S. Mitra Kalita

The group of eight Indian youths describe themselves as “working, well educated, aware, well traveled, well spoken.” In other words, they are exactly the type of people who live, work, and party in Gurgaon, a Delhi suburb filled with pubs, call centers, restaurants, software companies and gated communities that somehow feel a cross between Miami and New Jersey.

Zach Sobiech used his songs to say goodbye to the world. The world, it seems, is still not quite ready to let go.

So is it legal or not to use Airbnb in New York City?

Indian cinema wants to use the Cannes Film Festival to show the world that the industry is more than just the loud, garish genre known as Bollywood.

Leave it to a Punjabi to liken a hockey puck to his mother’s aloo tikki.

Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick’s decision to shut down the city of Boston and nearby suburbs—the tenth-largest metropolitan area of the US and the ninth-largest by GDP—may be scary, but Americans are growing ever-familiar with lockdown mode.

Through much of the 1990s and early 2000s, Infosys ranked up there with the Taj Mahal as part of any foreign dignitary or business luminary’s India itinerary. To drive home the software developer’s significance, the trees lining the company’s sprawling Bangalore headquarters include placards with the names of the people who planted them: Bill Gates, Michael Dell, the prime ministers of Japan and Norway, among them.

Rwanda began its annual week of mourning today, commemorating the 100-day genocide in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsi were murdered just 19 years ago.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has become a bit of a punching bag for the women’s movement: She didn’t take a maternity leave, she banned Yahoo employees from telecommuting, and she said she doesn’t consider herself a feminist.

The US government opened a probe last year into whether the Wall Street Journal bribed Chinese officials for information—although the newspaper’s own investigation found no evidence to support the claim, the Wall Street Journal reports today.

Here we go again.

Gun ownership in the US might be on the decline, but the upcoming National Rifle Association (NRA) convention promises to be “one of the largest” in its history and “a safe and fun atmosphere the whole family can enjoy.”

M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming book is not what you’d expect from the director best known for his works about the supernatural.

Hugo Chávez’s personality was made for Twitter. Venezuela’s president, whose death was announced today, often posted several times a day and engaged with followers from Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to citizens of his country.

The Sheryl Sandberg media blitz has begun. The Facebook chief operating officer’s book, Lean In, isn’t even out for another three weeks, but the front page of the New York Times sowed seeds for the backlash surely to come:

Finally, the hard questions are being asked.

The death of a young woman gang raped aboard a bus in Delhi has captivated the world, from candlelight vigils to fiery tweets vowing justice.

Thousands of people have been protesting all day in New Delhi, as they have been all week after the gang rape of a woman riding a private bus. Dozens of activists and police were injured in today’s clashes, and officials are pleading for calm. Politicians promise to keep their promises this time. Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde held a press conference and pledged the government will “increase the number of buses at night, track those buses with GPS devices, ensure drivers carry identity badges and increase the number of police officers on busy routes.”

Here’s the great irony of India: its economic turnaround is owed to an outsourcing model of English-speaking, well-educated young workers. And yet the country suffers from an acute skills gap, meaning universities are churning out graduates ill-equipped for the needs of the private sector. A report just out says just 10% of MBA graduates are deemed “employable.”

Social media has been a pretty heartbreaking place for the last 24 hours. Photos of stricken teachers keeping a line of terrified children in single file. Parents running to find their children—and those still waiting. In between, a steady stream of scoops: The killer is 24 years old. No, he’s 20. His name is Ryan. No, it’s Adam. His mother worked at the school. No, she didn’t.

This might be the global property market’s new normal. Here’s a telling chart from a report (pdf) just released by real-estate firm CBRE:

Wait, does Apple suddenly care about India?

Every government has been commanding women to breastfeed. Brazil tried bizarre ads of a baby’s nose looking like a nipple. New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg famously asked hospitals to keep formula under lock and key, sanctioned only by nurses so new mothers try harder to breastfeed. Similar efforts in the Philippines achieved remarkable success: exclusive breastfeeding rose from 36% in 2008 to 47% last year.

India’s economy is on track to turn in its worst year of performance in a decade. Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 5.3% between July and September from a year earlier,the government reported today.