WASHINGTON: Trade between India and the US has increased by 40 per cent since the launch of India-US Strategic Dialogue by the Obama Administration three years ago and could cross the USD 100 billion mark this year, a senior administration official said.The elevation of India-US relationship to that of a strategic dialogue in 2009 has produced real results for...

WASHINGTON: In a direct repudiation of repeated claims of Pakistan, a top American general based in Afghanistan has said that reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Omar is hiding in Pakistan along with his commanders.The statement contradicts Islamabad's stand that the Taliban leader lives across the border in his own country."Omar lives in Pakistan, as do many of his commanders.From that...

NEW DELHI: In a display of determination to aggressively take on BJP, Congress President Sonia Gandhi today led from the front by egging on her members in the Lok Sabha to counter opposition's sloganeering on coal allocation issue.Gandhi showed her combativeness in Parliament soon after telling party MPs not to be deflected by the "intemperate Congress bashing" by the...

NEW DELHI: Refusing to be on the back foot on coal block allocation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today rejected the CAG's observations as "misleading" and "flawed" and blamed Opposition parties for thwarting his government's efforts to bring a policy of competitive bidding.Speaking inside Parliament as well as outside, he took "full responsibility" for the decisions taken by the Coal...

NEW DELHI: Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said the government never talked about "zero loss" in allocation of coal blocks and complained of "incorrect reporting" by the media of his remarks on the issue."None of us used the phrase 'zero loss'. Nevertheless, a section of the press has incorrectly reported that Government claimed that there was 'zero loss' in...

NEW DELHI: Rajya Sabha today congratulated India Under-19 cricket team for winning the one-day international World Cup by beating defending champions Australia.Members thumped their desks after Chairman Hamid Ansari congratulated the Indian team for winning the U-19 World Cup yesterday.The win is all the more significant as this is for the third time that U-19s have won the limited...

KANDAHAR: Taliban Islamist insurgents beheaded 17 civilians, including two women, who were holding a party with music in a southern Afghanistan village, officials said today."I can confirm that this is the work of the Taliban," the Helmand provincial governor's spokesman Daud Ahmadi told AFP, referring to the hardliners notorious during their rule for public executions and the suppression of...

BALASORE, Odisha: India's nuclear-capable Prithvi-II ballistic missile with a strike range of 350 km was today successfully test-fired from the Integrated Test Range near here as part of user trial by the army."The flight test of the surface-to-surface missile was conducted around 1100 hrs from a mobile launcher from ITR's launch complex-III at Chandipur," defense sources said.Describing the trial...

WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD: Badruddin Haqqani, the key operational commander of the al-Qaeda linked Haqqani network, and top Pakistani Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah are believed to have been killed in US drone and air strikes in the tribal region of Pakistan and Afghanistan.Badruddin, the son of Afghan warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, is ranked as a deputy to his elder brother and the network's...

CHENNAI: Accusing the Centre of showing "excessive enthusiasm" in training Lankan defense personnel, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa today said it has "mischievously concealed" the training being given to two Lankan officers in Tamil Nadu since May and demanded that they be sent back.".. I have expressed in no unclear terms the strong views of my government on imparting training to...