India

Despite his international pariah status after invading Ukraine, Russian leader Vladimir Putin was a welcome guest at the 14th summit meeting of the BRICS forum on Thursday.

Netta D’Souza, a top official with the opposition All India Congress Committee (AICC) party, was arrested on Tuesday for spitting on female police officers during a rancorous protest against the investigation of party member Rahul Gandhi for money laundering charges.

The government of India this weekend followed up on its feisty refusal to apologize for buying huge amounts of Russian oil by refusing to apologize for buying huge amounts of Russian coal.

Russian companies have increasingly turned to China and India to sell products originally intended for U.S.-allied markets in recent months due to Western sanctions against Moscow, China’s state-run Global Times reported on Tuesday, noting that these alternative transactions are often settled in local currencies.

China’s crude oil imports from Russia broke records in May, notching a 55 percent increase year-on-year and vaulting Russia past Saudi Arabia as the rising industrial super-power’s top supplier of oil.

China recently blocked a joint attempt by the U.S. and India to have the U.N. Security Council recognize a Pakistan-based terrorist named Abdul Rehman Makki as a “global terrorist,” the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported on Friday.

Mobs of angry young men set fire to two offices of India’s ruling party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in eastern India’s Bihar state this week as part of nationwide protests against New Delhi’s recent decision to alter the guidelines of traditional military recruitment in the country, India Today reported on Friday.

The U.S. State Department on Thursday condemned “offensive comments” about Islam’s Muhammad made by two officials from India’s ruling BJP party.

A U.S.-based research group estimated Tuesday that current air pollution levels in the Indian national capital territory of Delhi shorten the average lifespan by as much as ten years, the Times of India reported.

An Indian woman and her husband were recently “hacked to death” in southern India’s Tamil Nadu state by the woman’s brother and another male relative after the couple secretly married despite their divergent caste backgrounds, the Times of India reported on Tuesday.

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday led protests against what he described as a politically-motivated corruption probe.

A form of English heavily influenced by migrants in London is likely to become the dominant dialect of the language in the UK within 100 years, experts are claiming.

An elephant trampled a 70-year-old woman to death in eastern India’s Odisha state last week, then returned to attack the same woman’s corpse during her funeral, the National newspaper reported on Monday.

A report published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Monday said China is pursuing a “substantial expansion” of its nuclear arsenal, including the development of new delivery systems and the construction of hundreds of additional missile silos.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Saturday that his country might increase its purchases of discounted oil from Russia, and accept more financial assistance from China, as the island nation spirals deeper into an economic crisis.

The U.S. and the West are trying to ween themselves of off Russian oil, but India, China, and other Asian countries are snapping it up.

Rahul Gandhi, a senior leader of the opposition All India Congress Committee (AICC), on Monday protested against a corruption probe launched by the majority BJP Party that accused Gandhi and his mother of money laundering. The AICC denounced the probe as a “well-planned conspiracy” to destroy BJP’s leading opponents with false charges.

Muslims across India on Friday continued protests sparked by comments from a now-suspended spokeswoman for the ruling Hindu-nationalist BJP party that were denounced as insulting to Islam’s Muhammad.

India signed a defense pact with Vietnam on Wednesday, pledging to “significantly increase the scope and scale” of their military coordination over the coming decade.

India’s Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) on Wednesday published a timeline for eliminating the use of coal for both industrial and household fuel in the national capital of Delhi and its suburbs. The plan calls for replacing coal with natural gas beginning on October 1.

The al-Qaeda terrorist organization threatened to unleash a string of child suicide bombings across India in a statement published Tuesday in response to an ongoing controversy surrounding remarks about Muhammad made by a now-former spokeswoman for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Indian government made some conciliatory statements after a spokeswoman for the ruling BJP party made televised comments seen as critical of Islam’s Muhammad two weeks ago, but as condemnation from Muslim nations and demands for additional acts of contrition keep pouring in, the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pushing back against its critics.

Recently leaked audio shows Google employees grilling executives over the cancelation of an employee-organized event about caste bias in April. Caste bias is the mistreatment of people based on their caste — the social hierarchy of India.

Police in India’s northern city of Kanpur said on Monday they had arrested 38 people in connection with acts of rioting on Friday after local Muslims and Hindus pelted each other with stones, India Today reported.

India’s ruling BJP Party on Sunday suspended spokeswoman Nupur Sharma and permanently expelled Delhi regional media director Naveen Kumar Jindal after they made televised comments critical of Islam’s Muhammad and his child bride, Aisha.

Speaking at an international forum in Slovakia on Friday, Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar argued that criticism of India for buying Russian oil was unfair when Europe is still importing oil and gas from Russia.

An Indian governmental delegation met with leaders of the Taliban in Kabul on Thursday for the first time since the group seized control of Afghanistan in August 2021, Asian News International (ANI) reported, noting that the high-level meeting concerned bilateral relations and humanitarian aid.

China’s government on Tuesday claimed Beijing is still New Delhi’s top trading partner despite recent reports revealing that the U.S. had supplanted China in the ranking over the past fiscal year, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported.

The U.S. recently overtook China to become India’s top trading partner, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Monday, citing new data from India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

A source inside the Indian government said on Monday that several desperate foreign countries are pleading with India to supply over 1.5 million tons of wheat, to compensate for shortfalls from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and other factors.

The state-run Coal India will soon import coal for use in public utilities to offset the effects of a nationwide power shortage in April, Reuters reported on Saturday citing a letter by India’s federal power ministry issued that same day. “Coal

The administration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday expressed intentions to transform India into “a global drone hub by 2030,” the Times of India reported.

Vedanta — an Indian oil, gas, and metals conglomerate — plans to finalize a $20 billion deal with the Taiwanese microchip maker Foxconn by June to produce semiconductors within India starting in 2024, India’s Swarajya magazine reported on Thursday.

Police in New Delhi questioned an Indian lawmaker on Thursday for allegedly taking bribes in exchange for the illegal issuance of visas for nearly 300 Chinese nationals in 2011 as part of a Chinese-funded power project in India’s Punjab state, the Times of India reported on Thursday.

New Delhi is allegedly in negotiations with Moscow to procure oil shipments at a discounted rate, Reuters reported on Wednesday citing an unnamed senior Indian government official.

India, which is the world’s second-largest importer of fertilizer, received about 200,000 tons of fertilizers from Russia in the month of May, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported on Tuesday.

The summer of 2022 is poised to deliver a dangerous challenge to overstressed power grids around the world, at a time of soaring energy prices and reduced fuel inventories thanks to the coronavirus pandemic aftermath and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Outgoing Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s parents are trying to rescue his nomination as U.S. ambassador to India, hiring a lobbying firm to convince Senators to confirm him, despite allegations he ignored sexual misconduct in his office.

India plans to use units of a Russian-purchased S-400 air defense system — which utilizes a mobile, surface-to-air missile system — to defend itself against potential threats posed by neighboring China as soon as June, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported on Wednesday.

India’s Directorate-General of Foreign Trade banned wheat exports on Friday, causing market prices to skyrocket around the world and prompting expressions of grave concern from humanitarian groups