Hours after Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari's personal attack against Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Bharatiya Janata Party workers staged a protest outside the Pakistan high commission in New Delhi, On Friday, December 16, 2022.
Turkiye and Azerbaijan backed Pakistan and condemned India's recent strikes on terror camps in that country and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir under Operation Sindoor.
Sources close to the top BJP leadership tell me that Tharoor has already had secret meetings with the BJP's top brass and is waiting patiently to make his next move, reports Ramesh Menon.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah arrived in Srinagar to review the security situation in Kashmir following a deadly terror attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 people, including tourists. Shah chaired a high-level meeting of security officials, including those from the Army, CRPF, and police. The attack, claimed by The Resistance Front (TRF), a shadow group of the banned Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror group, is the deadliest in the valley since the 2019 Pulwama strike.
Toxic grey smog has sickened tens of thousands of people, mainly children and elderly people, since last month when the air quality started worsening in Lahore, the city bordering India.
When the country has been at war, the Opposition has buried its differences with the government, points out Aditi Phadnis.
With Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif deciding to retain Pakistan's foreign affairs portfolio, former minister Sartaj Aziz will play a crucial role as his advisor in charting a way forward on issues like relations with India and the United States
There are challenges galore before him, and it is not going to be easy. In the next four years, he has to conjure a system that changes the optics about him and the BJP both nationally and internationally so that he can ride back on his own, claim the top slot, and not have to lean on a coalition, asserts Ramesh Menon as Modi 3.0 completes a year in power.
Biden's remarks could be seen as a setback to the Shehbaz Sharif government's bid to improve ties with the US.
'You must have heard that Pakistan is going bankrupt or that a default or meltdown is taking place. It (default) has already taken place. We are living in a bankrupt country,' Defence minister Khawaja Asif said.
Following a deadly terror attack in Pahalgam, India has ordered all Pakistani nationals to leave the country within 48 hours. This has led to a mass exodus of Pakistani citizens from India, while several women married to Pakistani nationals and holding Indian passports are facing difficulties returning to their families in Pakistan.
The political and ideological differences between the Congress and Shashi Tharoor is no longer a matter of whispers.
At the same time, external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said it is a matter between Iran and Pakistan.
On Jawaharlal Nehru's 61st death anniversary, Utkarsh Mishra recalls how India's first prime minister cultivated a unique role for the newly independent country on the world stage.
The SP MP said when the mentality is bad, then instead of telling about the achievements of the army, people start talking about their own achievements.
A young Indian man was arrested in Pakistan after illegally crossing the border to meet a Facebook friend he wanted to marry. However, the woman told police she was not interested in marrying him. The man, Badal Babu, was arrested in the Mandi Bahauddin district of Pakistan's Punjab province on December 28. He had crossed the border to meet his Facebook friend, Sana Rani. Rani, in her statement to police, said she had been friends with Babu for the past two-and-a-half years but was not interested in marrying him. Babu's family has appealed to the Indian government to intervene for his release.
Qin, who recently succeeded Wang Yi, had a phone call at the request of Bilawal on January 9, a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement in Beijing said on Tuesday.
According to the 2021 England and Wales Census data, of the 915,855 citizens born in India, 49 per cent (444,500) said English was their main language, followed by 41 per cent (373,583) who said another language was their main language but that they spoke English very well or well.
Badar Khan Suri, an Indian postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, is facing deportation after US authorities accused him of "spreading Hamas propaganda" and having "close connections to a suspected terrorist." The Department of Homeland Security claims Suri has been actively promoting antisemitism on social media and is connected to a senior Hamas advisor. Suri's lawyer, Hassan Ahmad, argues that his client is being targeted due to his wife's Palestinian heritage and their opposition to US foreign policy towards Israel. The incident follows the self-deportation of another Indian student from Columbia University who was also accused of supporting Hamas.
PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi is contemplating appointing former captain Waqar Younis as the director of cricket affairs.
Several Pakistani nationals visiting India started returning home through the Attari-Wagah land route in Amritsar on Thursday, a day after the Centre set a 48-hour deadline for them to leave the country. The decision came after India announced a raft of measures, including the expulsion of Pakistani military attaches, suspension of the Indus Water Treaty of 1960, and the immediate shutting down of the Attari land-transit post in view of the cross-border links to the horrific terror attack in Kashmir's Pahalgam that killed 26 civilians on Tuesday.
A former Bangladesh army officer and close aide of Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus has suggested that Dhaka should collaborate with China to occupy India's northeastern states if it attacks Pakistan in response to the Pahalgam terror attack. Bangladesh's interim government has distanced itself from the remarks made by Major General (Retd) ALM Fazlur Rahman on his social media account. Rahman's comments come amidst growing tensions between India and Bangladesh following Yunus' remarks in China about India's northeastern states being landlocked and needing Bangladesh's access to the ocean. These incidents have further strained relations between the two countries, with India withdrawing transhipment facilities granted to Bangladesh for exporting goods to the Middle East, Europe, and various other countries.
The delegations led by Baijayant Panda, Ravi Shankar Prasad (both Bharatiya Janata Party), Sanjay Kumar Jha (Janata Dal-United), Shrikant Shinde (Shiv Sena), Shashi Tharoor (Congress), Kanimozhi (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and Supriya Sule (Nationalist Congress Party-Sharad Pawar) will visit a total of 32 countries and the EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
Pakistan has formally lodged a protest with the US over its joint statement with India against the country's involvement in cross-border terrorism.
Their shared brief: To assert India's case with clarity, rebut hostile narratives, and secure enduring partnerships for global counter-terror cooperation.
Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman's much-anticipated visit to Pakistan has been deferred for unspecified reasons, a report said on Saturday.
The ministry of external affairs said in a statement that the Indian embassy remains in touch with the community with a view to extend all feasible assistance.
Delivering a thinly veiled message to Pakistan from its soil, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday said activities across borders characterised by the 'three evils' of terrorism, extremism and separatism are unlikely to encourage trade, energy flows and connectivity.
In his address at the meeting of the foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Benaulim, Goa, Jaishankar said the channel of finances for terror activities must be blocked without any distinction even as Bhutto Zardari raised the issue of "violation of international law" which was seen as an apparent reference to Kashmir.
While India today is vastly different from the India of 1975, the need for vigilance against authoritarianism remains the same, asserts Utkarsh Mishra.
In his petition, Suri's lawyer said that he is being punished as his wife, who is a US citizen, is of Palestinian heritage and because the government suspects that he and his wife are against the US foreign policy towards Israel.
Bangladesh is in turmoil, which is not good news for India, which shares a porous 4000 km border with it. There is a danger of fundamentalism growing there, and India has to move in to reset its ties with the new dispensation before China and Pakistan make capital out of it, alerts Ramesh Menon.
'Pakistan is a nuclear country.' 'With the kind of situation that is there in Pakistan today, America will help Pakistan stay afloat.'
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is set to hold separate bilateral talks with his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang and Russia's Sergey Lavrov at a beach resort in Goa on Thursday on the sidelines of a conclave of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) amid rapidly evolving regional security situation.
'What signal would we be sending -- that we don't stand by our friends?'
Former Australian all-rounder Shane Watson, who is in line to take over as Pakistan cricket team's head coach, is yet to make up his mind despite the PCB accepting his remuneration demands.
'If they aim to remain aligned with the public sentiment, as any democratic government should, then they must respond. Why else would the prime minister have cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia? And why would he have instructed the home minister himself to travel to Srinagar to assess the situation firsthand? This suggests that something is indeed being planned. I am quite certain of that, although the exact form it will take remains to be seen.'
'You can be sure that the Pakistanis knew when the Indian Air Force aircraft took off, which type these were, and what their likely targets were.' 'The question was: How would they determine that the IAF wanted to fire, and when to bounce them?', notes Shekhar Gupta.
The possibilities of this serviceable thriller are immense but the makers prefer to play it safe and hold back the daredevil in the diplomat's clothing, observes Sukanya Verma.
The dead were identified as belonging to Punjab province. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances