Indians

Maria Sharapova considers the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells a hometown tournament. The Russian tennis pro has a home in Manhattan Beach, her parents have a home in Topanga Canyon and she even has a favorite Italian restaurant in Southern California, La Sosta Enoteca in Hermosa Beach. And so it makes Sharapova happy that she will be seeded second to Victoria Azarenka when the women's tournament begins Wednesday. Men's main draw play begins Friday. "I like this tournament because the people come to watch the tennis," Sharapova said.

Each morning at 7, Marcelino Martinez arrives at the Hamburger Hamlet in Sherman Oaks. Wearing a thick white chef's coat, he inspects the fryers first - for the purity of the cooking oil and height of the flame. This has been his routine for 43 years. In this kitchen and many like it, the restaurant manager has trained hundreds of fellow Zapotec Indians from the highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico, to cook patty melts, onion rings and lobster bisque at El Hamlet . Most have moved on, preparing German, Italian, French and California cuisine at various restaurants throughout Los Angeles.

By the time their rickety boat was rescued last week off the eastern coast of Sri Lanka, nearly a hundred of the weakened passengers had lost their lives - roughly three times as many as survived. The starving people had endured nearly two months at sea, trying to flee the western state of Myanmar where hundreds were slain last year, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday. The Rohingya Muslims say they undertook the arduous journey out of fear for their lives. The outpouring of Rohingya from western Myanmar and Bangladesh refugee camps has made the Indian Ocean “one of the deadliest stretches of water in the world,” the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

NEW DELHI - At least 11 people were killed and 75 wounded when twin blasts struck a busy bus terminal, market and theater district Thursday in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. Given the intensity of the explosives, which according to early reports were hidden in a large “tiffin” lunch box and on the back of a parked bicycle, and the head injuries suffered by several people, authorities said they expected the death toll to rise. Local television network NDTV said a third device was found unexploded, a report that was not immediately confirmed.

Three close male friends live through ups and downs in realizing their dream of running a sports shop/cricket academy in the Indian film "Kai Po Che" ("Brothers for Life"). Based on a bestselling novel, the film traffics in an energetic form of aspirational/redemptive melodrama that ties the friends' fortunes to real-world events in the early 2000s, such as the Gujarat earthquake. Once business-minded Govind (Raj Kumar), impulsive cricket fanatic Ishaan (newcomer Sushant Singh Rajput)

Days after his arrest was ordered, the former president of the Maldives sought refuge Wednesday at the Indian embassy, the latest twist in a political saga that has gripped the chain of islands south of India. Mohamed Nasheed stepped down as president last year after weeks of turmoil, set off by his decision last February to arrest a judge whose rulings he claimed were politically tainted. He and his backers later said he was forced to resign by forces loyal to his country's longtime autocracy, which held sway over the Maldives until its first democratic elections roughly four and a half years ago. In August, a national commission countered that there was no coup and concluded that Nasheed had run afoul of the constitution by arresting the judge, findings that triggered new rounds of protests.

NEW DELHI -- Jail officials in India's western Gujarat state were conducting an investigation Tuesday after a 42-foot tunnel was discovered by chance under a high-security prison. It was reportedly excavated by convicted bombers with engineering degrees and found by a guard looking for unauthorized carrier pigeons. Authorities found the tunnel on the northern side of a high-security chhota chakkar section of the Sabarmati Central Jail late Sunday. It had reportedly been excavated over several weeks by inmates using dishes, steel utensils, buckets, ropes and iron bars.

California's practice of pressuring Indian tribes to share casino profits in exchange for approval of slot machines has been hit with a setback. The Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians has received approval of its gambling authorization from the federal government, reducing the amount it must pay the state, which has traditionally negotiated gaming compacts and demanded a large share of profits. Rincon had sued then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state for “illegal taxation” and “bad faith” in renegotiations for a gaming compact in which the tribe was asked to share profits in exchange for the state approving 900 new slot machines for its Harrah's Rincon Casino and Resort in San Diego County.

On a narrow road two miles from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, State Line Liquor beckons. Inside, "Native Pride" caps line a wall and sodas fill a cooler. But more often than not, people come for Budweiser and malt liquors with names like Tilt Watermelon and Hurricane. Alcohol has been banned on the South Dakota reservation for generations, so people come to State Line or three other beer and wine stores in Whiteclay for a case, a can or whatever a handful of change will buy. Alcohol sales near dry reservations have long been a problem, but in Whiteclay the tension between dry and wet, between Indian and non-Indian, stands out in sharp relief.

ABOARD THE PRAYAGRAJ EXPRESS, India - We're late. Very late. A nine-hour overnight train trip has turned into 16, and we're still miles from nowhere. It's winter in northern India and that means fog, great gobs of the stuff wreathing the land, causing shapes to appear out of the mist before slinking back into the void. Trains slow to a crawl. Airports come to a standstill. You're thinking: Cue the apoplectic passengers, minds racing to reconfigure digital calendars, a flurry of calls, texts, the jitter of tapping feet.