Category: WASHINGTON

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External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar held a wide range of discussions on the India-US relationship in a string of meetings with top US officials on Thursday, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

US Senators fell into deep negotiations on Monday to avoid a potential government shutdown, with the house in utter chaos over the government’s spending plans, by working out a stopgap legislation and decide whether to include funding to Ukraine as part of it.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned at least three Americans active in the Sikh community that their lives were in danger in the immediate aftermath of the murder of a "Sikh activist" in Canada last June, a media report said.

The US has reaffirmed that it will host the 2026 G20 Summit here as it sees itself as a dominant partner to balance the equations for the developing world in a strife-torn geo-political world leading to a global economic crisis. 

Kurt Campbell, President Joe Biden’s Deputy Assistant and Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific Region on US foreign policy, said the White House views the absence of Putin and Xi as a great disappointment to India when world leaders were attending.

Xi met Modi in Johannesburg on August 23 on the sidelines of the BRICS summit. Xi is minded not to attend the G20 Summit in New Delhi, according to several anonymous sources cited by several Western media houses, the noted US weekly Newsweek said in a special report on G20.

President Joe Biden is "excited" to visit India for the G20 leaders' meeting, the US said. And his bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be a "follow-on" to their "very robust" discussions during the latter's state visit in July.

US President Joe Biden will focus on "fundamentally reshaping and scaling up the multilateral development banks" during his upcoming visit this week to New Delhi for the G20 leaders' meeting, the White House said.

US President Joe Biden's visit to India for the upcoming G20 leaders' summit is on and he will be leaving for New Delhi on Thursday. Biden has tested negative for Covid-19 after First Lady Jill Biden tested positive.

Former US President Donald Trump surrendered at a county jail in Georgia in an alleged case of racketeering to overturn the outcome of the state's vote count in the 2020 presidential election.

From Vice President Kamala Harris to Ambassador Eric Garcetti, top American leaders congratulated India for the historic touchdown of Chandrayaan-3 on the southern polar region of the moon, calling it an 'incredible feat'.

The United States, which had helped in India's Chandrayan-3 mission and closely tracked its progress, joined the world in hailing the historic soft-landing of the Indian spacecraft on the moon’s South Pole surface on Wednesday.

“We have heard loud and clear that countries want us to step up our support in the face of the overlapping challenges they face,” US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on a news conference call, announcing President Biden’s visit.

Reiterating that India imposes high tariffs on American companies that manufacture motorcycles and cars, former US President Donald Trump has said he will slap reciprocal tax if voted to power in 2024.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined the banks for being unable to produce those “off-channel” employee communications going back to at least 2019.

Taking to Twitter, Michael Kugelman, a scholar of South Asian affairs at the Wilson Centre in Washington, posted: “Not long ago, Pakistan’s political crisis appeared to be easing a bit, with the government pledging to step down and make way for a caretaker to prepare for elections.” 

Jack Smith, the special prosecutor for this case and the one about Trump's mishandling of confidential papers, said announcing the charges, "The attack on our nation's capitol on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy."

Indian-Americans and allies held protests in US states of California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts throughout the weekend to condemn the ongoing ethnic violence in Manipur, which has left hundreds of people dead and thousands displaced.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday slightly raised India's GDP projection for the current fiscal to 6.1 per cent from 5.9 per cent. However this projection by IMF is still lesser than the 6.5 per cent growth projected by RBI for 2023-24.

He also reiterated that the US “strongly condemns the reported acts of vandalism and attempted arson against” the consulate and, added: “Vandalism or violence against diplomatic facilities or foreign diplomats in the United States is a criminal offense”.

A bipartisan duo of US lawmakers has called upon the state department to ensure the safety of Indian diplomats and diplomatic missions in the aftermath of the second attack on the Indian mission in San Francisco.

Two men dressed in dark clothes walked up to the gate of the Indian consulate in San Francisco on July 2, poured some kind of inflammable liquid on it from a container and set it on fire in a stunning breach of security as the same facility was attacked earlier in March.

“The US strongly condemns the reported vandalism and attempted arson against the Indian Consulate in San Francisco on Saturday,” said Mathew Miller, state department spokesman, in a tweet late Monday.

US lawmakers, pushing a legislation that seeks to fast-track the sale of arms and weapons to India with the same speed as those meant for close allies, have stopped talking it up as a “NATO Plus” arrangement in a nod to New Delhi’s skittishness about being perceived as an ally.

In wake of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's high-profile visit, US President Joe Biden on Sunday categorised the New Delhi-Washington friendship among the "most consequential" in the world.