From the beginning of the criminal prosecution of Rajat Gupta, it was clear that the government didn't have the sort of evidence usually at the heart of insider trading cases. Gupta didn't profit directly from the tips he allegedly passed to Raj Rajaratnam, who has since been convicted of inside trading.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will rank as the most accomplished, poised and successful woman politician in American history. She has pierced many glass ceilings with tenacity and grace. She almost made it to the White House and future sociologists and historians will be able to more objectively assess the misogyny index that still lurks deep within American society and its relevance in the Obama-Clinton Democratic party tussle. The U.

A callow prime minister, a global superstar, shadowy international arms dealers, crafty middlemen and nosy journalists were the dramatis personae of a real-life political thriller that played out in New Delhi, Stockholm, London and New York over a quarter century ago.

The ruling Congress party coalition looks like it will at best limp its way to general elections in 2014, stung by a rash of corruption scandals that have tarnished Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s second term in office and led to a dismal performance in state assembly elections earlier this year. Now the political establishment is abuzz about who will be the next president, a largely ceremonial post that comes open in July.

What should be done with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? If the Defense Department is to be believed, the chief planner of the 9/11 attacks on America is guilty of mass murder and crimes against humanity. Even if the evidence elicited by waterboarding him 183 times is void, his declaration in 2002 that “I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation from A to Z” should ensure conviction.

Listening to Narendra Modi campaign for re-election in Gujarat in 2002 after some of the worst communal bloodletting in India’s history, one word was repeated so often that even I, with little knowledge of the language, could follow the meaning. “Pakistan”, he said, was the real threat to India.

Narendra Modi's career provides a classic example of how a kinky ideology can thwart political ambitions in a pluralistic society. Yet, when the same ideological outlook enabled him to scale the heights of political power by winning the 2002 assembly elections in Gujarat, the chief minister must have presumed that even greater successes were in store for him. What he hadn't taken into account were the imperatives of a multicultural country.