In northern Thailand, hundreds of international rescue workers have been spending their last waking hours for the past 11 days trying to get a group of 12 boys, ages 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old soccer coach who have been trapped in a cave after flooding caused by relentless monsoon rains. On July 2, rescue teams discovered all of the boys and their coach alive and in relatively good health, sheltering deep inside the cave complex. Outside, family and friends, who had gathered, welcomed the news. While the boys have been found, extracting them from the cave still remains a difficult task -- much of the return trip is underwater and even though pumps are lowering the water level, the rainfall is not letting up. Here's what's happening and what officials are planning to get them out.
Donald Trump, accompanied by US First Lady Melania Trump, was received by Kovind at the forecourt of majestic Rashtrapati Bhavan along with his wife Savita.
The southwest corner of Union Square in New York City saw a cluster of Indians gathering around a statue of Mahatma Gandhi on the morning of October 2, the birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation.
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Bodh Gaya emerged as a centre that encouraged a continuous dialogue of civilisation, it has enabled India to re-forge her age old linkages with countries, who derived inspiration from Buddha's message of compassion. It is this dialogue that was sought to be interrupted by the dastardly attack, says Dr Anirban Ganguly.
Sumit Bhattacharya paradrops into the eastern Uttar Pradesh temple city to find it enjoying its moment in the national sun.
Nepal, which is reeling under Saturday's earthquake, is likely to experience widespread rains and thundershowers which may trigger landslides, according to the weather department which has asked people to remain alert.
China has long coveted Arunachal Pradesh, which it calls Southern Tibet. But, as Venkataraghavan Subha Srinivasan explains, in 1947, the present state of Arunachal Pradesh constituted the North East Frontier Tract of Assam. When India adopted its Constitution on 26 January 1950, NEFT became 'a separate politico-administrative entity' although it was constitutionally still a part of Assam. Its administration was brought directly under the President of India with the Governor of Assam acting as his agent. A revealing excerpt from his book The Origin Story of India's States.
'Seven galleries range from the historical to the traditional, and from the contemporary to what constitutes the Diaspora -- the migrant labour that went on to create plantation colonies in far reaches of the world,' notes Kishore Singh.
Savarkar believed Swarajya is more than the mere geographical independence of a stretch of earth called India. There was no point in fighting and sacrificing one's life for a Swarajya (mere territorial independence) at the cost of our Svatva (self-existence) or Hindutva itself! A revealing excerpt from Uday Mahurkar and Chirayu Pandit's Veer Savarkar: The Man Who Could Have Prevented Partition.
The new service will travel through 18 countries and each bus will accommodate 20 passengers.
'Sanjay Leela Bhansali's historical characters behave as though they are already aware of the chapters that will be dedicated to them and the sonnets that will be written in their memory.' 'And yet, they talk relentlessly about making and remaking history.' 'Can anything be more superficial?' asks Sreehari Nair.
Lonely Planet unveiled its list of Asia's Top 10 destinations for 2018.
The 68th annual Cannes Film Festival kicks off...
Make sure that these places feature in your 2019 travel bucket list.
'Lhasa is more than the Unesco World Heritage Sites it boasts of. It is more than a gateway to the mighty Himalayas.' 'It is about the warmth of its people: Unsaid, unspoken, but felt everywhere,' discovers Shruti Bajpai.
Take a look at photographs of the two prime ministers during PM Modi's five-day visit to Japan.
'Shah Rukh Khan is a born entertainer.' 'From five year olds to a 105 year old, Shah Rukh will charm and entertain everyone.' 'With Salman, a lot of people have come back intimidated.' 'But I enjoy my adventures with Salman because you just have to be yourself.'
Rediff.com's Rajesh Karkera takes in the best of Bhutan, a beautiful little kingdom that has bundles and bundles of goodness to offer.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's decision not to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Colombo has once again put the focus on alleged cases of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka.
On the occasion of the first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's 125th birth anniversary, Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com visits his residence of 16 years, and comes away marvelling at his enduring legacy.
'Why did your generals try to grab a few square kilometres of Indian territory in Ladakh?' 'And what happened to the hard work that you and Prime Minister Modi put into the Wuhan and Mamallapuram meets?' Claude Arpi writes a letter to Xi Jinping, China's self-styled supreme leader, who turns 68 today, June 15.
Few debut novels in recent times have been received with such critical applause as Akil Kumarasamy's Half Gods. 'The prose itself is a marvel,' declared The New York Times Book Review. A glimpse of Akil Kumaraswamy's ability to 'distill the mysteries of the human soul', revealed in this excerpt from her story The Office of Missing Persons.
Iraq is on the verge of collapsing and foreign military intervention is inevitable. But for those who follow the developments in Iraq and the Middle-East will understand the current situation is nothing but a culmination of US and western policies toward the region, says Dr Waiel Awwad
'Growing up in Karnataka, in middle-class and forward-caste background, Ambedkar did not enter our consciousness at all, I realised.' 'The 'exclusion' of sections of our society was not only physical; it was comprehensive in the sense that all aspects of their lives including the life of an exceptional intellectual and stalwart had been under-understood by people of my class, I thought,' says B S Prakash.
Rediff.com lists a few temples that shun tradition and prefer a rather unusual look. Here are some of the world's most bizarre places of worship.
Coffee is a very small part of the magic that envelopes this beautiful land.
Delhi's ritzy Terminal 3 is on the global top 5 list on social media and the first among Asian airports on social media.
Books like Sunil Khilnani's Incarnations: India in 50 Lives, simple and straightforward though they appear, are instead powerful arguments for complexity, for empathy, and for curiosity
'The conception of Make-in-India, Skill India, Smart Cities, Digital India, Beti Bachao, Beti Padao and so on show a visionary breadth of mind, and Modi is almost the first political leader in India to put them into effect with single-minded zeal,' notes B S Raghavan, the former civil servant.
China's ruling Communist Party has cracked down on Tibetans who planned to attend the Kalachakra Puja in Bodh Gaya. But the Tibetan people have dared the Communists by listening to the Dalai Lama's sermons on the Internet and sharing videos on social media.
There's never a bad time to visit Japan.
'This is the only place on earth where Elephas maximus climbs to these heights.'
How did the newly anointed heritage city bag the title and is it ready for the expected rush of tourists?
Nikhil Advani's Hero remake follows the template of the original, which may not have been the wisest course of action, notes Raja Sen.
India and Japan have a shared interest in countervailing China's hegemonic ambitions in Asia. Although neither has an interest in forming an overt anti-China alliance, Tokyo and New Delhi feel increasingly obligated to work together to find ways to guard against a muscular Beijing's power sliding into arrogance, says Brahma Chellaney.
The Al-Qaeda and its patrons seems to have outsourced, for the time being, the achieving of that larger, civilisationally retrograde goal of establishing an Islamic Caliphate in the Middle-East, to the ISIS. The symptoms are all similar; the difference lies only in the expressions, says Dr Anirban Ganguly.
Ram Gopal Varma is back with Part Three of that series, which presented to us the first clear evidence that the great man was slipping, rues Sreehari Nair.
'Without destroying idol worship, you cannot destroy caste because idol worship keeps religious communities in its religious ideology. The RSS is a big promoter of idol worship.' 'They may have an OBC PM, but neither the RSS or the VHP talk about an OBC becoming a priest. The equation is: Business in Baniya hands. Religion in Brahmin hands. OBC votes for the BJP.'
Hers is a rags-to-riches story for the ages, peppered with risks, determination and strokes of luck.
