We cannot simply bhangra off into the sunset. But we should take a moment to celebrate. A long, historic, poignant moment. This election is a Big. Freaking. Deal. For our country, our futures, our children, our spirits, notes Pia Padukone.
'This year felt different -- and was different.' 'For the first time, the Indian American voter seemed to matter.'
'Any normal human being, even if he is the American president, will find it hard, at least in the initial stages, to get over the gnawing feeling that Modi is Trump's man.' 'Modi should not be surprised if India and its requirements are treated as of low priority by Joe Biden,' warns B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant.
'The credit for managing Trump should go to Modi.' 'Biden is a predictable and rational person with plenty of administrative experience,' notes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
After the latest projections in Wisconsin, Biden has 253 electoral college votes as against Trump's 213, making it much difficult for the President to win the polls. The winner of the 2020 presidential election should have at least 270 Electoral College votes out of the 538-member electoral college.
'There is little appetite in the Democratic foreign policy establishment to pick a fight with India.'
The reversal of Trump's policy with regard to Iran, like the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, may not be a matter of just turning the clock back, but one of patient negotiations, with uncertain consequences in the post-COVID-19 world, observes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Harris, 55, is the first Indian-American to be selected for the second-highest elected office of the United States after that of the president. She is also the first-ever Black and first-ever African American to be nominated as a vice-presidential candidate by a major political party.
The selection of a woman Senator with an Indian background as the Democratic party's vice-presidential nominee should normally be a matter of elation in India, especially for those who boast of their nationalistic credentials such as the BJP followers, notes Amulya Ganguli.
The 2020 race marks Biden's third attempt at running for US president. He first tried in 1988 but dropped out after allegations of plagiarism. He ended his second attempt in 2008 after garnering less than one per cent in the crucial Iowa caucuses.
But his nature, temperament, his skill to listen to others, and empathise with their pain and hardships will make him a far better president, a leader America has been longing for four years, notes Aseem Chhabra.
"I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide, but to unify; who doesn't see red states and blue states, only sees the United States," Biden said in his victory speech on Saturday night.
Harris opened her vice-presidential acceptance speech on Wednesday night at the virtual Democratic National Convention by remembering her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, lamenting the fact that she could not be there to see her daughter's achievement.
We present our alphabet of 2020, pulling in everything you'll remember about this year we'd rather forget.
Amidst a resurgent COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 100 million people have already cast their ballots in early voting, putting the country on course for its highest turnout in a century. Some 239 million people are eligible to vote this year.
'Biden's promise of returning to 'normalcy' after Trump appears to mean that the same old politicians, who are responsible for the 'endless wars' in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, are being brought out of the woodwork after four years,' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Considered to be the worst ever civil unrest in the US in decades, the violent protests have engulfed at least 140 cities across America in the days following the death of Floyd, a 46-year-old man who was pinned to the ground in Minneapolis on Monday by a white police officer who kneeled on his neck as he gasped for breath.
It would be a huge achievement if the new administration manages a successful transition to some sense of domestic and international normalcy in these frantic times marked by the pandemic and rise of illiberal regimes across the world, observes Shreekant Sambrani.
'There is room for cautious optimism following the Harris anointment that America will return this year to more normal politics after the aberration of the Trump presidency,' points out Shreekant Sambrani.
While accepting the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday night, Biden said in Delaware that "united we can and will overcome this season of darkness in America."
"Fifteen years ago, I was leading the efforts to approve the historic civil nuclear deal with India. I said that if the US and India became closer friends and partners, then the world will be a safer place," Biden, who was vice-president in the Obama administration, said while addressing the Indian-American community on India's Independence Day.
What the Indian economy looks like next January will influence her view on India, not her genetics, notes Shekhar Gupta.
'We want to make sure that we are certainly targeting the entire Indian American community.'
She's here. The driving winds and pelting rain of Hurricane Florence's western edge began to batter the United States East Coast, giving the region a taste of what's to come as the monster storm moves ashore. Even though the one-time Category 4 tempest has been downgraded to a Category 2, it's still packing lethal 100-mph winds and the potential for 13-foot storm surges and 40 inches of rain, officials warned.
The three presidential debates scheduled this time are September 26 (Hempstead, New York), October 9 (St Louis) and October 19 in Las Vegas.
SpiceJet was dragged to court by several aircraft leasing firms.
HC asks DGCA not to de-register SpiceJet planes till April 6.
SpiceJet urges HC to direct DGCA not to deregister its planes.
The Irish firms had sought to deregister SpiceJet.
The court order could put SpiceJet's revival plan under stress.
Terming the crash of a Malaysian airliner in eastern Ukraine as a "terrible tragedy", US President Barack Obama said officials were trying to establish if any Americans were on board.
Parts of the city have sunk by as much as 29 feet from their original level because of subsidence caused by extraction of billions of barrels of oil.
The company, founded by Titanic director James Cameron, has filed voluntary petitions for relief under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, Digital Domain said in a late night statement on Tuesday.
2014 was a year for downturn for most economies across the globe.
Indian Americans numbering 3.2 million is the third largest Asian American community in United States after Chinese Americans (3.8 million) and Filipinos (3.4 million).
In the fourth and concluding part of the series ProPublica's Sebastian Rotella talks about how Laskar-e-Tayiba operative David Coleman Headley was finally nabbed by United States law enforcement agencies, but only after he hoodwinked them for seven years. But the epilogue in the story is rather like the prologue: full of impunity and mystery
Reader Jolly Gupta sends us a photograph.
The car maker, which filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 on Monday, owes $172.81 billion in total debts to its 50 largest creditors, including ArcelorMittal. In its filing with the bankruptcy court in the southern district of New York, GM said it has a 'trade debt' of $9.55 million to be paid to NRI-billionaire Lakshmi Mittal-led ArcelorMittal. According to the filing, the auto maker has assets worth $82.29 billion.
The next great mega-litigation could rival the $12 billion spent cleaning up Enron.
Babula Patel has been convicted for a sex offence and corrupting the morals of a minor.
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