Excerpts from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech at the Combined Commanders Conference on board the INS Vikramaditya at sea, off the coast of Kochi.
As AI-176 landed at the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru and the crew members walked to the lounge, a huge crowd of people gave a rousing reception for scripting history with the about 17-hour journey, the longest flight by the national carrier or any other airline in the country.
India's first exclusive defence satellite GSAT-7 was successfully launched by European space consortium Arianespace's Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou spaceport in French Guiana on Friday, giving a major push to the country's maritime security.
"It's ironic that Modi visited Tokyo a few days ago and talked about China's expansionism. The key now will be to get beyond such unnecessary controversies and start afresh.'
Monsoon revival over weekend likely, but second-half rainfall may be muted. If the rains become scarce after mid-August, the standing kharif crops might be impacted
'Over the last two decades, the India-French relationship has grown steadily, no major political difference having darkened the sky between Paris and Delhi,' says Claude Arpi.
In bilateral interfaces relations with China have also to be given due weight, opines Premvir Das
China's South China Sea build-up and 'territorial sea' construct potentially affects 55 percent of Indian trade passing through the region. Hence, coordinating with the US and Japan could provide dividends to India in the longer run,' says Srikanth Kondapalli.
We once again present a special feature on the ten worst earthquakes that had shaken the world and caused immense damage in the past 25 years.
Modi may take satisfaction from his display of considerable political skill in managing a mercurial, temperamental and unpredictable US president and nudging him into uncharacteristic restraint and even carefully orchestrated remarks. This personal chemistry will come in handy if Trump returns as president in the November elections, says former foreign secretary Shyam Saran.
Indians at large harbour a notion that their country is cherrypicking out of the American basket of goodies, but the policymakers in Delhi and the political leadership are well aware that it can only be a pipe dream since a military alliance with a superpower is a profound irrevocable commitment, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
India's only live volcano in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands which had started showing activity in the year 1991 after being dormant for over 150 years has once again started spewing ash, researchers at Goa-based National Institute of Oceanography said on Friday.
If viewed as a part of the Al Qaeda's radicalisation effort to produce jihadists out of discontented Muslim youth in India, the call could well have a much larger dimension, both in the near as well as long term, directly impacting on national security, says Bibhu Prasad Routray.
Slated to be in India on December 8, Carter would travel to Japan, Bahrain, Israel, Italy and Great Britain before returning to the US on December 16. This is for the first time that an outgoing American Defence Secretary has included India in his itinerary for the final overseas trip.
The PM's vision of a lean, agile, mobile and technology driven force requires more than 1.7 percent of GDP that it now gets.
PM Modi seems to be gradually ending India's strategic ambiguity
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's first State visit to India is an indication of the success of India's Act East Policy, says Dr Rahul Mishra.
Once in each President's term in office, he or she carries out a "naval fleet review", a deliberately public assembly of the entire fleet.
Utilising his visit to Fiji, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday acknowledged the role played by this tiny South Pacific Island nation in the success of India's Mars mission in the very first attempt and offered to make it the hub for regional collaboration in space.
Prime minister likely to visit Beijing, Shanghai; also President Xi's home province, Shaanxi. Nayanima Basu reports
India and Japan are natural partners at sea, and Narendra Modi's recent visit underlined the need to keep the association going
'India needs to learn in Kashmir how to spread development.' 'Pakistan needs to learn in Balochistan how to spread development.' 'China needs to learn in Xinjiang and Tibet.' 'And if they can show tangible benefits, there will be less terrorism.' 'No one wakes up in the morning saying 'I want to kill myself', right?'
'India appears to have stood its ground on strategic autonomy by resisting US pressure on Russia, China and Iran, but succumbed to the temptation to walk into a tighter embrace in defence cooperation, a high priority of the Trump administration,' notes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
India and China on Friday held 'in-depth' discussions on addressing the remaining issues along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, holding that disengagement in the North and South banks of Pangong lake provided a good basis to work towards their early resolution.
A list of all the foreign visits taken up by PM Narendra Modi this year and their outcomes.
It will not be to India's advantage to create misperceptions that it is bandwagoning with some Anglo-American project for regime change in Myanmar, argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'China's excessive military aid to Pakistan is the real elephant in the room as far as Sino-Indian relations are concerned. India should be confident enough to accept a degree of closeness between China and Pakistan, since China may wish to use this link for its foray into the Muslim world.' 'But the Chinese must be realistic enough to know that as time passes, the tactic of using Pakistan as a proxy to check India will yield diminishing returns. The US tried it for 60 years but failed, so will China,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'This is the first time that the Americans have agreed to refer to "cross-border terrorist attacks" in a joint statement.' 'No wonder Pakistan has called the joint statement "singularly unhelpful" and has blasted it, and its all-weather friend China has applauded Pakistan's frontline role in combating terrorism,' points out former foreign secretary Ambassador Kanwal Sibal.
There are some larger policy issues related to the submarine as a platform and the modernisation programme of the navy that merit brief recall and review, says C Uday Bhaskar
An AirAsia flight from Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people aboard reportedly went missing on Sunday morning after losing contact with air traffic controllers.
Voting was held in Maldives on Saturday for the second multi-party presidential elections with long queues of people outside polling stations in this Indian Ocean archipelago, which has seen a series of unsettling political events in the last eighteen months.
Several homes, businesses and mosques in the hilly Kandy district have been damaged in anti-Muslim riots.
If the Taliban have proved one thing over these two decades, it is that they are way smarter than their big brother, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Brushing aside India's concerns, China on Monday cemented its "all-weather ties" with Pakistan by agreeing to build a strategic $46 billion (Rs 2.9 lakh crore) economic corridor through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as part of 51 deals signed, expanding the communist giant's influence in the region.
Here is the full text of the joint statement issued by India and the US.
India has made a good beginning in the area of satellite navigation but still there is a long way to go.
Afcons Infrastructure, whose chartered barge P305 with 261 personnel at the Bombay High offshore oilfield was wrecked by cyclonic storm Tauktae earlier this week, on Thursday said the weather deteriorated rapidly and reached levels far worse than forecasts.
'A master politician who excelled in the politics of intrigue, Subash Ghisingh kept winning election after election, sending a clear message to the state and central governments that he remained the undisputed king of the Darjeeling hills.'
Swaraj expressed satisfaction over the agenda of the inaugural dialogue while giving the details of the deliberations.
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