Ten of the 25 richest Asians are from India. Mukesh Ambani of India’s Reliance Group, with an estimate net worth of US$29 billion, is the richest, followed closely by steel giant Lakshmi Mittal (at USD28.7 billion).

Globally, Ambani and Mittal are the fourth and fifth richest – right behind Carlos Slim (USD 53.5 billion), Bill Gates ($53 billion) and Warren Buffet ($47 billion).

About Pakistan’s Mian Mohammad Mansha, Forbes says:

Born during the tumultuous Partition winter of 1947, when his parents were among those Muslim families making the trek from India to Pakistan. His father and uncles jumped into textiles with Nishat Mills in 1951. Mian went to college in the U.K.; joined family business after graduation…His Nishat Group is now Pakistan’s largest exporter of cotton clothes (for brands like Gap) and nation’s largest private employer. More:

Click here for the full Forbes list

[via 3quarksdaily]

Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India

“Anyone who can obtain a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford and successfully manage the world’s largest democracy has to be the smartest person in the world,” says one of our MacArthur voters, Loren H. Riesenberg of Indiana University.

Muhammad Yunus, Managing director of Grameen Bank, Bangladesh

He used his brain to make a dent in the fight against poverty. This “banker to the poor” from Bangladesh is the originator of the innovative microcredit concept, in which financing is doled out to those too poor to receive traditional loans to help them break free from poverty.

Says Forbes: “The combined fortune of India’s 100 richest is $276 billion, almost one-fourth the country’s GDP. That is well below the total worth of $775 billion for the 100 richest Americans, but well ahead of the equivalent sum for China’s top 100. Although China has more billionaires–79 vs. India’s 52–India’s wealthiest are worth over $100 billion more than the $170 billion total net worth of their Chinese counterparts.”

London-based steel baron Lakshmi N Mittal with $30 billion, Anil Ambani with $17.5 billion, Azim Premji with $14.9 billion, Shashi and Ravi Ruia with $13.6 billion and KP Singh with $13.5 billion make up the top five billionaires on this year’s list.

1. Mukesh Ambani

2. Lakshmi Mittal

3. Anil Ambani

4. Azim Premji

5. Shashi & Ravi Ruia

6. Kushal Pal Singh

7. Savitri Jindal

8. Sunil Mittal

9. Kumar Birla

10.Gautam Adani

[Full list here]

Full story in Forbes

Krishna Menon

From Foreign Policy:

Indian Diplomat Filibusters Himself to (near) Death

Year: 1957

Quote: “The Security Council regards this as a dispute. It is not a dispute for territory. There is only one problem before you … that problem is the problem of aggression.”

Impact: With this epic filibuster during a debate on Kashmir, Indian U.N. envoy Krishna Menon holds the record for the longest speech in the history of the U.N. Security Council. In total it lasted over eight hours. Menon actually collapsed from exhaustion partway through and had to be hospitalized. He returned later and continued for another hour while a doctor monitored his blood pressure.

Others on the list: Castro, Krushchev, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Arafat, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Libyan Leader Muammar al-Qaddafi.

Click here for more

Yulia Tymoshenko, PM of Ukraine

So who do you think is the hottest world leader? Vladimir Putin? Barack Obama? Nicolas Sarkozy? They are not even in top ten.

Take a look at the Hottest Heads of State blog. “For too long citizens of the world have suffered under the tyranny of unattractive leaders,” it says. “Some people say that this is just the way things are: unattractive people have a death grip on the levers of power that will never be loosened. We say: Not with that attitude it won’t. By ranking the world’s leaders by looks, we hope to heighten voter awareness of this problem and shame the citizens of countries with unattractive leaders into rising up and staging coups or something.”

Obama is at #15 and Putin at#18.

At #3 is the King of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck.

At #14: Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives.

The hottest head of state, according to the blog, is Yulia Tymoshenko, Prime Minister of Ukraine. This is how the blog begins her profile: “Ukrainian Prime Minister Julia Tymoshenko may be hot now, but for most of her life she was very, very obese.”

Click here for the full list.

With its deep-pocketed owners and global appeal, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has shaken up professional cricket, luring top players from five continents with paychecks as big as $111,000 per three-hour match. That’s a stunning sum in a sport where domestic leagues have traditionally been an afterthought to the international version of the game.

While cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world (it’s played competitively in more than 100 countries), before the IPL launched last year, no domestic league was truly run as a business. But with IPL teams now paying top players as much as $1.55 million for just a five week season, versus $500,000 to $1 million, depending on the country, for an almost year-long slate of national team games, cricket is in the midst of a dramatic shift. More:

[Graphic: HT]

Top 20 failed states:

1. Somalia
2. Zimbabwe
3. Sudan
4. Chad
5. Dem. Rep. of the Congo
6. Iraq
7. Afghanistan
8. Central African Republic
9. Guinea
10. Pakistan
11. Ivory Coast
12. Haiti
13. Burma
14. Kenya
15. Nigeria
16. Ethiopia
17. North Korea
18. Bangladesh
19. Yemen
20. East Timor

Click here to read the full story, and here for the full list.

Category: Leaders & Revolutionaries
Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan army’s Chief of Staff

Profiled by Admiral Mike Mullen: Here is a man with a plan, a leader who knows where he wants to go. He seemed to understand the nature of the extremist threat inside Pakistan, recognized that his army wasn’t ready to meet that threat and had already started working up solutions. So far he’s done everything he told me he would do. More:

Category: Builders & Titans
Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and Co-Chairman of Infosys Technologies

Profiled by Vikas Swarup: A middle-class kid from a small town, he rose to become a co-founder and co-chairman of Infosys Technologies and a key player in India’s growth story. And just as truly successful companies and individuals have the ability to reinvent themselves, Nandan’s new avatar is that of a civic-minded intellectual keen to shape public policy. More

Category: Artists & Entertainers
A.R. Rahman, music composer

Profiled by Padma Lakshmi: A veritable Pied Piper, he has no competition, yet he makes it a priority to discover new talent and promote it. He has shaped modern India’s music for more than a decade. Now the “Mozart of Madras” has the world’s foot tapping along with him. More:

Category: Artists & Entertainers
M.I.A (Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, better known as M.I.A.),  British-born singer of Sri Lankan Tamil origin

Profiled by Spike Jonze: She has this wide range of talents and influences – she’s a Sri Lankan refugee who didn’t speak a word of English before she was 10, yet she’s also a child of Chuck D and the Pixies and Fight Club and MySpace. More:

Category: Heroes & Icons
Suraya Pakzad, founder of the Voice of Women Organization in Afghanistan

Profiled by Khaled Hossein: I cannot imagine the reserves of courage that Pakzad, 38, taps into every morning when she steps out the door, knowing it may be for the last time. But for several years now, at great risk to herself, this is just what she has done. It is difficult to name a more committed advocate for women’s rights in Afghanistan. More:

The richest in the world is Bill Gates. He lost $18 billion over the last 12 months, but still has a total net worth of $40 billion.

There are 24 Indians on the list; as many as 29 Indians have lost their billionaire status entirely.

Last year Anil Ambani was the biggest gainer and ranked at #6. This year, with an estimated wealth of $10.1 billion, he is down to #34, and is also the biggest loser: he lost $32 billion over the last 12 months.

His brother and Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani (#7) is the richest Indian with a total wealth of $ 19.5 billion. Last year his fortune was estimated at $43bn.

Steel baron Lakshmi Mittal at #8 lost $25.7 billion during the past year.

Click here for the complete list.

Other Indians in the list include Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Irfan Khan, Hritik Roshan. Aamir is ranked highest at 540th in the global list, followed by Shah Rukh (735), Salman (753), Irrfan (825) and Hrithik (1,059).

There are four categories: Ultimate (10.0), Strong (more than 7.50), Average (5.0) and Low (2.50). Aishwarya Rai’s score is 4.44.

More here:

Warren Buffett is the richest (value of stake $35.9 billion)

Mukesh Ambani / Reliance Industries: Value of stake $16.8 billion

Lakshmi Mittal / ArcelorMittal: Value of stake $13.2 billion

Anil Ambani / Reliance Communications, Reliance Power, Reliance Capital, Reliance Natural Resources: Value of stakes $9 billion

Sunil Mittal / Bharti Airtel: Value of stake $6.9 billion

Click here for the Forbes story

If you flew to Mumbai or Delhi last year, more often than not your plane did not arrive on time. The international airports in those cities were the world’s worst for timely arrivals.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Mumbai International (BOM)

Worst Arrival Rank: No. 1

India’s busiest airport in terms of passengers (21.4 million in 2006) is also the world’s worst for on-time arrivals. Last year, slightly more than 44% of its flights arrived as scheduled, with an average delay of 45 minutes. Departures from Mumbai were much more reliable, with 72% leaving on time.

Delhi Indira Gandhi International (DEL) is at No. 2

More:

And below, in the Hindu, an airline instructor pilot, Captain A. Ranganathan, on the sad state of India’s aviation infrastructure:

Better safe than sorry

[View from the cockpit: While runway 19R in Kolkata was cleared for landing, the pilot landed the aircraft on 19L]

After May 2007, we have had more than nine runway overruns and four cases of runway confusions in India. The numbers point to an alarming 30 per cent of overruns and a more alarming single year (four wrong runway landings) equivalent of a 12-year average (four) in runway confusion in worldwide statistics. These are serious warning pointers that have appeared and we continue to ignore them. Three holes are aligned and we wait for the fourth to synchronise! Two events in the recent past are perfect examples. A private airline’s flight landing on the wrong runway which was closed at Kolkata and the stressed Air Traffic Controller at Chennai telling an Air Force pilot to shut up.

More:

Beauties for the brains
1 Ana Ivanovic
2: Tina Fey, American TV actor, producer
3: Sarah Silverman, American singer, actor, comedian
4: Katie Couric, American TV journalist, writer
5: Lisa Ling, American TV journalist
6: Meredith Vieira, American journalist and TV celebrity
7: M.I.A., stage name of Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam, British song writer and artist of Tamil descent
8 Jhumpa Lahiri
9: Samantha Power, Irish American journalist, author and academic
10: Jennifer Granholm, governor of Michigan

More:

From the magazine’s cover story by Jon Meacham headlined “The Story of Power”:

In the popular imagination, power tends to be viewed in one of two ways, both extreme. The first is totemic and tactical (how to get ahead at the office, to win friends and influence people). The other is epic and amorphous (the fate of markets, of vast global events and forces that seem beyond anyone’s control, but especially yours).

Power is both these things, and more. At heart, it is best understood in terms of command and control. It is either the capacity to make others do as you wish (the command function) or to reorder the environment around you (the control function).

No. 1 on the power list is Barack Obama, followed by Chinese President Hu Jintao, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Markel and powerful Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Sonia Gandhi is at No. 17. “In the world’s largest democracy, she is the queen,” says Newsweek. Gen. Kayani is at No. 20 and ‘King of Bollywood’ Shah Rukh Khan at No.41.

Click here for Newsweek’s full and list and for their profiles.

These are painful times for India’s richest as the ongoing global turmoil drastically reshapes their fortunes. The country’s once soaring stock market fell 48% in the 12 months, the rupee depreciated 24% against the dollar and gross domestic product growth is expected to slow down to 7.5%, partly owing to double-digit inflation.

All of this conspired to knock 60% off the combined fortunes of the nation’s 40 wealthiest. Their total net worth fell $212 billion, to $139 billion, down from $351 billion a year ago.

Last year’s No. 1, U.K. resident Lakshmi Mittal, dropped $30.5 billion amid plunging steel prices, but he slips only a bit, to No. 2. Mukesh Ambani, who oversees petrochemicals giant Reliance Industries, grabs the top spot for the first time, despite losing $28.2 billion in the past year. His estranged brother, Anil, ranked third, is the biggest dollar loser, down $32.5 billion.

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Bhutan 45; India 85; Sri lanka 92; The Maldives 115; Nepal 121; Pakistan 134; Bangladesh 147; Afghanistan 176; Burma 178.

China is at 72.

The Top five: Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden, Singapore, Finland

The US is at 18 and the UK at 16

More here, and click here for the full list:

Only the Indians can match the Russians in the spending marathon. Their preferred stakes are buildings and weddings. Lakshmi Mittal, Britain’s richest man, has bought the nation’s most expensive home, a £117m mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens, from Noam Gottesman, 47, the Israeli-American financier. Mittal also owns the previous most expensive house in Britain, on the same road, which he picked up for £70m. The Indian steel boss blew £34m on a six-day wedding party in Paris for his daughter, Vanisha. It was held at the Palace of Versailles, and Kylie Minogue gave a private performance for 1,000 guests, who drank their way through 5,000 bottles of vintage champagne.

Not to be outdone, India’s richest man, the metals-to-mobiles entrepreneur Mukesh Ambani, whose £43 billion puts him in the top five in the global wealth list, is building the most extravagant private home since William Randolph Hearst built Hearst Castle: a £500m, 60-storey, twin-tower skyscraper on Mumbai’s harbour front. Six floors will be devoted to his 168 imported cars, and there will be a private health centre, an entire floor for entertaining, three floors of Babylon-inspired hanging gardens and three rooftop helipads. About 600 staff will run the gleaming mini-city on the hill.

More:

No. 1: Vanisha Mittal Bhatia, daughter of Lakshmi Mittal, $45 billion

The second child and only daughter of the world’s fourth-richest man, Vanisha serves on the board of directors of her father’s $103 billion (market cap) company, ArcelorMittal.

No. 2: Isha Ambani, Daughter of Mukesh Ambani, $43 billion

The only daughter of the world’s fifth-richest man, Isha, 16, already holds a stake worth about $80 million in Reliance Industries, the petrochemicals giant her father runs.

No. 3: Pia Singh, Daughter of K.P. Singh, $30 billion

A graduate of Wharton School, Singh pursued a six-week filmmaking course at NYU and later worked in the risk-underwriting department at GE Capital. She now works for her father’s DLF group.

Click here for the full list:

#3 Indra K. Nooyi, Chairman, chief executive, PepsiCo, U.S.: Nooyi continues to grow PepsiCo, the $39 billion food and beverage giant, through new product offerings and acquisitions

#21 Sonia Gandhi, President, Indian National Congress Party, India:Gandhi, the Italian-born leader of India’s most powerful political party, the Indian National Congress Party, has by now assumed the role of elder stateswoman.

#38 Aung San Suu Kyi, Deposed prime minister; Nobel peace laureate, Myanmar: Since the democratic elections in 1990, when she was elected prime minister, Suu Kyi, 63, has been kept from power and is now in the sixth consecutive year of house arrest.

#59 Mayawati Kumari, Chief minister, Uttar Pradesh, India: In the running to be prime minister, from her perch as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.

#99 Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman and managing director, Biocon, India: Trained in Australia as a brewer, she founded Biocon in 1978 to make industrial enzymes with a small Irish company, Biocon Biochemicals.

Click here for the complete Forbes list and the profiles:

For the story in pictures:

SHAH RUKH KHAN

Occupation: Actor

Region/territory: India

Brand ambassador for: Nokia phones

The world’s largest phone manufacturer doesn’t work with many celebrities but makes an exception for Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, who says he has used Nokia phones for more than a decade. After pairing on a popular commercial last December, the company began sponsoring Khan’s cricket team this spring.

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Gaining membership to the billionaire wives’ club is no easy feat. Today, there are just 110 eligible 10-figure bachelors, including divorced men, in the world. So what does it take to marry one? Our list of billionaire wives outlines a few tips–from some of the more notable women who tied the knot with these men.

For starters, looks are great–but brains are even better. Take, for example, the women who recently nabbed two of the world’s most eligible bachelors, Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Blonde beauty Lucy Southworth, who married Page in December, is a biomedical informatics doctoral student at Stanford University, where both Page and Brin studied as graduate students before leaving to start their company in 1998.

More:

How he got to the top: His father handed him the position.

In a benevolent effort to move his Switzerland-sized Himalayan kingdom of 600,000 from a monarchy to a democracy, his father-the previous king-abdicated in December 2006 and passed the throne to “Prince Jigme,” who fittingly has a master’s degree in politics from Oxford University. The Land of the Thunder Dragon became the world’s newest democracy in March when Bhutanese went to the polls for the first time ever to elect a 47-seat National Assembly. The handsome king will remain as the country’s head of state, but he is committed to guiding Bhutan’s democratization.

Click here for other leaders in the list:

1: Denmark

2: Ireland

3: Finland

4: US

5: UK

And this is where the South Asian countries stand:

64: India (next to Colombia, but way ahead of the economic powerhouse China, ranked 79)

67: Sri Lanka

83: Pakistan

96: Nepal

110: Bangladesh

Click here for the full list:

Both Pakistan and Bangladesh registered a fall from last year’s status, with Bangladesh featuring the worst fall of all Failed States, set off by postponed elections, deadlocked government and the continuance of emergency rule that has dragged on for 18 months (not to mention November’s devastating cyclone which left 1.5 million people homeless). Nearby Pakistan didn’t do much better with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

For the complete list and the whole story in Foreign Policy click here.

The criteria to make the list, says FP, could not be more simple: Candidates must be living and still active in public life. They must have shown distinction in their particular field as well as an ability to influence wider debate, often far beyond the borders of their own country.

India:
1: Historian Ramachandra Guha
2: Political psychologist Ashis Nandy
3: Environmentalist Sunita Narain
4: Economist-Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen
5: Journalist author Fareed Zakaria
6: Novelist Salman Rushdie
7: San Diego-based neuroscientist VS Ramachandran

Pakistan: Lawyer-politician Aitzaz Ahsan

Bangladesh: Microfinance guru Mohammed Yunus

China has four.

Click here for the full list, to vote your selection or to add a candidate.

The wealthiest man in Britain is the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal whose fortune has rocketed to £27.7 billion, up from £19.25 billion last year, thanks to strong global demand for steel. Mittal is now the sixth richest person in the world and far ahead of any other billionaire in Britain.

He is followed by Roman Abramovich, the Russian owner of Chelsea football club, on £11.7 billion, and the Duke of Westminster on £7 billion.

The Sunday Times Rich List, which includes people born or based in the UK, reveals that the native British are being overtaken by foreign billionaires. Only six of the top 20 were born in Britain.

Click here for the full Sunday Times Rich List:

Yogi Adityanath

Religion: Hinduism

Who is he?: Religious leader and member of parliament from Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous province

Country: India

Quote: “I want Muslim votes, too. But wash them in Gangajal [Ganges water] first.”

Why he matters: Adityanath is an up-and-comer in India’s growing Hindutva—Hindu nationalist—movement. In addition to his membership in the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he is the founder of the Hindu Yuva Vahini, a radical Hindu youth movement that has been implicated in a number of incidents of anti-Muslim violence. In early 2007 he was arrested for his role in fomenting religious riots in the northern city of Gorakhpur. Yuva Vahini activists set fire to multiple vehicles including a train and an ambulance in response to his arrest. Adityanath has been released and remains in Parliament, where he is known for such publicity-seeking antics as breaking down in tears during speeches and making statements critical of Mahatma Gandhi. Adityanath’s extreme views put him at odds with even the BJP, and he is now looking into starting his own party with a strictly Hindutva agenda.

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The Top Five:

United States
Troops currently in Afghanistan: 29,000
Fatalities: 419 (includes deaths in Pakistan and Uzbekistan)

Britain
Troops currently in Afghanistan: 7,800
Fatalities: 89 (includes civilians from the Ministry of Defense)

Germany
Troops currently in Afghanistan: 3,210
Fatalities: 26

Italy
Troops currently in Afghanistan: 2,880
Fatalities: 12

Canada
Troops currently in Afghanistan: 2,500
Fatalities: 81

The Bottom Five:

Singapore
Troops currently in Afghanistan: 2
Fatalities: 0

Austria
Troops currently in Afghanistan: 2, sometimes 3
Fatalities: 0

Ireland
Troops currently in Afghanistan: 7
Fatalities: 0

Luxembourg
Troops currently in Afghanistan: 9
Fatalities: 0

Iceland
Troops currently in Afghanistan: 13 (Iceland has no military, so these are actually civilians that report to the Icelandic Crisis Response Unit)
Fatalities: 0

For details on what each country’s troops are doing in Afghanistan, click here:

India, incidentally, has 19 newbies on The List — with at least one (Sameer Gehlaut of India Bulls) below the age of 40.

And, finally, India has retained its position as Asia’s biggest source of billionaires — 53 of them with a combined wealth of $340.9 billion. India’s Fab Four — Lakshmi Mittal, Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani and K.P. Singh — retain their place in The List’s T20 (top 20).

Check out the complete list, edited by Luisa Kroll at Forbes:

After 13 years on top, Bill Gates is no longer the richest man in the world. That honor now belongs to his friend and sometimes bridge partner Warren Buffett.
Riding the surging price of Berkshire Hathaway stock, Buffett has seen his fortune swell to an estimated $62 billion, up $10 billion from a year ago.

Gates is now worth $58 billion and is ranked third richest in the world. He is up $2 billion from a year ago, but would have been as rich–or richer–than Buffett, had Microsoft not made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo! at the beginning of February. Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú now ranks as the world’s second richest person with a net worth of $60 billion.

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