak idea as a conspiracy theory in a report also published in The Lancet.
'It came out of China and it could have been stopped and I wish they had stopped it and so does the whole world wish they had stopped it'
The overwhelming feeling at the end of COP 27 was that despite decades of meetings and landmark accords, like the Paris Agreement, the world was still not doing enough to slow the climate crisis, observes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Expressing concern over the situation in Afghanistan, a group of eminent persons, including former ministers K Natwar Singh, Yashwant Sinha and Mani Shankar Aiyar, on Wednesday urged the government to continue engaging with the Taliban and not allow any political party to use the developments in that country to communally polarise Indian society for electoral gains.
The prestigious event was originally scheduled to be held from May 16-24 but was postponed to August 15-23 before finally rescheduling it in October due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The agreement would divert China's attention and keep them busy in the Pacific theatre, probably resulting in a reduction in threat perception in our area of interest in the Indian Ocean, notes Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
Making a statement on the situation after cases of coronavirus surfaced, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said the government is taking all necessary measures to prevent the spread of the virus.
In a secret-ballot voting in the 193-member UN General Assembly on that race, Pakistan secured 169 votes.
"We have long witnessed unfortunate attempts to employ force to change the status quo at our unresolved borders", Singh said at the inaugural ceremony of Aero India-2021, the country's premier Defence and aerospace show, at Yelahanka Air Force Station in Bengaluru.
After two decades, the SCO appears to be at a cross-roads with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, asserts Srikanth Kondapalli, the leading China expert.
The Taliban knows that Washington holds the key, points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Megha Rajagopalan's Xinjiang series won the Pulitzer Prize in the International Reporting category.
The Indian side expressed readiness to provide extensive humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, Mujahid was quoted as saying by Afghanistan's Tolo News.
'While we may speculate about personality politics, the reality is that there are more important issues that drive the India-US relationship.'
The results for the People's Choice Award for the Wildlife Photographer Of The Year are in.
Despite a lot of lip service to national unity, functional relations between the Han Chinese immigrants and the Uyghur regional majority have not developed on equitable basis, says R Hariharan
"We will remember the soldiers' families, loved ones, and communities as they grieve," said Pompeo.
Union health minister Harsh Vardhan said a total of 2,51,447 persons travelling in 2,315 flights have been screened so far.
Esper also highlighted the 'increased' military cooperation with India and called it as 'one of the most important defence relationships of the 21th century'.
Hydrography (underwater geography) prevents the Indian Navy for opting for an all-conventional, or all-nuclear submarine fleet.
The total amount covered by interim orders of no coercive action passed by the courts in such matters is approximately Rs 67,000 crore, the government told a bench headed by Justice A M Khanwilkar.
Many of the stories, the pictures going out of India worldwide lately with these provocative processions, taunting of Muslims, bulldozers targeting mostly their properties, the sweeping 'othering' of a community of 200 million are painting the front pages and TV screens in the democratic world. That is where most of the friends we covet lie. Soon enough, these will also make our vital friends among the Muslim nations, from Bangladesh to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, uneasy. The best time for course correction is now, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
The guidelines released on Friday come into force from January 11 and will remain effective till further government orders.
Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge, speaking on the Motion of Thanks on the President's address, charged the government with not delivering on its various promises, including generating two crore jobs per year.
India cannot choose its geography and devise regional strategies to dovetail into the Western Indian Ocean hypothesis conceived in the Pentagon, argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Health officials in United States on Friday confirmed that a resident of Oregon has tested positive for coronavirus with no known history of travel to countries severely affected by the outbreak and no known contact with infected individuals.
In sectors like IT, cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, and transportation, the H-1B One Workforce grant programme would be used to upskill the present workforce and train a new generation of workers.
'At the same time, if we are a little careless, we will run into trouble. No doubt about that.'
The assurance comes as India's Covid graph dips -- on Friday 1,109 new coronavirus infections were reported -- and also one case of a new Covid strain in Mumbai.
The Taliban will view India through the eyes of the ISI and can be relied upon to undertake hostile actions against this country, warns Virendra Kapoor.
The nominees are Congresswoman Deb Haaland as Secretary of Interior, Jennifer Granholm as Energy Secretary, Michael Regan as administrator for Environmental Protection Agency and Brenda Mallory as Chair of the Council of the Council on Environmental Quality.
Indian-Americans have relatively more conservative views of policies in India while on issues affecting the US, the diaspora has a more liberal take, according to a survey of the political attitudes of the influential community in this country.
India is the second-largest global venture capital investment hub for digital shopping companies, growing by a whopping 175 per cent from $8 billion in 2020 to $22 billion in 2021, according to an official analysis released here on Wednesday. On a global scale, India came in second to the US last year, which attracted $51 billion in investment, followed by China at third with $14 billion and the UK at fourth with $7 billion. Within India, Bengaluru comes out on top globally with $14 billion worth of Venture Capital (VC) investments in digital shopping in 2021, followed by Gurugram at No. 7 with $4 billion and Mumbai at No. 10 with $3 billion.
'The crisis has strengthened America's resolve to work towards building its relationship with India as a bulwark against Chinese aggression'
