Claude Arpi's fascinating account of the Dalai Lama's arrival in Tawang in March 1959.
The Travel Photographer of The Year Awards winners have been chosen and they're a stunning selection celebrating the beauty of our planet and all its inhabitants. Photographers from 142 countries submitted over 20,000 jaw-dropping pictures that were shot on everything from high-end professional cameras to mobile phones, in categories including 'faces, people, cultures'; the natural world and the beauty of light. The winning images can be seen at the TPOTY exhibition, which is free, and will be on show at LondonBridgeCity next Spring. Rediff.com was kindly granted permission to publish 25 of the 150 winning and shortlisted images. Scroll down to see our picks of the bunch.
General T N Raina was an iconic Indian military leader whose contributions to the nation should be more widely known, notes Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
'We are witnessing a spectacle of breathtakingly creative diplomacy at work, riveted on the firm foundations of the country's strategic autonomy,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Delhi was not concerned.' 'It would continue sleeping for several more years, with the result that Indian territory is still occupied by China today,' says Claude Arpi.
'Gotabaya will expect India to observe the red line.' 'He even dispensed with any gesture welcoming India as an interlocutor on the Tamil issue.' points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'China was the elephant in the Oval Office and Trump would have sensed that Modi's foreign policy architecture has become disoriented sans the US' pivot to Asia,' points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The Rs 978 crore mission, which has been rescheduled for Monday after scientists corrected the glitch in the rocket, will be launched at 2.43 p.m from the second launchpad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, over 100 km from Chennai.
'This is the only place on earth where Elephas maximus climbs to these heights.'
Can Baichung Bhutia's Hamro Sikkim party pose a challenge to Pawan Chamling who has not lost an election in 24 years?
'It was the Mughals who first established standard units of measurement and maintained offices of meticulous record keepers and auditors, departing from the more haphazard methods of earlier regimes.' 'By the end of the 16th century, their revenue and judicial administrations exhibited an obsessive preoccupation with order, the efficient management of time, and a spirit of rational self-control -- all of them characteristics of early modernity,' point out Sheldon Pollock and Benjamin Ellman.
Britannia, which last week announced a management rejig putting COO Varun Berry in charge of Indian operations, has always believed in quickly identifying new trends in the food and beverage segment.
The ISRO is aiming for a soft landing of the lander in the South Pole region of the moon where no country has gone so far.
'If we had sent a few airplanes (into Tibet), we could have wiped the Chinese out.' 'And everything could have been different in the 1962 War.' 'They did not believe me there was no Chinese air force.' 'Can you imagine what would have happened if we had used the IAF at that time?' 'The Chinese would have never dared do anything down the line.'
'According to me, her finest hour was in 1983-1984 when she neutralised a combined US-Pakistan-British conspiracy to Balkanise India by creating an independent Sikh State of Khalistan,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd). A special assessment of Indira Gandhi on her centenary.
'The fabric of democracy is fraying,' says T V R Shenoy. 'It is being attacked not just by terrorists in Kashmir or by zealots in the North-East, but is being ripped apart even in Allahabad, in the Hindi heartland.'
With Beijing having had a profound rethink on India's admission as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the tectonic plates of the geopolitics of a massive swathe of the planet stretching from the Asia-Pacific to West Asia are dramatically shifting. That grating noise in the Central Asian steppes will be heard far and wide -- as far as North America, says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
From captivating photos of Northern Lights, sparkling galaxies, the 'man on the moon' and more, photos taken by the winners of the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2016 competition are an absolute treat.
'The parallels between 1914 and 2014 are striking. The crumbling of American and Russian hegemony, the rise of powerful terrorist groups, ferment in the Middle East and the rise of China... These closely mirror the world of 1914,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'If every city had the strongest tools that are currently available only to a few, the world's climate prospects would glow far more brightly.'
The State must stand as a solid tower of confidence to provide a guarantee of safety to its citizens and instill fear in the hearts of offenders. But where is that State, asks Tarun Vijay
What does one do when one day, out of the blue, one is told to go on a road trip to the Everest Base Camp?
The jury of the 58th annual World Press Photo Contest has selected an image by Danish photographer Mads Nissen as the World Press Photo of the Year 2014.
'The thin line is a permanent dilemma with soldiers. You have to appreciate that in that dilemma and chaos there are officers who stand and lead their men.
Bollywood's Badshah turns 50 on November 2, and it's time to celebrate his life and movies.
In his penultimate State of the Union address, Barack Obama said that the economy is improving.
