The Islamic State group has released a video showing the beheading of US aid worker Peter Kassig in a warning to Washington as it prepares to send more troops to Iraq.
Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba's technology chief had posed as an Indian businessman while negotiating to buy from an American company a Voice-over-Internet Phone service that was later used by the LeT handlers to communicate with 26/11 attackers while concealing their actual origin.
Bikash Mohapatra salutes boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
Moni Chadha was with Lal Bahadur Shastri in Tashkent. He counters colourful conspiracy theories with sobering facts.
'They are saying my petition is an attack on Hindu religion.' 'You pray in your home, there is no problem, but the school is a public institution run by government funds.'
Photojournalist Chandu Mhatre, one of the first to reach Bhopal after India's worst industrial disaster ravaged the city, remembers his worst seven days, in a conversation with Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com.
Chaos and controversy rock the 2016 Republican national convention in Cleveland, Ohio.
'US counter-terrorism policy was encouraging and emboldening the Indians to deal with the problem of Pakistani-supported terrorism once and for all.' 'The US had been trying to browbeat Pakistan into doing what it wants, with very limited success.'
'A vote for Hillary means a vote for endless wars of trying to overthrow governments and rebuilding foreign countries.' 'A vote for Bernie Sanders means an end to these interventionist wars, and instead spending our money and precious resources rebuilding our own country,' Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, the only Hindu-American in the United States Congress, tells Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com
A guide to where you can't use the selfie stick.
'If you go up to an average American or British citizen, and tell them you are a Muslim, they look at you suspiciously. It's not a good feeling,' Saif Ali Khan tells Sonil Dedhia.
Sukh Ram and Raja were charged with corruption during their tenure as telecom ministers. Sukh Ram was convicted while Raja has been acquitted. One had cash found under his bed; in the case of the other the trial judge mockingly asks: Where is the money? And if there's no money, where is the corruption? So, pronounced innocent. Sukh Ram is a Brahmin. 'Maybe he strayed just that one time, people like that aren't usually corrupt.' And Raja is a Dalit. 'Can you expect any better?' What race is in some places, caste is in India, says Shekhar Gupta.
When we hang out with the stars...
Six men are in the news, and in very different boats
'Small bands of terrorists believe they can destabilise superpowers if they are ready to become martyrs.' 'Since the road to paradise is under the shade of swords, it is a win-win situation for those ready to die for the cause of Allah.'
'Mohammad Akhlaq's death isn't only about a Muslim being killed out of sheer communal bigotry, but also the denial of the Constitutional guarantees of "due process" under Article 21 and the freedom of choice,' says Shehzad Poonawalla, who has moved the National Commission for Minorities over the murder.
'Competence, experience, matter, did you say?' 'No music was sweeter than the mash of xenophobia, jingoism, racism, misogyny.' 'And the master busker to play the tune was round the corner to capture an eager audience just in the nick of time.' Shreekant Sambrani on the Trump Triumph a week after his upset victory.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is the only candidate in the race to the White House who has devoted her entire life to the people of America, outgoing US President Barack Obama has said.
'Unsurprisingly, the joint statement issued after Modi's visit contains a paragraph on terrorism.' 'It is on the usual lines that India would have with, say, Croatia.' 'The surprising part is that it shies away from getting into specifics,' points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'The Ishrat encounter was neither genuine, nor fake. I believe it was a 'controlled killing,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'It was the first document he had seen that asked him about his past in such detail; it was the only interest this country (America) had shown in his origins, and it was most inconvenient. To get ahead, he had to find out where he had come from.'
We take a look at Time magazines top world leaders.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is a fraud, a liar and a hypocrite, top Democratic leaders and speakers at the party's national convention said as they lashed out at the billionaire from New York.
'A deadly combination of money and religion lures them into the murky world of terrorism.' 'You will reach heaven if you kill -- what a doctrine!' Professor Ajoy Roy, whose son blogger Avijit Roy was brutally murdered in Dhaka last year, tells Rediff.com's Indrani Roy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had invited ASEAN leaders to be the chief guests.
'In the last one year, it looks like there were bad things that didn't take place, and there were good things that didn't take place,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
The ordinary life lived in Pakistan is rarely a part of Indian imagination. This is this gap that Pakistani television serials have succeeded in bridging, says Mohammad Asim Siddiqui.
'It is a great misfortune that the Nehruvian Stalinists of India have colluded with the grand project of demeaning and destroying Sanskrit. Today, the number of Sanskritists in India is low, and falling,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
'I say Modi was India's last chance.' 'Because the kind of work this government has done -- I'm talking about physical delivery -- is fantastic, like no time in our history.'
Even if I completely disagree with what Gulmehar says, I must, as a father, as an Indian, protect her rights and her dignity. Otherwise I am not entitled to be called an Indian, says Tarun Vijay.
"Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad," Obama said as tears streamed down his cheeks in the East Room of the White House in the presence of a large number of victims of mass shootings.
Eyewitnesses reported hearing a loud "bang" from inside the venue.
'Against the backdrop of difficult administrative, political and economic problems, Imran's temperament and staying power will be the subject of intense expectation and public scrutiny,' says Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan Desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
Chitrita Banerji's new book, Bengali Cooking, takes readers into the kitchens of West Bengal and Bangladesh through the changing seasons. And if it starts to rain, nothing matters more to the Bengali palate than the hilsa fish and the many ways it can be consumed.
A 25-year quest by nearly 1,000 scholars to document and present one of the world's oldest living traditions came to fruition when the 'Encyclopedia of Hinduism' was unveiled in Columbia.
'Even if the media is partisan, the BJP, governing at the Centre, has the most to lose if India descends into widespread communal violence.' 'Fanning the flames either by vested political interests or by partisan reports only plays into the hands of those seek a conflagration.'
In his penultimate State of the Union address, Barack Obama said that the economy is improving.
India is not making a choice of war over peace. Rather it is at war, a war thrust on it by a sick militaristic State, says Sankrant Sanu.
'The real danger in India right now is that identity politics is being stoked in extremely dangerous ways.' 'The narrative you get about churches in the mainstream Indian media and the narrative you get in the social media is very different.' 'Many Americans today want to appropriate Indian culture. They want yoga, but they say yoga has nothing to do with Hinduism. They want Ayurveda, but they say it's got nothing to do with Hinduism.' 'Hinduism has been failed by political constituencies in India -- seculars and the right-wing.'
Without civilisational moorings, India, more a sub-continent than a country, could not exist. Primacy of Dharma has been the cornerstone of Indian civilisation, says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
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