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The Indian leader received more than 16% of almost five million votes cast Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who entered office this year on the promise of reviving the country’s economy, is the winner of this year’s reader poll for TIME Person of the Year. In the final tally, Modi received more than 16% of the almost 5 million votes cast. Protesters who took to the streets in Ferguson, Mo., after the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager finished second with 9%. Hong Kong protest leader Joshua Wong, Nobel Peace Prize-winner Malala Yousafzai and the doctors and nurses treating...

A major problem with the H-1B debate is the absence of displaced IT workers in news media accounts. Much of the reporting is one-sided -- and there's a reason for this. An IT worker who is fired because he or she has been replaced by a foreign, visa-holding employee of an offshore outsourcing firm will sign a severance agreement. This severance agreement will likely include a non-disparagement clause that will make the fired worker extremely cautious about what they say on Facebook, let alone to the media. On-the-record interviews with displaced workers are difficult to get. While a restrictive severance...

Four decades after the 1971 India-Pakistan war, India's intelligence agencies are once again scanning a stretch of coastline in southern Bangladesh. Cox's Bazar was rocketed and strafed by INS Vikrant's fighter aircraft to cut off the enemy's retreat into the Bay of Bengal. Today, 43 years later, it sets the stage for China's dramatic entry into India's eastern seaboard. Assessments from the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and naval intelligence say the Bangladesh Navy will station two ex-Chinese Ming-class submarines on bases that are less than 1,000 km away from Visakhapatnam, home to the Indian Navy's nuclear powered submarine fleet...

STRATFORD, Conn., Dec. 5, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- India's Navy has selected Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. UTX, +0.07% to fulfill the service's Multi-Role Helicopter requirement for anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare (ASW/ASuW), among other maritime roles. Negotiations will now begin to procure 16 S-70B SEAHAWK® helicopters, with an option for eight additional aircraft, along with a complete logistics support and training program. "India's selection of the S-70B helicopter represents a major strategic win for Sikorsky in an important growth market, and positions us well for future opportunities," said Mick Maurer, President of Sikorsky Aircraft. "We look forward...

A deadly epidemic that could have global implications is quietly sweeping India, and among its many victims are tens of thousands of newborns dying because once-miraculous cures no longer work. These infants are born with bacterial infections that are resistant to most known antibiotics, and more than 58,000 died last year as a result, a recent study found. While that is still a fraction of the nearly 800,000 newborns who die annually in India, Indian pediatricians say that the rising toll of resistant infections could soon swamp efforts to improve India's abysmal infant death rate. Nearly a third of the...

Pakistani ship in high seas can pose a jehadi threat, Navy Chief Admiral RK Dhowan today said, citing reports of an attempt by militants to hijack a Pakistan Navy frigate in September. He said that threat of maritime terrorism is increasing and the force was prepared for it. On the reported failed attempt by Pakistani militants to hijack 'PNS Zulfiqar' in Karachi, Dhowan said it was indeed a "very, very serious situation" which the Indian Navy has taken "serious note of". While one report had then said that the plan of the militants was to use the hijacked ship to...

(Reuters) - India is speeding up a navy modernization program and leaning on its neighbors to curb Chinese submarine activity in the Indian Ocean, as nations in the region become increasingly jittery over Beijing's growing undersea prowess. Just months after a stand-off along the disputed border dividing India and China in the Himalayas, Chinese submarines have shown up in Sri Lanka, the island nation off India's southern coast. China has also strengthened ties with the Maldives, the Indian Ocean archipelago. China's moves reflect its determination to beef up its presence in the Indian Ocean, through which four-fifths of its oil...

A church was destroyed by fire in India in a suspected arson attack: A mysterious, early morning fire destroyed one of East Delhi's big churches, St Sebastian's Church in Dilshad Garden, prompting allegations of foul play by the Christian community. Police have registered an FIR against unknown persons under section 436 (mischief by fire with intent to destroy house) of IPC. The blaze started in the early hours of Monday and reduced to ashes the church's interior, including the altar, the Holy Bible, Cross and all images and statues. Several churchgoers stood outside the charred remains of the 13-year-old...

India, the world’s largest democracy, has at present the tenth-largest economy. It will, no doubt, surpass the economies of the European nations in a few years and rank among the world’s four largest economies, together with the United States, China and Japan. It is a friend of the State of Israel. It shares with Israel the values and ideals of democratic government. Like Israel, it has a substantial Muslim minority among its population. Since its partition in 1947, it has fought three wars with its neighbor, Pakistan, and to this day faces a security threat from that direction. Terrorist acts...

Only by overlooking important forces in markets and politics can anyone assert that Saudi Arabia is letting crude prices fall mainly to extinguish competition from North American shale oil. With oil, the Saudi regime always takes the long view. With security, however, its motivations are more immediate. The kingdom faces unusually intense threats: Islamic State (IS) militancy in Iraq and Syria, the chance that Iran won’t agree by a Nov. 24 deadline to suspend its nuclear ambitions, terrorist insurrections from restive Yemen, durability of the menacing government of Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus. Falling oil prices hurt the IS and Iran,...

India’s largest state-owned bank will launch an Islamic equity fund next month aimed mainly at attracting investments from the country’s 170 million Muslims.The Securities and Exchange Board of India, the country’s capital markets regulator, recently allowed the government-owned State Bank of India and three mutual funds to launch Shariah funds. […] A large section of India’s Muslim population remains outside the banking system, partly because Islamic law known as Shariah prohibits interest. Shares of companies linked to alcohol, tobacco, gambling and casinos and financial institutions that earn interest would be excluded from the fund. […] India’s stock exchanges have between...

1m-years-old footprints found at Margalla Hills By Sher Baz Khan ISLAMABAD, July 27: In what appears to be a major discovery, archaeologists have found two over one million years old human footprints preserved on a sandstone at the Margalla Hills. The Indusians Research Cell, which is working under the supervision of world renowned archaeologist and historian Dr Ahmad Hassan Dani of Taxila Institute of Asian Civilisations, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, has made the discovery, which is likely to add a new chapter to the archaeological history and heritage of the federal capital and attract visitors. A footprint of 1 feet is...

NEW DELHI: Ahead of President Vladimir Putin's visit here early next month, India has told Russia to come back with a plan to substantially reduce the delivery timeframe for the stealth fifth-generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) if it wants to seal the futuristic project by next year. The plan till now was that India would begin inducting the stealth fighters only 94 months — at the earliest — after the two countries inked the final design and R&D contract, which itself has already been delayed by over two years by now. "Russia has now been told that India cannot wait for...

Work has begun on scrapping the country's first aircraft carrier, Vikrant. Built for the British Royal Navy as HMS Hercules in 1943, it was acquired by India in 1957 and saw action during the India-Pakistan war in 1971, playing a key role. When the electric saws were pressed upon the ship, it essentially put an end to a movement by activists to save her. Vikrant was auctioned to a ship-breaker for Rs 63 crore this year. Mumbai's IB Commercials Pvt Ltd won the bid on January 29 and bought the vessel on April 9. Since then, the company faced hurdles...

One of the many new weapons shown for the first time Airshow China this year was the China Aerospace Science Industrial Corporation (CASIC) CX-1 Mach 3 cruise missile. The PRC’s defense industrial complex has a number of cruise missiles that can be either ship- or air-launched, and each successive show at Zhuhai seems to generate new models. So this missile is not a major breakthrough in Chinese defense technology. What makes the CX-1 unusual is its close resemblance to another missile that is well-known to the rest of the world: the joint Indian-Russian project, the BrahMos. The uncanny similarity of...

The U.S.' much-ballyhooed recent deal with China to cut carbon emissions got a lot of attention in the media. So did Europe's recent pledge to slash its carbon output by a whopping 40%. But both plans seem to have run into a major snag: India.

When the International Court of Justice in The Hague starts hearing complaints against Israel's security fence in the West Bank on Monday, India will be busy constructing a fence of its own. After 15 years of fighting in Kashmir that have left more than 65,000 dead, the Indians are using cement, razor wire, and electronic sensors to stymie a menagerie of Pakistani guerrilla forces. "The fence will be a permanent barrier at the border to prevent militants from entering," the head of India's Border Security Force in Jammu and Kashmir told The Washington Post last summer. "Why should we wait...

Indians constitute four per cent of the total illegal immigrants living in the US, a country where the overall unauthorised immigrant population has remained unchanged since 2009, a latest report has said. According to a report by Pew Research, more than 450,000 unauthorised Indian immigrants live in the US, constituting four per cent of the total illegal immigrants in the country. Indian are the largest unauthorised immigrants in New Hampshire.

Man was already treated and cured in Liberia An Indian resident who tested positive for Ebola—and was cured—has landed in Delhi from Liberia. The 26-year-old man is being isolated in a facility at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport, The Times of India reports. According to the Times, the man had already been treated for Ebola in West Africa, currently does not have symptoms and tested negative for the virus before he flew. However, his semen tested positive for the virus. He had a medical clearance certificate from the Liberian government saying the had been treated and was confirmed negative from...

At the U.N. General Assembly in New York last September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set aside time for a critical meeting. But it wasn't President Barack Obama he was keen to see. It was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Since Modi came to power in May, ties between Israel and India have been in overdrive, with the two signing a series of defence and technology deals that have underscored their burgeoning commercial and political relationship. The same month as the UN meeting, Modi's cabinet cleared a long-delayed purchase of Israeli missiles for its navy. In October, India closed a...