'If all goes well, Modi will visit the Maldives later this year. But two Indian concerns remain unaddressed: President Yameen's intentions about Mohammad Nasheed and China,' says Rajeev Sharma.
Centre announces it is safe for coastal residents to return home
'With the recent challenging of the notion of the Indian Ocean Region being India's strategic backyard, China is gradually upping the ante in the maritime realm around India.'
The agreement provides for creation of an enabling framework for closer cooperation and interoperability, besides allowing militaries of the two countries to use each other's bases and facilities for repair and replenishment of supplies, the official said.
Space shuttle Discovery began its return to earth as pilot Jim Kelly fired the orbital manoeuvring systems that will put the spacecraft in a trajectory to land here at around 1742 IST. \n\n
Lakshmi Sharath visited the island nation and returned with a bagful of memories.
Several homes, businesses and mosques in the hilly Kandy district have been damaged in anti-Muslim riots.
The world needs to wake up to this new dimension of war at sea and be prepared to face the 'unknown enemy' who have the advantage of attacking at their choice of location and time, cautions Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
Uppal, 43, was detained last week in that country and the ED authorities are in touch with the Dubai authorities to get him deported to India, they said.
'Unlike on the western and eastern borders where there is an enemy at the gate, here there is an invisible enemy which is building its own capability and can come into play at a time and place of his choosing.'
Foreign policy is always a work in progress and ups and downs are built into foreign policy process. What is permanent is national interest. Hopefully, this year, which will also witness general elections in the country, will also clear clouds in the foreign policy horizon, observes Rup Narayan Das.
Fourteen years after the Sri Lankan government announced his death, a veteran Tamil nationalist leader claimed in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, on Monday that Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of Eelam Tamils in Sri Lanka, is doing well and said a conducive atmosphere prevails for him to appear now.
The New Zealand police on Monday said they have received a "report" wherein it was alleged that two members of a delegation of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), the Amul brand owner, "inappropriately touched" a woman at a trade event in the island country a week ago.
Rulers in New Delhi and their political aides in sensitive states like Tamil Nadu have to be doubly careful not to provoke a situation whose consequences may be much more than visible now to the naked eye, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
An earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale hit the Andaman Sea on Thursday but the Met department ruled out tsunami.
A round-up of our favourite photographs from the week gone by.
As many as 3,50,000 people have been rendered homeless in the region.
These natural wonders are all under threat.
Under the amended treaty with Mauritius, for two years beginning April 1, 2017, capital gains tax will be imposed at 50 per cent of the prevailing domestic rate.
In a tweet, before leaving for New Delhi, Rajapaksa said he was looking forward to strengthening bilateral relations with India.
Arson attacks continued on Wednesday and Muslim-owned businesses were targeted by the mobs.
Tomy was battling for life on the dismasted sailboat Thoriya with a severe back injury, the officials said.
The aircraft carrier is China first domestically-built ship. Shandong is bigger than China's first aircraft carrier Liaoning and could house 36 fighter jets.
'Amid the frequent cries that the defence budget falls short of what is needed, we tend to ignore the reality that any enhancement in the allocation is just not possible, and the armed forces have no option but to operate within this constraint.' 'So, unless deadwood -- especially manpower -- is identified and eliminated, we simply cannot have a modern military of the type that India needs,' says Vice Admiral Premvir Das (retd).
"In the flux and transition of our times, the most critical need in this region is to uphold and strengthen the rules and norms that must define our collective behaviour," he said.
Mauritius promises India full-cooperation on tax treaty issues.
The ship will now arrive on August 16 and remain at the Hambantota port till August 22, they said.
The newly discovered debris, found over the weekend, is on its way to Malaysia for further examination. The wreckage is a piece of horizontal stabilizer skin, CNN reported, quoting an unnamed US official as saying.
Hard to believe that some of these surreal places do exist.
Polls opened at 7 am local time and would close at 5 pm with some 12,845 polling stations being set up throughout the country for 15.9 million voters, who will choose a successor to President Maithripala Sirisina.
Esper also highlighted the 'increased' military cooperation with India and called it as 'one of the most important defence relationships of the 21th century'.
It is speculated that the tsunami was caused by activity around a volcanic island in the strait, Krakatoa, which is 156 km west of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta.
Although the Malabar is a routine exercise which has been carried out for several years now, security experts attach a lot of traction to it in view of China's assertive behaviour in the South China Sea, observes Rup Narayan Das.
The naval officer had circumnavigated the globe in 2012-13, and was a special invitee at the race, which commemorates 50 years of the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race 1968-69.
Manasi Joshi and Rohit Roy celebrate their only child's 17th birthday in the Maldives.
Rediff.com brings you composite images that show the comparison made between a scene from 2004 (TOP) and 2014.
Navy chief Adm. Sunil Lanba said that by 2050, India will have 200 ships, 500 aircraft.
The next edition of the high-voltage Malabar naval exercise begins from August 26 to 29 off the coast of Guam amid mounting global concerns over China's growing military muscle-flexing in the Indo-Pacific region.
