Free Republic

A 5,000-year-old industrial production center featuring furnaces, hearths, and mud-brick structures has been found in northwest India between two channels of the Ghaggar River. According to a report in Frontline, the settlement, occupied for more than 1,000 years, lacked the fortification walls, streets at right angles, citadel, and area for traders and craftsmen usually seen in Harappan sites. One of the furnaces, used for smelting gold and copper, had a platform where the smith could sit and blow through an underground tube to the fire pit. Nearby hearths were used to produce gold jewelry and copper fish hooks and spear...

India's $150 billion IT industry is one of the biggest employment generators, accounting for around 3.5 million white collared jobs in the country. However, the IT industry is experiencing tectonic shifts amid rising competition and increasing trend of automation. A report from US research firm HfS Research says that automation has put to risk 6.4 lakh low-skilled jobs - or nearly one in five jobs - in India's IT and BPO sector in next five years. At biggest risks are more routine or repetitive tasks in the IT sector. Automation is already making its presence felt in the Indian IT...

This is a silver jubilee to remember. The economic reforms launched by PV Narasimha Rao in July 1991 have transformed India so much that it's difficult to recall how bad things used to be. Back in 1991, lndia pretended to be a Third World leader. In fact, its development model evoked derisive laughter among many developing countries that had grown twice as fast. They found Indians good at drafting resolutions in international meetings, but little else. Today, India is called a potential superpower by journals ranging from Forbes to The Guardian. India is called the only Asian power that can...

“Generously donate to the brave young men of the Jaish-e-Muhammad who are fighting for the victory of the name of God and Islam.” The Jaish-e-Muhammad is soliciting funds from congregated Karachi mosques to send jihadists to fight in India and Afghanistan, footage obtained by The Indian Express reveals. ...Jaish’s fund collectors operating with impunity, even though the organisation is officially proscribed in Pakistan. “Help the mujahideen of the Jaish-e-Muhammad, the mujahideen of Islam, fight jihad in Kashmir against India, and in Afghanistan against the Americans,” one man can be heard saying in footage shot Friday night, outside a mosque in...

J.C. Penney is opening an IT office in Bangalore, India, as it restructures that critical department which was hurt during the retailer's failed reinvention in 2012 and 2013. The new IT office will have an emphasis on analytics, innovation and reporting capabilities, said Penney spokesman Joey Thomas. With some IT job functions moving to India, some jobs now performed by contract employees in Penney's Plano headquarters will be cut, but Thomas didn't say how many. Penney is hiring full-time IT engineers and analytics professionals for the new office in India and in Plano, he said.

America, Japan and China are racing to be the first nation to make nuclear energy completely renewable. The hurdle is making it economic to extract uranium from seawater, because the amount of uranium in seawater is truly inexhaustible. And it seems America is in the lead. New technological breakthroughs from DOE’s Pacific Northwest (PNNL) and Oak Ridge (ORNL) national laboratories have made removing uranium from seawater within economic reach and the only question is – when will the source of uranium for our nuclear power plants change from mined ore to seawater extraction? Nuclear fuel made with uranium extracted from...

HF-24 Marut is India’s first indigenous fighter. For the HAL and the IAF, July 1, 2016 is a throwback to April 1, 1967. On April 1, 1967, HAL had handed over India’s indigenously designed fighter, HF-24 Marut to the Dagger squadron of the IAF. It was a culmination of a dream dreamt in independent India by Jawaharlal Nehru, to attain self-reliance in the design and production of aircraft. The IAF was asked to provide the requirement for an indigenous fighter in the mid-1950s and the HAL was tasked for the project. In August 1956, Kurt Tank, a German aerospace scientist,...

New Delhi: It's been almost every Air Chief's favourite whipping boy - an Indian-built fighter jet delayed so inordinately that it came to be seen as a promise that would never be kept. But three decades after the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft went into development, there is a grudging acceptance that the fighter officially inducted into the Air Force this morning in Bengaluru is, in many ways, world-class. While the delay in delivery cannot be justified, there have been fierce debates on why that happened. State-run Hindustan Aeronautics or HAL, which is the lead player in the Tejas project, says...

Illustrative: The Israel Navy launches its new 'Barak 8' missile defense system on November 26, 2015. (screen capture: IDF Spokesperson's Unit) The Indian military on Thursday successfully test fired the Barak 8, a surface-to-air missile defense system it developed jointly with Israel, reports in Indian media said. The system, made up of a radar array and missile launcher, successfully detected and downed an unmanned aerial vehicle, an official from India’s Defense Research and Development Organization said. “The test launch was a grand success and it met all the targets,” he told the local NDTV News. Developed jointly by the DRDL...

It is almost the norm for soldiers, on leaving the IDF, to fly to India to ‘decompress.’ Here, a tank commander who served in the 2014 Gaza war explains the appeal, and details the process of regaining control over his life after ‘3 years of alarms each morning, of always having an assignment, of constant uncertainty as to when I’d be home next’ I wake up to the sound of laughing children, stare out the window at the blanket of clouds covering the valley below, and think of nothing. Finally, nothing. Like many of those traveling to India, I have...

The Clinton Foundation is 'a vast, criminal conspiracy' and 'a slush fund for grifters' with thousands of honest people who are victims after contributing their hard-earned money to what they believed would be used for philanthropic causes. In truth, the money that was donated to help earthquake victims in India and Haiti and HIV/AIDs sufferers in the Third World has mostly enriched the Clintons and their friends through scams spanning the globe, claims author Jerome Corsi in his book, Partners in Crime: The Clintons' Scheme to Monetize the White House for Personal Profit, which will be published in August. Driven...

Istanbul governor: 28 killed and 60 wounded We have just received an update on the casualties from the attack from Istanbul's governor. At least 28 people have died, with approximately 60 more wounded.

Global Times, a national English-language daily in China, Tuesday published a strongly-worded editorial defending China’s position on the entry of India and other non-NPT countries into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). Launching a harsh attack on Indian public and the country’s media, the editorial called India a ‘spoiled’ and ‘smug’ nation especially in international affairs. becoming a member of the NSG and brushed away accusation that it tried to block India’s entry. ...Global Times, that publishes in both English and Chinese, is considered a media house with far-left leanings and a nationalist bias. It also has often echoed the views...

According to a senior White House official, India will gain access to almost 99 percent of US defense technologies after it is recognized as a ‘Major Defense Partner’. Earlier this month, after a meeting between US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House, the US, in a joint statement, recognized India as a ‘Major Defense Partner', a status coined specifically to mark unique level of military cooperation between two nations. The official estimated this access as "99 percent" of all US defense technologies available. "[In reality], less than one per cent of all exports [requests]...

After a year in India, Zaharaddeen Muhammed, 27, knows enough Hindi to understand what bander means. Monkey. But it isn't even the daily derogatory comments that make him doubt his decision to swap his university in Nigeria for a two-year master's degree programme in chemistry at Noida International University. Nor is it the questions about personal hygiene, the unsolicited touching of his hair or the endless staring. It is his failure to interact with Indian people on a deeper level. "People often look at me as if I am different, and hard to be trusted," the tall, softly spoken student...

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has alleged that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton received funds from Indian political leaders and institutions in return for supporting the India-US civil nuclear deal. The Trump campaign has published these allegations in a 35-page booklet, but none of them are new and they have been in the public domain for several years now. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has refuted these allegations several times in the past. In a statement, the Trump's campaign said the information provided in the booklet is an in-depth summary of the top 50 facts about Clinton's record that...

Archaeologists excavate Indo-Greek and Saka-Parthian structures at Bazira, Swat. -- Dawn photo Indo-Greek coins discovered during the recent excavation at Bazira, Barikot, Swat. Courtesy Italian Archaeological Mission in Swat Indo-Greek coins discovered during the recent excavation at Bazira, Barikot, Swat. Courtesy Italian Archaeological Mission in Swat Terracotta baroque female figurine, circa 3rd-2nd BC. Courtesy Italian Archaeological Mission in Swat Indo-Greek coins discovered during the recent excavation at Bazira, Barikot, Swat. Courtesy Italian Archaeological Mission in Swat

The People’s Bank of China have set the USD/CNY fixing for Monday at 6.6375, some 0.9% weaker than Friday’s fixing level of 6.5776. The figure, well above Friday’s close of 6.6150, was the weakest fixing level seen since December 2010.

A Punjab Assembly legislator’s property was damaged by a mob on Saturday morning in Ludhiana’s Malerkotla after a group, which wanted to complain about someone “tearing” the pages of the Quran, was allegedly turned away from meeting her. Tension started at 10 pm Friday when pages of the Quran were found near Jarg Chowk in Malerkotla. Around 1 am, a group of people went to meet MLA Farzana Nissara Khatoon, who stays on Ludhiana-Malerkotla road, but were allegedly turned away. According to area DSP Randhir Singh, the MLA’s security fired in self-defence against the 300-strong crowd that had assembled at...

India tested today an air-launched version of the BrahMos-A supersonic attack missile on an Indian Air Force (IAF) Sukhoi Su-30 MKI aircraft. The missile was not launched on this test, as the carriage flight was designed to test the weapon’s aircraft integration. Following the initial flight tests on board the Su-30 MKI aircraft the first air-launch of the BrahMos-A missile is expected later this year. If successful, this planned flight test will verify the developer’s simulations, assuring the safe separation and initiation of the missile. “A single test-fire from the aircraft will be enough. BrahMos has demonstrated its capability multiple...