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Washington, DC - The US House of Representatives has passed an amendment unanimously that cuts down $650 million in military aid to Pakistan as Republicans sought to tamp down demands for still deeper reductions. Congressman Ted Poe had demanded a $1.3 billion cut, but later settled for the 650 million cut. "Pakistan is the 'Benedict Arnold' to America in the war on terror. They are disloyal, deceptive and a danger to the United States," Poe, who had moved the amendment, said. "This so-called ally continues to take billions in US aid, while funding the militants who attack us. And we've...

The US President, now in election gear, has repeatedly lashed out at outsourcing by Americans to firms based in India US President Barack Obama and his Republican opponent Mitt Romney are engaged in a fierce battle about outsourcing, which has become a huge election issue. Outsourcing was an issue in 2008 polls and also earlier, but this time with the economy sliding, jobs have become a vital issue for the middle class. Both the presidential candidates are targeting this section. Economy has become ‘the’ issue for the election, overriding all other concerns. Democrats are generally against outsourcing. The Senator from...

From Russia With Love? China vs. India Carrier Showdown There’s a pronounced aerial component to Asia’s march to the seas. The Indian Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the soon-to-be-commissioned INS Vikramaditya, recently took to the Barents Sea for its second shakedown cruise. After putting the ship through its paces, the Russian shipyard Sevmash will reportedly deliver it to the Indian Navy at year’s end—culminating a prolonged, painful, sometimes comical overhaul process that converted the Soviet “aircraft-carrying cruiser” Admiral Gorshkov into a more conventional flattop featuring a ski jump for vaulting short-takeoff warplanes into the skies. Meanwhile, China’s first carrier, the Soviet-built...

A VILLAGE council in India has issued a Taliban-like diktat banning women under the age of 40 from falling in love, using mobile phones or going out in public unescorted. The “fiat” issued by the Asara village council in Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh province, 40km northeast of the capital New Delhi, has outraged women’s rights activists across India. It also requires women to cover their heads while away from their homes. Anyone defying the order would be ostracised and then expelled from the village, council member Mohammad Mokam said yesterday. He added there were “other ways” to make the...

You may know more Sanskrit than you realize. In fact, the word know comes from the same Indo-European root for the Sanskrit jnana. A Greek form of the root inflected by Latin gives us the English term gnostic, referring to knowledge of spiritual mysteries. You, faithful reader, know what agnostic means. Have you ever watched or created a video? Again, an IE root is the source of the term. Some scholars think the Sanskrit vidya, another word for knowledge, arose from a lexeme for seeing. With the twists and turns of consonants and vowels as language developed, we have an...

Curious: didn't see any stories on this outrage on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC or read about it in The New York Times-Democrat or The Washington Post-Democrat: About a year ago, Xerox told some 600 employees, many of them engineers, that their jobs were being transferred to an India-based IT services firm. How has that worked out? Neither company is disclosing detail about what's been going on, but information is leaking out about some layoffs. The move by Xerox goes to the heart of the outsourcing debate between President Barack Obama and the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. It involves...

Disclosure forms reveal that Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Florida, previously held funds with investments in Swiss banks, foreign drug companies, and the state bank of India. This revelation comes mere days after the Democratic chair attacked presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for holding money in Swiss bank accounts in the past. "Americans need to ask themselves, why does an American businessman need a Swiss bank account and secretive investments like that?" the DNC chair, a chief surrogate for President Obama's reelection team, said on Fox News Sunday two days ago. "Just...

Gripen operational cost lowest of all western fighters: Jane’s The study conducted by IHS Jane's Aerospace and Defense Consulting, compared the operational costs of the Gripen, Lockheed Martin F-16, Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet, Dassault’s Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon and the F-35 aircraft. The operational cost of the Swedish Saab Gripen aircraft is the lowest among a flightline of modern fighters, confirmed a White Paper submitted by the respected international defense publishing group IHS Jane’s, in response to a study commissioned by Saab. The paper says that in terms of ‘fuel used, pre-flight preparation and repair, and scheduled airfield-level maintenance together with...

Cleaving their way through the sapphire waters of the Indian Ocean, the ships bore their cargo into port. Whether at Colombo, on the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) or one of the Indian ports such as Madras, Calcutta or Bombay, the cargo was the same: hordes of eager young women, sweltering in the corsets, stockings and flannel underwear they were required to wear beneath their dresses — some still suffering from sea sickness as they staggered down the gangway into the searing heat. These were the girls of the ‘Fishing Fleet’, and they had come to India for the...

NEW DELHI: How far will a country go to secure a favourable deal for itself? Pretty far, it seems. Mauritius has offered a couple of sun-drenched islands to India as part of a trade and investment deal. While the offer has been talked about for a while, Mauritius has revived it - at a time when it's very keen on persevering with the 1983 double-taxation avoidance treaty with India. Mauritius foreign affairs and trade minister Arvin Boolell said that it was up to India to use the islands to its advantage. He said the "blue economy" had great potential. India...

The Children's Development Khazana - a bank for street kids operates 12 branches in Delhi and another 400 affiliated units in Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Kyrgyzstan. Ram Kumar, a 17-year-old, who only makes a dollar a day selling tea outside Delhi's railway station, is able to deposit half of it in the bank each night. Ram Singh, 17, earns just one dollar from the 100 cups of tea he makes every day outside Delhi railway station, but each evening, after packing up, he goes to the bank and deposits nearly half of it. Singh holds an account at...

Pakistan's new hate list By Ashok K. Mehta Editorial The Pioneer Wednesday, July 4, 2012 A recent Pew poll has shown that despite the best of efforts, the US is still widely reviled in Pakistan. India is the next most despised. Pakistanis are becoming lyrical about their relations with the US which are on their lowest note ever. They hum two songs: Money Can't Buy You Love; and Who's Sorry Now, referring to their troubled transactional ties including the ongoing dead-locked cost of transportation of logistics to Afghanistan; and the US attack on a Pakistani frontier post. Pakistan is demanding...

It is great to be at world's largest democracy to celebrate the birthday of world's oldest democracy -- this was how US Ambassador to India Nancy Powell described America's Independence Day celebrations here. Addressing the gathering at the American centre, she said, "my belief is that we have much in common and India and US are very-very close with people. "We had shared colonial heritage and we each had struggled for our Independence and for our freedom," she said. Powell said both the democracies are vibrant and diverse and our relationship is flourishing. "You, the youth of India and also...

When Dr V. Seetharaman examined 75-year-old patient P.K. Krishnamurthy at Mumbai's Fortis Hospital this week, the eye expert was shocked by the highly unusual sight of the writhing parasite and had to operate speedily to remove it before serious damage was caused. "It was wriggling there under the conjunctiva," Seetharaman told AFP, referring to the thin membrane lining the eye. "It was the first time in my career of 30 years that I had seen such a case." Krishnamurthy had been suffering for more than two weeks with redness and irritation before the doctor pin-pointed the threadlike creature under a...

The most obvious reason is that the Chinese–one important official called it the “little superpower–perceive that Israel in particular and the Jewish people in general have been success stories. Ten or twenty years ago this would have been less unique in the world. But now, sad to say, it stands out more because the United States and Europe, perhaps only temporarily, are not working very well.Of course, on a strategic level, Israel and China have some differing interests but these are less important than they may appear to be. China wants to have commerce with everyone, including Iran, and is...

As part of Exercise Malabar 2012, the U.S. 7th Fleet is visiting Chennai, where they have been warmly received by the Indian Navy. Sailors from the fleet have also been participating in volunteer events around the city. NOTICE: Bandwidth-heavy images below. INDIAN OCEAN (Apr. 12, 2012) Indian Sailors assigned to the Visit, Board Search and Seizure (VBSS) team aboard Indian Navy Ship Satpura (F-48) transit toward guided-missile destroyer USS Halsey (DDG 97) via rigid hull inflatable boat during a VBSS training exercise. Halsey and Satpura are participating in Malabar, a regularly scheduled naval field training exercise conducted to advance multinational...

NEW DELHI: Noting that the South China Sea was witnessing "competing claims", India today strongly pitched for co-operation instead of competition in the seas and oceans at a trilateral meeting with Japan and South Korea. Asserting that India, Japan and Republic of Korea depend heavily on the Sea Lanes of Communications (SLOCs) for their energy security which are also the mainstay for trade and connectivity, Sanjay Singh, Secretary (East) in Ministry of External Affairs, said "there is indeed a compelling case for us to cooperate on maritime security." "India has a valued geostrategic location straddling the SLOCs. The Indian Ocean...

IT’S midnight in Manila, and the capital is just waking up to the start of another working day. At the Worldwide Corporate Centre office block, thousands of young Filipinos are crowding into endless open-plan offices. Once seated, they quickly start answering the questions and calming the frustrations of vexed American consumers beginning their own day on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. These Filipinos are call-centre workers. To outsiders it is hardly a glamorous profession, yet despite the antisocial hours these men and women have every reason to be as well-motivated and cheerful as they seem. They are well...

How the world's economic centre of gravity has shiftedIT IS not exactly news that the world's economic centre of gravity is shifting east. But it is striking how fast this seems to be happening. In a new study on the economic impact of urbanisation the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the eponymous consultancy, has attempted to calculate how this centre of gravity has moved since AD 1 and how it is likely to move until 2025. Although the underlying maths (which involves weighting the approximate centre of landmass of a country by its GDP) has to be taken with a...

India will pledge an additional $ 10 billion to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) firewall against a eurozone financial conflagration. This was announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his opening speech at the Group of 20 summit in Mexico. The money will be part of an estimated $63-billion contribution by the BRICS countries, the emerging group og economies currently chaired by India, to the IMF’s $430-billion emergency fund. The BRICS countries, comprising Brazil Russia India China and South Africa, had earlier agreed that their contributions would be conditional on the IMF enhancing their voting rights and “that this recourse...