Soon after he was sworn in by Vice President J D Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Penny Wong from Australia and Japan's Iwaya Takeshi for his first multilateral meeting as the top American diplomat.
'Will President Dissanayake calibrate his foreign policy taking into account India's immediate security concerns? We need to watch.'
In June last year, India unveiled its first list of 29 critical minerals open for private sector exploration and mining. Since then, 38 critical mineral blocks have been auctioned, but only 14 - less than 37 per cent - have found bidders. This modest achievement was secured only after the Centre conducted a second round of auctions when the first round fell flat, failing to attract the minimum required bidders.
The Bangladesh Assistant High Commission in Tripura's capital Agartala on Tuesday announced the suspension of all visa and consular services with immediate effect until further notice because of 'security reasons', a day after the mission's premises was breached by a group of people protesting against the arrest of Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das in Dhaka.
The 16th Brics Summit beginning Tuesday in Kazan, Russia, is expected to see more focus on creating a sharper energy policy for Brics that ensures closer partnership among members in both energy security and energy transition, official sources said. The same is expected to be a part of the Kazan declaration, currently being negotiated, they added.
World Athletics boss Sebastian Coe is quite aware that cricket is nothing short of "religion" in India but he feels it shouldn't be viewed as a "roadblock" for other sports
As a leader, he was ambitious, not for himself but for India and its people. His was not the short-term election cycle calculation of individual political gain. His was a practical vision of how to better the lives of his fellow citizens, asserts Ambassador Shivshankar Menon, who served as foreign secretary and national security advisor when Dr Singh was prime minister.
Shah said stringent actions would be taken against any individual who jeopardises the nation's security.
China has defended its plan to build the world's largest dam on the Brahmaputra River in Tibet, assuring that the project will not affect riparian states and safety issues have been addressed through decades of studies. The dam, estimated to cost USD 137 billion, has raised concerns in India and Bangladesh, but Chinese authorities maintain that the project has been thoroughly studied and safeguards are in place. The dam is part of China's efforts to develop clean energy and respond to climate change.
From bhikshus of Ashokan 3rd century BC and medieval Sufis to Oxfam, Omidyar and Soros now, non-State actors have any real power only when they work in conjunction with a real State, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
Withdrawing a blanket ban on overseas shipments of non-basmati white rice, the government on Saturday imposed a floor price of $490 per tonne and exempted the commodity from export duty. Exports of non-basmati white rice have been banned since July 20, 2023 to boost domestic supply. "The export policy for non-basmati white rice (semi-milled or wholly milled rice, whether or not polished or gazed) ...is amended from prohibited to free, subject to MEP (minimum export price) of $490 per tonne with immediate effect and until further orders," the directorate general of foreign trade (DGFT) said in a notification.
Erdogan's skipping of the Kashmir reference is being seen as an apparent shift in Turkiye's stance and comes at a time when the country is trying to become a member of the BRICS grouping to forge alliances beyond the West.
A tensions escalated with fresh ceasefire violations by Pakistan, the Congress on Saturday said India's Pakistan policy under Narendra Modi dispensation has become an "international joke".
Pakistan government is holding internal discussions on formulating a policy to deal with the new Indian government under Narendra Modi.
India has abstained in the UN General Assembly on a resolution that demanded that Russia immediately cease its aggression against Ukraine and urgently withdraw its military and other unauthorised personnel from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
India stressed that it is even more extraordinary for a country with a history of rigged elections to talk about political choices, that too in a democracy.
'Netanyahu lured Trump into a trap by enticing him with a seductive scenario of massive lucrative business in Gaza's reconstruction.' 'Trump's imagination is running riot, completely disconnected from ground realities,' asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The policy proposes a contingency plan to handle cyber attacks on vital installations and critical infrastructure.
'For the first time since I've been following Indian politics, one heard voters talking about India's role on the world stage and the fact that, due to Modi's leadership, India was once again a great power.'
'We have to keep a watch because India-Sri Lanka has a history that whenever there has been a change in government, either the connectivity projects have been questioned or cancelled or revived.'
The outcome may determine whether Macron's centrist coalition retains power or if France faces a period of political cohabitation with the far-right National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen.
India may be 15th among the top 25 Artificial Intelligence nations, but it has the 'the greatest upward potential' according to research by Tufts University's business school, the Fletcher School. At the top is the US, followed by China, fighting for global leadership in AI followed by the UK, Japan, and Germany. In the 15th spot, India is ahead of Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia and Thailand.
We the people are left in the wind, waiting on the whims of an unengaged president and an oligarch with a nearly bottomless wallet, observes Sree Sreenivasan.
Delhi's appeasement strategy may now translate as more mega arms deals with the US, generating substantial business and job creation in the American economy. Make no mistake, Americans will use it to pressure India, predicts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The US is currently Earth's most powerful country and a certain latitude of understanding -- a world view -- is popularly expected from its leadership. From a country identified with freedom, constitution, debate, democracy and the likes of Abraham Lincoln even as it had the most powerful military around, the US, following Trump's actions, seemed repositioned as militarily powerful with other qualities secondary, observes Shyam G Menon.
'As a child, I didn't even know that he was an IPS officer... It was much later when I came back to India'
'Modi-Shah have understood the risks their cynical mixing of domestic political motivations with strategic national interests was soon going to become counterproductive asserts Shekhar Gupta.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow sees the prospect of making the Security Council more democratic, exclusively, through broadening the representation of countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Night patrolling on hospital premises and regulating access for people to key areas are among the measures the Centre has asked states to implement to ensure the safety of medics at workplaces, following Supreme Court orders in the rape-murder case of a junior doctor in Kolkata.
Both candidates have shifted from their traditional constituencies - Sadhotra from Marh and Sharma from Akhnoor - after these two segments were reserved for Scheduled Castes.
In the Union Budget for Financial Year 2023-24 (FY24), Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had held forth on the need for better governance and investor protection in the banking sector. She had proposed certain amendments to the Reserve Bank of India Act (RBI Act), 1934; the Banking Regulation Act (BR Act), 1949; and the Banking Companies (Acquisition and Transfer of Undertakings) Act, 1970.
India needs to recognise and address challenges posed by its dependence on China for critical minerals and examine the implications of phasing down coal on bank balance sheets as it accelerates its green transition, the government's Economic Survey 2023-24 tabled in Parliament on Monday said. As part of its national plan to contribute to meeting the global goal of limiting the average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, India has committed to reducing emissions by 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, achieving 50 per cent cumulative electric installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources, and creating a carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 gigatons of CO2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover.
Saturday's Quad meeting in Delaware is taking place against the backdrop of China's assertive behaviour in the South China Sea, its sabre-rattling in the Taiwan Strait and increasing footprints in the Pacific and Indian Ocean, asserts Rup Narayan Das.
The countries offering visa-on-arrival service to Indian nationals have been exploited as 'Donkey Routes' by agents for people who endeavour to reach the United States and Canada.
India has the ability in all respects to be a great power and address our security challenges in the best national interests, says Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
Pakistan summoned a senior US diplomat here and lodged a strong protest over America's alleged "interference" in its internal affairs, according to media reports on Friday.
What stood out in his 15-year journey as a member of the political executive at the Centre was his glowing record as India's most successful and effective finance minister. Both as prime minister and finance minister, he understood the importance of gradualism, except when the economy or the polity was in a crisis.
"We should not have a repeat of what happened in Mumbai. That there was a terror attack and there was no response," Jaishankar told reporters in Mumbai.
It's time India re-visited its Western alliances for the attitude and approach that the West reserves for the nation when it comes to security cooperation of the kind that they might not have visualised outside of China, India's bug-bear, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
The White House and the Pentagon have denounced Republican presidential aspirant Donal Trump's call for a ban on the entry of Muslims into the United States, saying the anti-Muslim rhetoric undermines America's national security.
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