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At a recent event in the Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi, I found myself with my arm around his waist and his arm around my shoulder, posed for a photo opportunity. George W Bush, the much reviled former President of the United States, was in an expansive mood that evening. Aside of his “base” in America, this was fawning that had to be seen to be believed. He is the unquestioned hero of India’s elite. A senior member of the ruling Congress party said he would recommend him for the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award. In his early...

Manmohan Singh’s recent state visit — the first hosted by the Obama administration — has been almost universally criticised in India for being, although high on symbols, everything from a fizzle to a failure. The critics, in this instance, may be exaggerating. If the yardstick of success is replicating the July 2005 achievement, then this summit indeed pales in comparison. The 2005 visit was epochal because it removed the last major structural impediment to better US-Indian strategic relations. Since then, however, bilateral ties have become broad and diverse, spanning a variety of issues where both agreement and disagreement persist in...

Nearly a year after the Obama administration took office, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that US-India relations are drifting, lacking the focus, momentum and salience they had when George W Bush occupied the White House, David J Karl writes for PacNet #77. By David J Karl It is a disconcerting indicator of the condition of U.S.-Indian relations that much of the attention in Washington regarding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s state visit was focused, first, on the accouterments of the lavish banquet President Obama gave in his honor and, then, on the bizarre exploits of the aspiring reality-TV contestants...

Vice President Joe Biden. Click image to expand.Vice President Joe BidenGive credit to the vice president: He really does enjoy politics and "can't see a room without working it," as a colleague of mine half-admiringly remarked last Wednesday morning.We were waiting to enter the studio and comment after Biden had finished his interview with the Scarborough/Brzezinski team, in which the main topic was Afghanistan. Exiting, he chose to stop and talk to each of us. Not wanting to waste a chance to be a bore on the subject, I asked him why he had mentioned India only once in the...

Singing the enemy’s song Rahman, many experts have long suspected, was allowed to enter the United States by the Central Intelligence Agency in an effort to infiltrate Al-Qaeda -- a high-stakes intelligence gamble that backfired spectacularly “We have an expression in Arabic”, the blind Egyptian cleric who ran al-Qaeda’s networks in the United States once told an interviewer, “everybody sings for those he loves”. On February 26, 1993, a fifteen hundred kilogramme improvised explosive device went off in the underground parking garage of the World Trade Centre in New York -- the very building that, eight years later, would be...

"Oh, you are all here. I had some things to discuss with all of you so it’s good that you are together in the same room,” US President Barack Obama said as he strode into the room where the BASIC countries — Brazil, South Africa, India and China — were holding their last, intensive meetings in Copenhagen. “We really need a deal,” he said. “It’s better that we take one step forward rather than two steps back. I’m willing to be flexible.” And he rolled up his sleeves and sat down. Obama had come to meet China’s Wen Jiabao, in...

The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write. No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007. Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former...

In July 2008 a severe persecution of Christians broke out in the Indian state of Orissa. A 22 year old nun was burnt to death when angry mobs burnt down an orphanage in Khuntpali village in Barhgarh district, another nun was gang raped in Kandhamal, mobs attacked churches, torched vehicles, houses of Christians destroyed, and Fr. Thomas Chellen, director of the pastoral center that was destroyed with a bomb, had a narrow escape after a Hindu mob nearly set him on fire.  The end result saw more than 500 Christians murdered, and thousands of others injured and homeless after their houses...

NEW DELHI: India is looking forward to getting from FBI the voice recordings of the phone conversations between David Headley and his Pakistani handlers to ascertain the identity of those who sent out instructions to the perpetrators of 26/11. Sources said that Indian agencies want to compare them with the voice recordings of the 26/11 masterminds to find out if these men indeed were Headley's handlers too. The US agency has in its possession recordings of Headley's conversations with LeT member A, not yet identified, and individual A identified by the FBI as Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed alias Pasha. Pasha...

India is in a sorrowful and angry mood. Having just passed the first anniversary of the “26/11” terrorist bombings in Mumbai, it continues to deal with a growing list of apparently Pakistani-inspired spies and terrorists. The feeling was palpable on the streets of Mumbai, where I stayed during the week of the anniversary, as part of a Canadian International Council research trip to India. There was anger in the air as the nation paid tribute to the 166 “martyrs” of the attacks on a popular café, a Jewish community centre, two luxury hotels, the Trident Oberoi and the Taj Mahal...

Note: The following text is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEThursday, December 17, 2009 Guyanese National Charged with Smuggling Indian Nationals to the United States A Guyanese national has been indicted on charges of conspiracy and alien smuggling in connection with her role in the smuggling or attempted smuggling of four Indian nationals to the United States. Annita Devi Gerald, aka Annita Rampersad, 52, was charged in a nine-count indictment returned yesterday by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Texas. Gerald was arrested by ICE special agents in Houston on Nov. 17, 2009, and has been held without...

WASHINGTON -- After a day spent frantically darting around Copenhagen trying to locate world leaders, getting snubbed by China's premier and crashing a meeting where he had initially been kept out, President Obama heralded a last-minute, largely toothless UN global-warming summit deal that drew fast fire from all sides as a sham. Almost no one was happy with the outcome of the two-week confab and even the president, who was slammed by liberals and Republicans alike, along with other world leaders, admitted that the pact doesn't legally commit any of the nations involved -- the point of the summit in...

BEIJING - With 30,000 more United States troops on their way to Afghanistan, it is growing clearer that they will not suffice and that larger challenges loom. Afghanistan is also increasingly developing into a political proxy war between India and Pakistan. Pakistan, which backed the mujahideen against the Soviets in the 1980s and offered a safe haven and breeding ground to the Taliban in the 1990s, is now looking askance at the government of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, which it sees as pro-India. Conversely, India has fond memories of the time when Kabul was firmly under Moscow's hands and...

Copenhagen, Denmark (CNN) -- President Obama announced what he called a "meaningful and unprecedented" climate change deal with China and other key nations that was expected to be sealed before the president heads home from the Copenhagen summit late Friday. "For the first time in history, all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change," Obama told reporters. The president said he met with leaders from India, China, Brazil and South Africa, and "that's where we agreed ... to set a mitigation target to limit warming to no more...

Barack Obama came, he spoke, and no one concurred: India and China have taken a united stand and walked out of the climate summit as Copenhagen talks fail.Tensions prevailed at the climate talks at Copenhagen today, as Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and China premier Wen Jiabao walked out of the summit along with their respective delegations, as talks failed. Obama feted Singh just this month, saying that they should be impressed that India got first crack at Obama’s state dinner agenda.  Apparently, Singh was less impressed than Obama presumed.Meanwhile, Obama is getting some pretty bad reviews for his intervention...

Barack Hussein Obama has achieved so much in such a short time that there is very little left for him to aim for now. Unless, of course, they decide to anoint him as god. Don’t be surprised if they do so. There are plenty of parallels in history where the reigning superpower of the world decided to declare its ruler a god. Romans used to do so with their Caesars. But this divine status was invariably conferred after the ruler had won a major war. Technically speaking Obama would have to wait till he has won in Afghanistan. Since Obama...

A recent exchange of intelligence information between India and the U.S. revealed that an American Moslem (whose father was a Pakistani diplomat) under arrest for plotting Islamic terrorism, admitted that he had witnessed Pakistani Army officers working with Islamic terrorists, while he was undergoing terrorist training in Pakistan. While there have been many such reports, Pakistan always responds by claiming that they are "rogue officers." But American intelligence and military officials, who have worked have worked with the Pakistanis, report encountering many Pakistani officers who were openly favoring Islamic terrorism. Thus the Pakistani protests carry less and less weight. For...

(Chicago-based terrorist causes India to revise its visa rules with U.S.) India is taking some precautionary measures after the arrest of Chicagoan David Coleman Headley as a terror suspect in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The Asian country has revised its tourist-visa regulations, affecting those with long-term tourist visas, the India Times reports. “Americans with five- or ten-year tourist visas will no longer be allowed to enter India within two months of their last departure from India if their last visit was longer than 90 days or if they have stayed longer than 180 days during the past year,” an advisory...

Thirty-eight years ago today, on a blustery late afternoon in Dhaka, the commander of the Pakistani forces in East Pakistan, General Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi publicly surrendered to the Indian Army, represented by Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora. In that now famous picture of the surrender of December 16, 1971 at the Ramna Race Course, there is a man standing on the right, behind Niazi, with his head proudly up, gazing at something over the horizon. He was the man who had masterminded the public surrender. I first met General Jacob-Farj-Rafael Jacob (Jake to his friends) in November 2006, at...

‘Want daughter to be a doctor, to take care of me’ RAGHAV OHRI Posted online: Tuesday , Dec 15, 2009 at 0346 hrs Chandigarh : Like any young mother, she dotes on her newborn daughter and hopes that the baby will grow up to become a doctor. But her journey to motherhood has been far from normal. When she gave birth on December 3 —World Disability Day —Sheila (name changed), who is in her late teens and mentally challenged, had crossed hurdles she could barely understand. Not only had she been raped and impregnated at the Nari Niketan here, the...

NEW DELHI: India's suspicion that US was not coming clean on David Coleman Headley, the US-based Lashkar jehadi who facilitated 26/11 by providing Ajmal Kasab and others with precise information about their targets, has deepened. The growing disquiet in the government here which believes that Headley was a US agent who went rogue was expressed by a senior government official. "It is very strange that the US did not inform us of Headley's visit to India in March this year when he, by their own account, had been under their surveillance since at least September 2008," the official said, pointing...

Eurofighter will last 30 to 40 years: German envoy K.V. Prasad NEW DELHI: Eurofighter, one of the six contenders for the multibillion-dollar tender for 126 medium multirole combat aircraft (MMRCA), offers a cutting-edge technology without the End User Monitoring clause, German ambassador Thomas Matussek has said. “It is really a next generation plane and it will be in service for the next 30 to 40 years,” he told The Hindu. “It also comes without any End User Verification, complete transfer of technology and production.” End User Monitoring, which created a political controversy earlier this year, is a requirement the United...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A Pakistani-born Chicago businessman charged with helping plan an attack on a Danish newspaper knew about the assault on Mumbai in advance and discussed other potential targets in India, prosecutors said on Monday.U.S. In arguing against releasing Tahawwur Rana from jail on bond, federal prosecutors in Chicago gave more details about a conversation authorities recorded earlier this year between Rana and accused conspirator David Headley. In the September 7 conversation during a long car drive, Rana, 48, and Headley, 49, discussed Rana's meeting in Dubai days before the November 2008 attack on Mumbai with an associate referred...

A Chicago businessman already charged in a Danish terror plot knew about a separate November 2008 terror siege in India that killed 170 people days before it happened, prosecutors alleged today. In a court filing this afternoon, prosecutors said a Sept. 7, 2009 intercepted recording between the businessman, Tahawwur Rana, 48, and his friend David Headley, shows Rana met with a retired Pakistani military major last year in Dubai. The major, Abdur Rehman — referred to as “Pasha” in the recording — told Rana and Headley of the planned assaults days before dozens of buildings in Mumbai were blown up...

High alert in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Gujarat A top Union Home Ministry official on Monday said that Taliban-trained ‘fidayeen’ (suicide squad) have entered the country to carry out attacks at "specific" installations, including Bhaba Atomic Research Centre Kolkata, Mumbai and the national capital, besides Gujarat, have been put on high alert following intelligence inputs that Taliban-trained terrorists have sneaked into these cities to target vital installations. A top Union Home Ministry official on Monday said that Taliban-trained ‘fidayeen’ (suicide squad) have entered the country to carry out attacks at “specific” installations, including Bhaba Atomic Research Centre, defence establishments among...

India successfully tested a nuclear-capable ballistic missile from a ship near the east coast on Sunday, a defence official said. The Dhanush, which has a short range of 350 kilometres (220 miles), is a navy version of the surface-to-surface Prithvi missile and can carry both nuclear and conventional warheads. The missile was successfully fired from a ship in the Bay of Bengal, said S.P. Das, director of Integrated Test Range, a unit of India's Defence Research and Development Organisation. "The test met all the requisite parameters," he said. The Dhanush was last tested in 2007. Last month, India conducted the...

New Delhi: Concerned over the increasing number of Pakistani origin citizens living in the West being attracted to terrorism, the government is contemplating to tighten the visa approval norms for such persons visiting India. Home ministry sources said that the government was particularly concerned over the recent reports of five young Americans -- two of them Pakistani-origin -- arrested in Pakistan for links with Al-Qaeda. The arrests came in the wake of busting of the Lashker-e-Taiba plot, in which the Pakistan-based terror group was planning to use David Coleman Headley, whose father was a Pakistani national, to launch terror attacks...

On the first anniversary of the Mumbai attacks, many observers discussed the implications of the events that took place last Nov. 26. But few have commented on the implications of what did not take place: New Delhi did not mobilize its armed forces. It did not retaliate against terrorist safe havens, nor did it go to war with the country -- Pakistan -- where they were located. Rather, it limited its response to calling upon its neighbor to shut down the terrorist cells and extradite the masterminds and abettors of the Mumbai attackers. Islamabad responded half-heartedly. It failed to bring...

HYDERABAD, India – Amid mounting street demonstrations and violence, 20 state ministers resigned Saturday to protest India's decision to carve a new state out of its southern region of Andhra Pradesh.

It looks that a big part of Gold bars in Banks vaults are in fact tugsten plated gold , the scandal is just starting to leak and it could cause the burst of the Gold bubble. Video interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0-hGHJSgNA

December 4, 2009 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- It must have seemed odd to FBI agents that Chicago terror suspect David Coleman Headley carried a book with him called How to Pray like a Jew. Mr. Headley isn't Jewish. He is an Islamic fundamentalist. Headley, a Pakistani native whose birth name was Daood Gilani before he changed it, was using the book of Jewish prayer tips as part of an elaborate cover, according to federal authorities. Now, the reason for the alleged cover may be surfacing. Headley is under investigation by India's counterpart to the FBI in connection with a plot to...

At the risk of sounding a complete killjoy, I feel there is a compelling case for making serious international conferences joker-free zones. The images of the Copenhagen conference on climate change illustrate the point. At one level, there are fractious, but nevertheless serious, deliberations involving sovereign nations and multilateral bodies. There are also non-official specialists, think-tanks and the media who are observing and reporting the proceedings. And finally, there are those who have landed up in Copenhagen for the sole purpose of providing diversionary photo-ops and making a spectacle of themselves. It is tragic that some Indians — whose sojourn...

You might think from the media coverage that the Copenhagen summit on climate change is epochal. Wrong. Copenhagen hardly matters. If it doesn't produce an agreement, it clearly won't matter. But even if it yields an agreement, that will matter very little. Why? Because reducing carbon emissions by 80% from the 1990 levels - the target for 2050 for rich countries - depends on technological breakthroughs, not political pledges at Copenhagen. Without technological breakthroughs, reducing carbon emissions by 80% will erode living standards in the countries concerned. No government will deliberately engineer economic distress for the sake of climate change,...

YOU WILL NEVER GUESS WHO WAS A GUEST AT OBAMA’s FIRST STATE DINNER….. Mr. Ratan Tata [The chairman of the Tata Group - India's biggest conglomerate] A story emerging out of Britain suggests “follow the money” may explain the enthusiasm of the United Nations to pursue caps on carbon emissions, despite doubts surfacing in the scientific community about the validity of the underlying global warming hypothesis. A Mumbai-based Indian multinational conglomerate with business ties to Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman since 2002 of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, stands to make several hundred million dollars in...

In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Captain Jack Sparrow desperately sought the key that would unlock a chest containing Davy Jones' still-beating heart. This, he thought, would help him rule the oceans of the world. There may be no promise of immortality or great power to Meghalaya's policy makers but they are as obsessed as Sparrow to open a chest that has defeated all attempts to unbolt it for over a hundred years now. Interestingly, the massive iron trunk at the Raj Bhavan in Shillong has proved more impregnable than the most famous chests in fiction and lore....

Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia was more optimistic about industrial output.“To get a growth rate well above10% is not just a base effect. There is an element of growth that is taking place which I hope will be sustained,” he said. Friday’s industrial data comes within days of buoyant overall economic growth numbers and indicates that the country should trot along towards recovery if farm output does not dip much in coming quarters. The positive momentum in the recovery is also reiterated by the latest car sales figures, which spurted 61% in November from a year earlier. Industrial...

New Delhi: A genetic study has found that Indians are the ancestors of the Chinese and other East Asian populations. The study, a joint project of 10 Asian countries, found that India received a wave of migration from Africa 60,000-70,000 years ago and these early humans subsequently moved to East and Southeast Asia. The earlier belief was that humans from Africa reached India and East and Southeast Asia separately. The study has important implications, especially in the understanding of human migratory patterns and in the investigation of genetics and disease. The findings of the five-year study -- conducted by a...

It's taken all of recorded history, but this year China finally looks set to overtake India as the world's number one gold consumer. It may struggle to hold that position in the short term, as the one-off factors that have slowed India's gold demand fade, but in the long term China's rapidly growing economy and investment demand could see it add gold to the long list of commodities where it is the world's largest buyer. The story this year is mostly about falling demand in India -- down by more than half in the nine months to end-September, according to...

The world’s cheapest car is about to get greener and sportier. A hybrid version of the tiny Tata Nano has been confirmed by Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Motors, according to South Korea’s Maeil Business Newspaper. The current gasoline-powered Nano — on sale in India since April — is hardly a gas guzzler. Powered by a tiny, 35-horsepower 2-cylinder gas engine, the Nano is capable of approximately 50 miles per gallon. A greener variant of this engine (or the larger 3-cylinder motor planned for export markets) could make the Nano the world’s cheapest hybrid.

The evidence clearly shows that the congressional investigation of the White House Gatecrashers is being controlled and limited. Homeland Security Committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), now the subject of an Ethics Committee investigation, has made it clear that he wants to limit the investigation. Is he trying to protect White House officials with something to hide? Ignoring evidence of White House connections to the alleged gatecrashers, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, Thompson will not subpoena Desirée Rogers, the White House social secretary who is a very close friend of Barack and Michelle Obama. As a result of the stonewalling and cover-up,...

Washington, Dec 9 (IANS) Describing the resolution of the Kashmir issue as crucial for the stability of the South Asian region, the US’ military chief has welcomed India’s reduction of troops in Jammu and Kashmir. “In the long-run, resolution of the border in the east in Kashmir is a very important outcome. Obviously, that is a principal concern to India and Pakistan,” Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told foreign correspondents here Tuesday. “But there is a concern to many others in terms of stability of the region. I think that is a key part of...

Mirage math: Israel better than France SUJAN DUTTA New Delhi, Dec. 10: Israel is close to swinging an order to upgrade French-origin Mirage 2000 aircraft with the Indian Air Force (IAF) despite France’s charm offensive in hosting the Indian military on the Champs Elysees. Tel Aviv has offered to upgrade the frontline fighter aircraft, of which the IAF has three squadrons, at rates nearly 40 per cent less than the price quoted by the French. Israel, whose chief of defence staff returns to Tel Aviv after visiting New Delhi this week for the first time since diplomatic relations were established...

New Delhi: A US nuclear trade mission of around 50 companies, currently doing the rounds in the Indian capital and dropping loud hints of sourcing nuclear engineering products from India, may be feeling the New Delhi chill a bit more harsher than others. With NPT zealots in the Obama administration ensuring that the 123 Agreement takes its time to materialise, New Delhi may have atlast decided to shed some of its forced cordiality to all things American and not rollout the red carpet. Ostensibly, the delegation has made the trip to try and understand the ''policy challenges'' that stand between...

BEIJING: Six Chinese traders who exported fake anti-malaria drugs to Nigeria under the "Made in India" label have been sentenced to death, the ministry of commerce in Beijing has said. But the ministry gave no further details about the identity of the traders. The issue became a major controversy last June when Nigeria's National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control said it had seized a large consignment of spurious anti-malaria drugs worth $210,000. The drugs came from China and were distributed in Nigeria tagged "Made in India". The Chinese government apologized to Nigeria and promised a thorough investigation...

Last night I was invited to attend a Christmas get together sponsored by the Illinois Policy Institute. This year's theme was feeding the hungry in Africa and bringing economic freedom to developing nations. We heard some interesting presentations from Paul Wormley of the One Acre Fund as well as Tim Probasco of Opportunity International, both involved with helping subsistence farmers in Africa and India to become self-sufficient and to work toward creating financial success by selling their products at market. Both organizations take different approaches toward the same market oriented goals and both are efforts worthy of support. Best of...

Israel has become a major exporter of military equipment to India. And that includes advice, as well as hardware. Recently, for example, Indian Air Force commanders have been asking Israeli advice on the Indian effort to select a supplier for over a hundred high end jet fighters. Israeli Air Force officials have recommended the U.S. F-16. In this case, the Israelis practice what they preach, currently having over 300 F-16s in service. Israeli firms also manufactures a lot of add-on gear for F-16s (and similar fighters). India has been leaning towards the Swedish Gripen, but the Israelis point out that...

For the second time this year, India has grounded its Su-30 fighters because one of the aircraft crashed. This time, the grounding of the 98 Su-30s in service is expected to last only a few days. Earlier this year, in May, its Su-30 fighters were grounded for a month after one of them appeared to develop engine problems and crashed. One of the pilots survived, but the parachute of the other failed to open. Four days before the Indian Su-30 went down, a Russian Su-35 also crashed because of engine problems. The Su-35 is an advanced version of the Su-30,...

HELSINKI, Finland, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Speaking during a joint news conference with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said: "We have a shared interest in promoting prosperity and stability in the Asia Pacific region. We have a common stake in peace and development in Afghanistan and in defeating terrorism in South Asia and beyond." Singh clearly noted that progress in Afghanistan translated to broader security benefits for the entire Asian region. Perhaps not coincidentally, his visit to the United States occurred roughly on the first anniversary of the Mumbai terrorist attack, which killed 173...

Is it wrong for an American to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas? Sounds like a crazy question, but it’s actually at the center of a lawsuit that’s on its way to court. Promila Awasthi is a US citizen, originally from India. She lives in Silicon Valley, and worked for software giant Infosys at its Fremont, Calif. office in 2008. When she was there, she claims, she was routinely teased by two of her supervisors for celebrating American holidays. “Why, as an Indian, should you be celebrating Thanksgiving?” she says she was asked. “You should not be doing that,” she was told.

AUTHORITIES in southern India plan to ban an age-old ritual in which babies are tossed from the top of a nine-metre temple. Every first week of December in a rural district in the state of Karnataka, villagers drop babies from the top of a Hindu temple onto a blanket held by a crowd below, amid dancing and singing. Thousands of people assembled on Wednesday at the temple near Indi in the district of Bijapur to witness the event, which is said to confer good health and a long life on the baby and bring prosperity to the family. But the...