India, Asia | featured news

India’s problems have dampened hopes that it, along with China and other non-Western economies, might help revive global growth.

Robyn and Jason Wright, who struggled with infertility, thought they'd never have a child. But now they have a little boy, carried by a surrogate in Anand, India, the reproductive tourist hub for an international baby boom.

At least 13 people are dead after a train crash in India early Tuesday morning, a spokesman for the ministry of railways said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed Pakistan on Tuesday to do more to stamp out homegrown terrorism, in comments likely to please the Indian government but annoy Pakistani leaders.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on India to further pressure Iran over its nuclear program after officials said the South Asian nation will curtail its imports of Iranian oil by 20 percent.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will use a two-day visit to India this week to urge further reductions in Indian imports of Iranian oil.

Army divers and rescue workers pulled 103 bodies out of a river after a packed ferry boat capsized in heavy winds and rain in remote northeast India, an official said Tuesday. At least 100 people were still missing after the boat carrying about 350 passengers broke into two pieces late Monday, said Pritam Saikia, the district magistrate of Goalpara district.

After several official predictions that India would grow by 7-8% in 2011-12, the finance minister finally admitted in his Budget 2012 speech that the growth would be 6.9%. The actual figure may be lower at 6.5%, thanks to the statistical error in sugar production, which dragged down January's industrial production growth figure from 6.8% to 1.1%.

Indeed, he suspects that "New Delhi's emphasis on China is more about slighting Pakistan than competing with China." China is already modernising its own nuclear-armed medium- and intermediate-range missile systems that could be used to target India. But as Taylor Fravel notes, "India and China have similar nuclear doctrines, as both emphasize no first use and achieving deterrence through development of a secure second-strike."

India announced plans Wednesday to test launch a new long-range missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead as far as the Chinese capital Beijing for the first time. Officials and defense experts said if the tests of the Agni-V missile proved successful, it would mark a significant improvement in India’s nuclear deterrent capability, and would strengthen its hand in a hostile neighborhood, sandwiched between nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and China.