Invoking Mahatma Gandhi in his address at the United Nations General Assembly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that 'one must care about the world one will not see', adding that the top-most priority must be the eradication of poverty from the world.
The International Cricket Council joined the world in mourning the death of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, saying that the former South African President was a "towering symbol of resistance" who would inspire generations to come.
More than 600,000 Rohingyas from Myanmar's Rakhine state have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, creating one of the world's most dire refugee crisis.
One priority for Delhi (for the new foreign secretary in particular) is to have an in-depth discussion with Dharamsala as soon as possible, suggests Claude Arpi.
Bloodbath in Gaza continued unabated today with Israel and Hamas refusing to back down in the conflict that has killed over 660 Palestinians and 31 Israelis, even as US Secretary of State John Kerry said his ceasefire negotiations in Jerusalem were making progress.
'Washington appears to be playing the long game, and making the argument to India that over the longer term, Russia -- sanctioned, cash-strapped, isolated by the West -- will no longer be a viable defence partner for India'
In a frontal attack on the Narendra Modi government, Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday said there has been an "alarming increase" in communal incidents since it came to power and asked party men to resist its "authoritarian and sectarian" tendencies.
'It is a testing time for our foreign policy which may involve a certain element of taking risks, assessing costs, and expecting failures,' asserts Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
'Previous governments in India had reservations about working with Israel.' 'Modi has shed this tag.' 'Disengaging itself from its traditional and ideological foreign policy approach in the Middle East shall serve India's long-term interests.' Rajaram Panda explains why the significance of Modi's visit to the Jewish nation goes beyond markers like the first-ever visit to Israel by an Indian PM and 25 years of diplomatic ties.
Narendra Modi's positive engagement with Barack Obama has well and truly washed away the doubts and slights of the past.
The French president said that peace should be maintained in the region and peoples' rights should be protected.
India hit out at China for its remarks that there was no consensus over the United States' proposal to ban Pathankot attack mastermind and Jaish-e-Mohammed is chief Masood Azhar at the United Nations
AAP candidates from Mumbai, Medha Patkar and Meera Sanyal, are poised to play a crucial and complementary role. While Patkar gives voice to the suffering of people at the grassroots, Sanyal is articulating the key principles that could build a more just and equitable society or economy, says Rajni Bakshi.
'India would not like to see Pakistani domination and tutelage of Afghanistan against Indian security and economic interests.'
'Antonio Guterres takes over as the UN secretary-general with tremendous goodwill as the process of his election was without the usual horse trading and compromises.' 'We have every reason to believe that he will be sensitive to Indian positions,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has liberalised the procedure for facilitating the import of rough diamonds (termed roughs in the trade).
Exploiting the killings to ratchet up the tension in the region and harden negotiating positions with the central government serves nobody, least of all the people of Nagaland. The peace process must not be stalled because of this incident or distracted by calls to repeal the AFSPA, argues Vivek Gumaste.
We have our own problems for sure and they are not trivial, but for now, our economy is in not too bad a shape, our politics is as personality-driven and authoritarian as that of most countries in the world. We must make the best of what we have and not be excessively unhappy looking at the grass on the other side of the septic tank which may not be greener after all!, observes Shreekant Sambrani.
Sandeep Pandey salutes women who have contributed to social transformation in India after 1980.
The Al Qaeda, the Islamic State or Daesh, as it is also called, will continue to exploit the fault lines and the many contradictions in the approaches of different countries, says Hardeep Puri.
The Security Council as it is today is unable to bring peace and security in the world and so there is reason for countries like India to become members of the Council, Ambassador Asoke Kumar Mukerji tells Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com.
About 90 per cent of the workers at this delivery service facility are said to be Indian-Americans, mostly from the Sikh community.
'Many said his visit was very risky. But mercifully, Air Force One has taken off from Delhi without Mr Trump stepping on anybody's toes,' notes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The Russians had appealed their exclusion from the Games by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over the doping scandal from the 2014 Sochi Games.
'If the US intention was to use the FATF platform to isolate Pakistan and impose sanctions against it, that is not going to work when influential countries such as Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia will not lend support to the US campaign,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
"South Asian studies" academics in the US would do well to introspect how they wittingly or unwittingly become part of Pakistan's proxy war in wielding influence over academics and policy, says Sankrant Sanu.
Will Indian democracy benefit from the potential that Shashi Tharoor stores in his mind, spirit and intellect? Or will it be the saga of another leader who promised much but delivered too little, asks Dr Sudhir Bisht.
Do Modi's foreign visits actually serve India or they nothing more than expensive tools for domestic positioning and image-building, asks Shehzad Poonawalla.
Over 5 million alumni from the Indian Institutes of Technology, Mumbai University and Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, plan to raise Rs 21,000 crore to start the world's largest infection testing lab in Mumbai.
'The Indian version is that the two top diplomats merely exchanged pleasantries, while the Pakistani side characterised the encounter as an 'informal dialogue'.' 'The truth, as always in such piquant situations, is somewhere in between.' 'It stands to reason that ice has been broken,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The country has a fiendishly complicated electoral system that is a combination of population-based proportional representation and party-based national lists, says Aditi Phadnis
The India-Japan joint naval exercises are a strategic signal for China, observes Dr Rajaram Panda.
News of all that's transpired on and off the football field
"The granting of the Freedom of the City of London recognises how they have added their voices to the growing global movement to stamp out racism."
This is Modi's first bilateral visit to Myanmar.
By writing a scathing letter to Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio on the breakdown in law and order in the state, is Governor R N Ravi creating the ground for consolidating his power and directly influence proceedings in the state, asks Sandeep Pandey.
It asked all nations to work together to expedite the adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism in the UN General Assembly without any further delay.
The US is not going to be able to mount a concerted 'Western strategy' against China or Russia in the present international milieu, predicts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'The Indian middle class ignores the conflicts areas in Jammu and Kashmir, in Central India and in the North East.' 'The violence does not touch us at all and so we are able to easily look away from the underlying reasons and grievances.'
Whether the third wave will ravage us depends on the pace of vaccinations, careful and calibrated opening up of establishments, and a strategy to contain the spread in specific states or pockets.
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