President Pranab Mukherjee addressed a joint session of Parliament ahead of the budget session which began on Tuesday. Here are the highlights of President Pranab Mukherjee's speech:
Enabling labour to become more globally mobile can produce higher remittances with powerful 'brain gain' dividends.
'The greatest loss from replacing the 126 Rafale proposal with the 2016 contract for 36 Rafales might not be the extra money paid, but the opportunity that India's aerospace industry lost of obtaining access to critical aviation technologies and manufacturing skills.'
Prasad asked private operators to play a role in skill development.
The International Cricket Council might have confirmed that the tainted trio of Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamir can return to cricket after the expire of their bans, but a divided house seems to have emerged in Pakistani cricket.
'There is no harm in children studying the Vedas; it is part of Indian culture and history... The aim is not to saffronise education,' Shiksha Bachao Andolan chief Dinanath Batra tells Vicky Nanjappa/Rediff.com
The Politburo Standing Committee -- the most powerful body in China -- is unveiled, but in a break from Communist party convention, no successor to Xi Jinping is named.
You just cannot let an institution go adrift and never reporting to any other institution and never submitting itself to any monitoring review or evaluation with regard to its functioning and particularly with regards to an institution which has dominion over the lives and liberties of citizens. That kind of total abdication of government responsibility with regard to that kind of an institution will be dangerous to democracy itself, to the people, Bahukutumbi Raghavan tells Sheela Bhatt
All international passengers will henceforth be screened at airports, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said at a press conference. Earlier, travellers from only 12 countries were screened at airports for the disease that has claimed over 3,000 lives and infected more than 90,000 worldwide.
As the context of Panchsheel has changed, it is all the more essential that India and China need to reinvent and redefine Panchsheel for a new world order taking into account globalisation, and mutual economic interdependence. The new Panchsheel, in order to be relevant, needs to shed its binary approach of west verses the east recognising the seamlessness of global frontiers, which globalisation has brought in, says Rup Narayan Das.
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).
A summary of sports events and sports persons, who made news on Friday
'Is there any harm in studying the history of India? This is not a regressive stand. The Vedas and Upanishads should be included in our textbooks,' says Dinanath Batra.
Defence projects worth a whopping Rs 80,000 crore were on Saturday cleared by the government which decided that six submarines will be made indigenously and over 8,000 Israeli anti-tank guided missiles and 12 upgraded Dornier surveillance aircraft will be purchased.
Criticising various provisions in the proposed GST regime, Moily said it will be a "technological nightmare" and the anti-profiteering provisions in it are "far too draconian."
10 takeaways from the prime minister's UN speech.
Cancelling Uighur leader Dolkun Isa's visa could have been a mutual face-saving exercise for New Delhi and Beijing.
Considering the common linkages, high-level trust, complementarities, and convergent interests between the two nations, Malaysia has the potential to become India's key partner in Southeast Asia, says Dr Rahul Mishra.
Xi and Modi met soon after their arrival at a summit of the BRICS group of emerging powers. Xi said the two countries should join hands in setting global rules and suggested he attend the November meeting of the 21-nation APEC in Beijing, as well as take part in Chinese-led regional initiatives.
'By the time he came out after nearly five hours, he had a one-to-one conversation with the President, a delegation-level meeting, a reception, a dinner, a tour of the White House and a joint statement of a kind none of his predecessors ever had,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Eyeing greater cooperation with South East Asian countries on economic and security issues, India on Thursday announced a separate Mission for ASEAN region to be set up in Jakarta with a full-time resident Ambassador.
Arunabha Ghosh on why India will increasingly become an energy great power, but not an energy hegemon.
The second part of our series on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ministers with a criminal record.
Magsaysay Award winner Sonam Wangchuk speaks to Claude Arpi about his journey, his fights, his hopes and how he became an inspiration for the Bollywood blockbuster.
'Foreign policy-making cannot be shifted out of Delhi and the regional satraps, who do not have a national perspective, should not be allowed to dominate foreign policy. But regional inputs should be integral to foreign policy-making at every step of the way,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The Supreme Court on Thursday said there was no bar on the collegium to go ahead with its work to appoint judges for the higher judiciary, which is plagued with large-scale vacancies.
Consensus seems a problem before the current session of Parliament ends.
Diplomats agree that amid stormy relations with China and Pakistan, Modi has posted impressive foreign policy successes, notes Aditi Phadnis.
'People had said it will explode and everyone will die. Nothing of that sort has happened.' 'Our government has done a splendid job so far.'
'Our policy seems to be to give away part of J&K, even though we are entitled to the entire state.' 'The Congress has done so, and the BJP is following the same policy.' 'No one is applying their mind to the legal position.' 'Kashmir is not a part of Pakistan under its own constitution.'
News of all that's transpired on and off the football field
It is important the SCO focus strongly on economic development and regional integration that leads to greater benefits for the least developed regions of member-countries, writes Sana Hashmi.
'I was present at a meeting where he decided to permit the IAF to strike at Pakistan positions in Kargil, with the caveat that they should not cross the LoC.' 'Confident that the Indian Army would succeed, Mr Vajpayee was positioning himself to tell the world after the Kargil conflict was won that India did not violate the 'sanctity' of the LoC,' recalls Ambassador G Parthasarathy, who served as India's envoy in Islamabad in that eventful year, 1999.
'Indira Gandhi and P N Haksar did not want Pakistan to leave as an embittered foe hell-bent on taking revenge for being humiliated so comprehensively.'
'Offensive operations to capture objectives across the LoC to eliminate terrorist launch pads and deny the use of the most dangerous routes of infiltration, are likely to be limited to brigade-level attacks.' 'These limited operations are unlikely to escalate to war across the international boundary,' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
'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.
The rakshasutra programme organised by the RSS at BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu's residence shows how the Sangh and BJP leaders are no longer afraid to proclaim their identity with each other, says Rediff.com contributor Anita Katyal
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's three-day visit to Britain has seen India and the UK agreeing on Rs 90,000 crore deals.
A summary of sports events and sports persons, who made news on Friday
'Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may be anxious for a farewell visit to Washington in October,' says retired Ambassador K C Singh, 'but bending backwards on America's PRISM policy is going to earn him scorn at home and contempt abroad.'
