Sunil Sharan

The United Nations climate chief, Christiana Figueres, has warned that a Republican win in the U.S. presidential election would jeopardize action against climate change and that America would risk falling behind China and Europe in clean technologies. She urges American voters not to vote for a Republican candidate.

England's cricket batsman Kevin Pietersen averaged 11 runs in the recent test series against Pakistan, but still wanted to play in this year's IPL (Indian Premier League). His coach, Andy Flower, believes that the IPL stunts Test batting, and has hinted that Pietersen's IPL bug might cost him his Test...

Celebrated Prussian military analyst Carl von Clausewitz described how the "fog of war" causes facts to be fudged. Indian army chief General V.K. Singh has surely studied von Clausewitz. How then has he allowed himself and his force to become embroiled in fuzzy mathematics over the churlish matter of...

The bankruptcy of the solar energy company Solyndra not only cost taxpayers over half a billion, it also dealt a serious blow to the nation's adoption of clean energy. The Obama administration's attempt to jump-start the clean energy sector by picking favorites begs the question whether the federal...

Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao says Pakistan is hypnotically obsessed with India but she and her bosses too are fixated on a coveted prize, a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council. The mandarins of New Delhi must be pleased as punch to have had over to visit leaders...

Come hell or high water, India and Pakistan's leaders continually nose-thumb one another. Each snub is met with a counter-snub; every kindness by suspicion and prickliness. Memories of ghosts past inspire cold shoulders today. Would the enemy crow about its magnanimity for all time to come? Might acceptance of help...

Congress has abandoned yet another climate bill. Gridlock in the august body looms large come November, dampening hopes of effective energy legislation in the foreseeable future. America is stuck. Yet deregulation, a concept all but renounced by the country a decade back in the wake of California's energy crisis, holds...

What was supposed to be a breakthrough meeting between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan last month degenerated into a public rebuke of India's home minister, P. Chidambaram. In an unprecedented gesture, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh attempted to smoothen feathers ruffled in Islamabad on the prickly topic of...

A wave of righteous indignation sweeps the West with every alleged act of terror, while quotidian civilian casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan are treated as a humdrum affair, barely meriting mention. In the wake of Faisal Shahzad's arrest, Pakistan's image as a breeding ground for terrorism is taking hold in...

Climate change was the purported theme of the just-concluded summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in Thimpu, Bhutan. Instead an Indo-Pakistan rapprochement hijacked the agenda. Countries most at risk in the region, Maldives and Bangladesh, pressed for firm commitments to combat global warming but all they...

Of George W. Bush's infamous axis of evil, Iraq simmers, North Korea waxes and wanes, only Iran remains firmly in Obama's crosshairs. Two of his closest allies, Israel and India, are seemingly on the outs with Obama. In 1907, erstwhile adversaries England, France, and Russia formed the Triple Entente, generating...

President Obama is keen to lower the temperature between India and Pakistan. Warm handshakes between Indian and Pakistani prime ministers broke the ice at his just-concluded nuclear summit. Pleasantries apart, relations between the countries remain fractious as ever, with resolution to any combustible dispute--Kashmir, Afghanistan, terrorism, nuclear build-up, water resources--nowhere...

Making the nation's electric grid "smart" has become a passion of the
Obama administration. Already $4 billion of American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (ARRA) money has been committed to the endeavor. With
a complete makeover for the U.S. grid projected to cost $165 billion,
it is...

All parts of India have given birth to a prime minister, except the
eastern. Subhash Chandra Bose and Jyoti Basu, both sons of the East,
came close to leading the nation but destiny willed otherwise. Pranab
Mukherjee is the only viable candidate from the region today and...

A giant meteor capable of extinguishing human life is believed to be hurtling toward Earth. Will the US unite to figure out the threat or will we cleave along partisan political lines? Most likely the former. Then what makes a menace of equivalent magnitude, the one potentially posed by global...