It was the first Oscars that I have ever watched. Forget it. It was the first Oscars that India itself was watching so closely. I say this with brazen alacrity, though some might question my ...

I hate to be a party-pooper, especially at this momentous time in history, when Barack Obama, a Black man, has just become the 44th president of the most powerful nation on this earth. But that is ...

Piracy is bad. Piracy is illegal. We mouth those lines without thinking about what they imply. Who is a pirate? A farmer who shares his seeds with another? A 12-year-old who remixes a music track and ...

The job of town crier, which dates back to medieval England, calls for powerful lungs. Peter Taunton's stentorian voice got him the post of town crier of Stafford, U.K. His rousing "Oyez" raised the ...

There's a new blue-and-white Obama sticker on an old, green, steel cupboard in my bedroom. How come? It was handed to me by a little boy at an American expatriate meet last week. ...

After months of speculation, former prime minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif finally pulled out of the troubled coalition that was born in turmoil and has ended with disrepute. After Musharraf quit as ...

The initial chapters of Ramchandra Guha's book, India After Independence, chronicles those days of high idealism and great debates and giants among men. That heady combination of idealism tempered by ...

When the US announced post the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that it would be launching a 'War on Terror', people in India must have uttered a wry laugh within themselves. ...

The popularity of the terms 'War on Terror' and 'bad men' owes itself to US President George W. Bush. Bush's war started with the presumption that either the world was with him or against him. That ...

Pranab Mukherjee's guarded response to the developments in Pakistan makes diplomatic sense. But, strangely, India has come to be thought of as having a pro-Musharraf bias. That should change. It is a ...

The news just in says Musharraf has quit as president of Pakistan. The immediate sense of euphoria is palpable. Even in neighbouring India, the people's reaction has been one of "interest". ...

After nine years of a rather tumultuous rule in Pakistan, the country's most famous dictator faces a rather unceremonious and undignified exit from a position he has held on to rather tenuously for so ...

Post-Independence, Pakistan inexorably slipped into military rule. The battle for democracy has had brief stints of success, only to be outsmarted by a military man. ...

After a surfeit of Obama in the news, we suddenly saw this news item on July 27, 2008 about McCain talking about doing away with "affirmative action". He was asked this question specifically on ABC. ...

The mania over Sanjay Dutt's arrest resulted in a quiet burial in news pages for two significant events in world cinema. On July 30, a day before Dutt's verdict was announced, world cinema lost two of ...

Last week started here in Rio de Janeiro with the XV International Animation Festival of Brazil (Animamundi 2007), that shows animations from all over the world. One good news for my Indian friends is ...

From July 13th to 29th, Rio de Janeiro will be home to the XV Pan-American Games Rio 2007, the famous sport competition that involves countries from the Americas. ...

Last Sunday, 17, BBC News started a campaign to support Alan Johnston, the BBC Gaza correspondent kidnapped last March and missing for almost 100 days. To show support for the journalist, the British ...

Good news! President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva - or just Lula - is visiting India. According to Brazilian and Indian media, the leader of Brazil wants to make a strategic alliance with India. ...

Yesterday, the Brazilian press noticed a confusion generated by, well, the own Brazilian press. This Tuesday edition of Jornal do Brasil, one of the most popular Brazilian newspapers, showed a ...