Data spanning the years 1951 to 2014 show that temperature and pressure conditions at specific locations in the Arctic region during the pre-monsoon period correlate with the Indian summer monsoon rainfall, points out Charu Bahri.
Aziz Haniffa, who has covered every Indian Prime Minister's visit to the US since Rajiv Gandhi in 1985, gives us a peek into what's happening in Washington, DC on the eve of the Modi-Trump summit.
India and Tajikistan on Monday pledged to further deepen their cooperation to fight terror and agreed to step up defence ties besides boosting trade and investment.
Arguing that Pakistan will remain a key player in counter terrorism post-2014, the United States has proposed $280 million in military assistance to the country, although it wants to cut civilian aid in an effort to acknowledge India's concerns about misuse of the funds.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated Afghanistan's new Parliament built by India in Kabul
'What should worry India and which needs to be expressed is Russia's simultaneous proximity to both China and Pakistan from a strategic angle. That hasn't happened ever before,' says Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
Domestically, China's 'strike hard' policy is alienating Uighurs further in Xinjiang. China's quid pro quo with the Taliban is hardly any lasting solution to the Afghanistan crises or to regional security, says Srikanth Kondapalli.
Through its early days to the 1980s, Pakistan sought to expand its sphere of Islamic influence through Afghanistan to Central Asia and got Pakistani citizens recruited in the Afghan government institutions in the 1990s when the Taliban were power. Now, it is looking eastward through India to Bangladesh and Myanmar to establish an imaginary caliphate.
India and Pakistan fear that any instability in the war-torn Afghanistan following the withdrawal of American troops could result in "surplus terrorism" in both the countries, a top US official has said.
'India can replicate what Pakistan did to Kulbhushan Jadhav should the need arise.' 'Hopefully, Pakistan will see reason before that transpires,' says Ambassador G Parthasarathy, former high commissioner to Pakistan.
'If push comes to shove, Pakistan does have the capability to make it difficult for the US and NATO forces to make even a withdrawal of troops out of Afghanistan in orderly fashion,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
US admiral's suggestion for a revival of a strategic maritime quadrilateral with Japan, Australia and India leaves China livid, says Rajeev Sharma.
Amid efforts by the concerned governments to hold peace talks with them, the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban have said they would continue their "struggle" till "the Western inspired systems" of governance in both countries are overthrown.
Countries with abundant resources are faring worse in terms of development than those with less.
'China's deep involvement in the stability and economic and political success of Pakistan actually produces some elements of congruence with India's core interest in a stable and productive relationship with Pakistan.' 'It is not far-fetched for us to pursue that congruence and with ingenuity work out with China a formula that also satisfies our formal position on PoK,' argues Ambassador Kishan S Rana.
'If you take pride only in being a nation with nuclear weapons and a strong military, then you think very differently from those nations that take pride in having wonderful universities and academic institutions.'
He did not mention the issue of Jammu and Kashmir.
The country may propose pipeline via China when Putin visits this year.
'There is no Buddha or Gandhi among countries, existing for the service of others; they all exist for the good of themselves.' 'For each country, its own interests should be paramount, and it is futile and churlish to expect China to be an exception to this rule,' says B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant and long-time China-watcher.
Modi government expects cargo traffic at its ports to jump by two-thirds by 2021 as India ramps up exports of goods including cars and other machinery.
Lazio won 2-0 at Legia Warsaw on Thursday to qualify for the Europa League knockout stages after a tie marred by violence when Italian fans fought with Polish police on the way to the stadium.
Despite having started at least a decade later than Jet Airways, IndiGo accounts for the lion's share in the domestic market
'The project of a united Europe has constantly been made and remade.' 'The national borders have changed many, many times and so have the languages.' 'Britain's exit is only the latest episode in this long history,' says Aakar Patel.
India should plan its strategies on the assumption that the rightward swing will stay and the West will retreat into an economic fortress, says Nitin Desai.
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.
India offers $1 billion towards Afghanistan's development during Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's visit.
'Pakistan may feel emboldened to give an upswing to the proxy war in J&K, having secured a better international consensus on its strategic importance.' 'The raising of Pakistani flags by separatists in J&K is an attempt to win psychological space and more of this can be expected as we go into the summer.' 'Pakistan should remain warned that pushing India on this issue will be dangerous.'
The United States has appealed to India to uphold the Vienna Convention principles and ensure the safety and security of its diplomats stationed in the country, as New Delhi took a series of steps in response to the arrest and inhuman treatment of its diplomat in New York last week.
The United States has hoped that the major diplomatic row over the arrest of the Indian Deputy Consul General in New York will not affect bilateral ties with India. In a major diplomatic embarrassment to India, 39-year-old Devyani Khobragade, a 1999-batch IFS officer, was taken into custody on Thursday as she was dropping her daughter to school and handcuffed in public on visa fraud charges before being released on a USD 250,000 bond after pleading not guilty.
US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal believes the India-US nuclear deal is not in limbo and it is for India and Pakistan to set the pace for conversations to resolve their issues. Rediff.com's Aziz Haniffa reports from Washington, DC.
What connection does Qaumi Tarana -- Pakistan's national anthem, which millions of Indians heard at the Eden Gardens on Saturday -- have to Bombay?
The prime minister said there was a need to demonstrate strong and collective will to defeat terror networks that cause bloodshed and spread fear.
When Meenakshi Arvind and Mookambika Rathinam took an epic car journey from Coimbatore to London, they encountered a world that was more good than bad. In the cry for freedom in a dark corner of the globe, they discovered that The Mahatma remained India's greatest icon.
The soul of India resides in pluralism and tolerance. This plurality of our society has come through assimilation of ideas over centuries. Secularism and inclusion are a matter of faith for us. It is our composite culture which makes us into one nation.
'Trump's stated strong stance against Islamist extremism and terrorism could play into the Indo-US relationship.' 'It could mould US attitude and exert pressure on Pakistan.' 'In the event of US military presence in Afghanistan increasing, however, Pakistan could gain an opportunity to again emphasise its importance.'
'In our media and general population the idea of 'strong posture' was successfully sold by Modi. This is now a liability for him, as he has discovered,' says Aakar Patel.
India has performed poorly in removing gender-based disparities, ranking 114 out of 142 countries in World Economic Forum's 2014 gender gap index, scoring below average on parameters like economic participation, educational attainment and health and survival.
In a rare public admission of Pakistani links to militancy in China's Muslim-majority Xinjiang province, the official media in Beijing said the co-founder of the Al Qaeda linked East Turkestan Islamic Movement was indoctrinated in a madarasa in that country.
Hizb-ut-Tahrir has cleverly avoided any intense global scrutiny while spreading its ideology and support base in nearly 50 countries
He also said that the Obama Administration has not expressed any objection to the recent signing of a pact by India and Iran to develop the Chabahar port, despite some concerns expressed by a few Senators.
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