Free Republic

Just when external affairs minister S. M. Krishna was affirming in India’s right to ‘freedom of navigation’ in Washington, news reports from Shanghai say China is testing Delhi’s political will to exercise this right in the South China Sea. Krishna’s affirmation was part of the India-U.S. Strategic dialogue this week in Washington. Meanwhile, an Indian naval contingent, on an extended operational deployment in the South China Sea during the last two months, has called in at the Shanghai port on its way home. According to reports from Shanghai, when the Indian naval squadron led by INS Shivalik was on its...

Indian-Americans are richer and better educated than all other ethnic groups in the US but are least likely to marry out of the community , says a new study. And, as most other Asian-Americans they lean politically towards the Democratic Party,Party, but unlike them take longer to give up their Indian citizenship The study by Pew Research Center released on Tuesday uses existing data and new survey to chart — as the title says — the rise of Asian Americans. Indian Americans are the third largest Asian American group at 3.18 million, behind Chinese and Filipino origin Americans at 4.01...

ISLAMABAD: India on Thursday declared Hafiz Saeed as mastermind of the Mumbai attacks as the two countries started two-day talks in the ... International: 26/11 attacks: India provides more evidence... Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while on a visit to India, blamed Pakistan of “not doing enough” against Saeed. Pakistan had demanded proof of his involvement in terrorism, which is good enough to stand...

SWAGGERING YOUNG men shooting into the sky at weddings is part of the popular culture in rural and small-town Punjab. Boys, you might scoff, and their toys. Until a woman approaching 60 tells you she loves using beer bottles as target practice. Until an apparently demure schoolteacher tells you she takes her pistol to class. Until a succession of women — doctors, writers, professionals, the wives of politicians, property dealers and landed gentry — confess not only to owning guns but delighting in their power. Gaurmail Kaur, 41, teaches in a high school in Faridkot and packs her pistol in...

Israel today said it's official India Facebook page has the most 'Likes' after that of the US and the United Kindgom. The ISRAEL in INDIA Facebook page, launched by the Israelian Embassy in August, 2010, has received almost 20,000 'likes', a figure surpassed only by the pages of the US and the UK. Two decades after India and Israel established full diplomatic relations, ties between the two nations are extending far beyond traditional diplomacy, the Embassy said in a statement. Less than two years after the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi launched its activity on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other...

Setbacks for New Russian Fighter Plane in India Anatoly Isaikin, head of Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state arms exporter, was once again forced to address the string of setbacks plaguing Russian arms manufacturers in India over the past 12 months. This includes the long-suffering Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-35 fighter, whose future on the domestic and foreign markets remains unclear. “The situation with these tenders has nothing to do with any systemic problems,” Isaikin told the Vedomosti newspaper. “To my mind, the MiG-35 fighter plane has lost the tender in India because it was not mass-produced. At the same time, French and U.S. companies were...

<p>US firm Westinghouse Electric and the NPCIL on Tuesday signed a preliminary pact for an Early Works Agreement (EWA) for installation of the first 1,000 MW American nuclear reactor in India under the historic 2008 Indo-US civil nuclear deal. The announcement of the signing of the MoU, which represents a significant milestone towards the realisation of the Indo-US nuclear deal, coincided with the third Indo-US Strategic Dialogue headed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and External Affairs Minister S M Krishna. The MoU with the Nuclear Power Company of India Limited (NPCIL) related to negotiating an EWA supporting future construction of 1,000 MW nuclear power reactors at the Mithivirdi site in Bhavnagar district in Gujarat. The EWA will include preliminary licensing and site development work.</p>

By retaining the World Championship in Moscow, the land of chess, Anand has not only fulfilled another dream, but also shown his class by continuing to win in places with little crowd support To win a World Chess Championship in Moscow is just about every chess player’s ultimate dream. Much like, or maybe even more than, Wimbledon in tennis or the British Open in golf. So, when Viswanathan Anand added Moscow to the list of venues, where he has won the world title—Teheran (Iran), Mexico City (Mexico), Bonn (Germany), Sofia (Bulgaria) being the others—it was the culmination of another schoolboy...

Indian aircraft carrier enters sea trials as navy eyes Rafale Russia has commenced sea trials involving the Indian navy's refurbished aircraft carrier the INS Vikramaditya, as sources suggest the service could consider a future acquisition of the Dassault Rafale. Originally built for Russia as the Admiral Gorshkov, with a maximum displacement of 43,500t, the refitted and modernised vessel left Severodvinsk in the north of the country on 8 June for open-sea trials, preceeding its delivery to India in December. Once operational, the Vikramaditya will be capable of carrying 30 to 34 aircraft, including RSK MiG-29K deck-based fighters. Eugenia Legostaeva Sources...

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Saturday sent out a crystal clear message to US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta that it is following a well thought out strategy to eradicate the menace of extremism and terrorism and will follow its own timeline, regarding “safe havens” in Pakistan. To date, the US has refrained from designating the Haqqani network an international terror organization, though it has put several of its members on the terror list. “We strongly believe that such statements are misplaced and unhelpful in bringing about peace and stability in the region”, said the spokesman at the Foreign Office, at a...

The Russian refit of their former Gorshkov VSTOL carrier into the STOBAR Indian Aircraft Carrier Virkamaditya is complete and the vessel has been launched for sea trials. INS VIKRAMADITYA LAUNCHED FOR SEA TRIALS Originally the Indian Navy purchased a full wing of new Mig-29K aircraft from Riussia for 1.5 billion (USD) which included the refitting of this 1980s carrier. However cost overruns ensued and ultimately after months of work stoppage, the Russians and Indians agreed to a complete cost for the carrier and the aircraft for 2.8 billion (USD), still a low price. The Virkamaditya is now launched and in...

New regimes that have replaced or are replacing the old in the Arab world are dominated by hardline Islamists. India should be worried by the changes. The Government has faced criticism in Western capitals and even from its own ‘liberal intelligentsia’ for not supporting Western attempts for ‘regime change’ in those countries labelled as ‘rogue states,’ or are said to be acquiring ‘weapons of mass destruction’. This Western propensity for ‘regime change’ was justified ideologically, as the Soviet Union was falling apart and finally collapsed on December 25, 1991. In his thesis entitled, The End of History, American scholar Francis...

NEW DELHI: India is not going to give up its tactical and strategic advantage over Pakistan in the Siachen Glacier-Saltoro Ridge region anytime soon, even though Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may still want to convert it into "a mountain of peace". The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), chaired by the PM, on Thursday cleared the "brief" for the 13th round of the defence secretary-level talks to be held with Pakistan in Islamabad on June 11-12. Sources said the Indian delegation, led by defence secretary Shashikant Sharma, will insist Pakistan first agree to the three sequential "pre-requisites" of authentication, delineation and...

INS Vikramaditya all set for crucial, pre-induction trials Aircraft carrier will be delivered to India on Navy Day, December 4 INS Vikramaditya will take to the sea for crucial pre-induction trials on June 8, Russian shipbuilding sources said. Last month, the trials were put off by two weeks due to bad weather alerts. However, the delay will not affect the scheduled delivery of the aircraft carrier to the Indian Navy in December, according to the Sevmash shipyard, where the Soviet-era Admiral Gorshkov carrier has undergone modernisation and repairs. “We are confident that we will hand over the vessel to India...

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta urged India on Wednesday to build a closer military relationship with the United States, but Indian leaders appeared more interested in buying U.S. weapons than in aligning strategically with Washington. Senior Indian officials made it clear in two days of talks that they will continue to set their own course on U.S. national security priorities, including isolating Iran and building up Afghanistan's military forces, sometimes in tandem with Washington and sometimes not. Panetta is visiting Asia this week to bolster military ties as the Obama administration, wary ofChina's growing clout in the region, seeks to...

An invasion of giant biting spiders has sparked mass panic in northeast India. Two people have died after being bitten by the hairy creatures, thought to be a new species of tarantula. But officials in the district of Tinsukia said locals’ attempts to treat the painful swelling caused by the bites may be more dangerous than the spiders themselves. It is unclear whether the victims died from venom or from treatment by witch doctors, who cut them with razor blades to drain the wounds.

(Reuters) - The Defense Secretary Leon Panetta promised on Wednesday to let India buy America's best weapons technology and jointly produce and develop equipment in a bid to increase trade with the world's top arms importer. India last year agreed to buy a fleet of C-17 transport planes and P-81 maritime surveillance jets from U.S. company Boeing, as well as Lockheed Martin's Super Hercules. It is at a late stage of talks to buy more than a dozen Boeing Apache helicopters and last month cleared the purchase of 145 M777 Howitzer artillery guns. Panetta made no public mention of these...

An overwhelming 85% of Indian Americans support Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, according to a poll conducted earlier this year. The results of the study, which were published in early May, also revealed that only 67% of Indian Americans polled voted for Obama in 2008. Mr. Obama’s life story seems to resonate better than Mitt Romney’s with many Indian Americans. In the study, which was conducted by Lake Research Partners, on the question of Obama vs. Romney, the ratio was a staggering 76 to 8 in favor of Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama has shown strong support for Indian...

The United States will move the majority of its warships to the Asia-Pacific in coming years and keep six aircraft carriers in the region, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Saturday, giving the first details of a new U.S. military strategy. Speaking at an annual security forum in Singapore, Panetta sought to dispel the notion that the shift in U.S. focus to Asia was designed to contain China's emergence as a global power. He acknowledged differences between the world's two largest economies on a range of issues, including the South China Sea. … Some Chinese officials have been critical of...

The mysterious fall of the largest of the world's earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit — ancient climate change, researchers say. Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia may be the best known of the first great urban cultures, but the largest was the Indus or Harappan civilization. This culture once extended over more than 386,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Seato the Ganges, and at its peak may have accounted for 10 percent of...