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This weekend, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley. Google, Facebook, and Tesla were among those jostling for the Asian premier's attention, and a bevy of new announcements have followed — underscoring the growing importance of the Indian market to the American tech titans.

Of course, there have been efforts underway to tap into India's 1.25-billion-plus citizens (and other developing economies) by tech companies for years now. One of the most high-profile is Internet.org, a cross-company initiative led by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. It aims to bring cheap internet to emerging markets.

The reasoning behind this push is obvious: Every new internet user is a new potential customer. Connecting the unconnected is "not all altruism," Zuckerberg said over the weekend (in relation to project to bring internet to refugee camps). "We all benefit when we are more connected." 

Modi's visit to California this weekend comes hot on the heels of a trip by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. But relationships between American companies and China can be strained by the latter's authoritarian policies — Google does not current operate in mainland China.

In contrast, the New York Times reported, Modi "was on a charm offensive during his own American tour." At a town hall event held with Facebook, the Prime Minister teared up as he discussed his mother. Zuckerberg also shared details of his own spiritual journey to India at the urging of Steve Jobs.

While in Silicon Valley, he also visited the offices of Google and attended a dinner with the likes of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and 350 other business leaders. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, visited Modi at his hotel, Reuters reports.

We're now seeing a bevy of announcements from tech companies attempting to capitalize of this visit. Google, for example, says it will install Wi-Fi in 400 train stations across the country. More ambitiously, Microsoft plans to bring cheap broadband internet to 500,000 villages across the country.

There are still hurdles to overcome, however — Along with basic connectivity, the language barrier being a key one.

Only one in six Indians knows enough English to surf the web in the language. But there are few web pages in Hindi or India’s 21 other official languages. “There are more web pages in Estonian than in Hindi,” Mr. Menon said.

Still, India has vast potential — an untapped well of hundreds of millions of new internet users. American tech companies are taking note.

"(India) has moved on from scriptures to satellites," Modi said this weekend, according to Reuters. "The world has started to believe that the twenty-first century belongs to India."

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Pope Francis goes to the United Nations on Friday to address global leaders on the need to help refugees fleeing wars and plea for greater attention to the world's poor and downtrodden.

The pope arrived in New York on Thursday night from Washington after urging Congress to help heal many of the nation's divisive wounds such as the current heated political battle over immigration.

A brass band from a Catholic high school greeted his plane with the classic tune "New York, New York," and the pope accepted flowers from the crowd of about 200 at the airport.

Apart from addressing the General Assembly, he will also lead an inter-religious prayer service at the site where al Qaeda militants brought down the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people.

He will also visit a Catholic elementary school in Harlem whose students are mostly immigrants or refugees, parade through Central Park, and say Mass in New York's famed Madison Square Garden.

Two years into his papacy, Francis has won the admiration of many in the United States, with liberals captivated by his focus on meeting the needs of the poor and addressing the excesses of capitalism, while some conservatives have expressed dismay that he has given less emphasis to the Roman Catholic Church's longstanding opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

The 78-year-old leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics offered a hint of the issues he would address at the UN's 70th anniversary in a wide-ranging speech to Congress on Thursday.

"Our world is increasingly a place of violent conflict, hatred and brutal atrocities, committed even in the name of God and of religion," Francis said. "Our world is facing a refugee crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Second World War. This presents us with great challenges and many hard decisions."

Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing years of fighting in the Middle East have attempted to cross into Europe this year, raising tensions within the European Union as member states argue about their obligations to harbor newcomers.

The pope early this month called on every European parish to take in a refugee family, a move that could provide shelter for tens of thousands of families.

The pope's arrival in New York on Thursday resulted in a heavier security presence throughout midtown Manhattan at a time when police are normally out in force for the United Nations General Assembly, which brings dozens of world leaders to the city.

The New York Police Department warned that it expected to set up some 37 miles (60 km) of barriers along roadways during Francis' visit. He is the third pope to visit New York City in the last 20 years.

The city's transit agency urged commuters not to drive into Manhattan on Friday and one company advertised $95 cross-town helicopter rides for people hoping to escape the resulting gridlock.

Juanita Jara, a 58-year-old nanny, said she would be among the crowd at the Madison Square Garden Mass and that she hoped Francis would continue his message of support for immigrants a day after he urged Congress to avoid an attitude of "hostility" to newcomers.

"I am a citizen, but a lot of people suffer separation from the family. I, for a long time, suffered that," said Jara, who emigrated from Paraguay a quarter-century ago. "I hope he pushes that."

The pope is also expected to repeat his plea for governments to take action to stem climate change, a call he made most prominently in "Laudato Si" the first papal encyclical dedicated to the environment, which was published in July.

That document has proven controversial in U.S. politics. Republicans, who in recent decades have embraced popes for their public opposition to abortion and gay marriage, criticizing the paper.

The pope will conclude his U.S. visit on Sunday with an open-air Mass in Philadelphia for 1.5 million people.

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Can Volkswagen survive the diesel emissions cheating scandal? Probably. Will its stock ever get back to where it was before? That's another story.

Shares of Volkswagen have plunged nearly 30% since the news of the automaker's Clean Air Act violations first surfaced last Friday. The stock is now more than 50% below the 52-week high that it hit in March.

The departure of CEO Martin Winterkorn on Wednesday is helping VW in the short-term. The stock has rebounded from the 52-week low it hit Tuesday. But one brand reputation expert said that VW has to act quickly to find new leadership.

"This is a mess. The CEO's resignation makes it more of a mess because it's a rudderless ship," said Richard Torrenzano, CEO of the Torrenzano Group, a firm specializing in crisis management for corporations.

It's important to remember that Volkswagen was already in trouble before the term "defeat device" started trending on Google and social media.

There was tension brewing between former VW chairman Ferdinand Piech and Winterkorn ealier this year. (Piech resigned in April.)

Excitement about VW's China business has also quickly turned into apprehension. VW car sales in China helped it surpass Toyota (TM) to become the biggest automaker in terms of global auto sales in the first half of the year.

But China is now the financial equivalent of one of George Carlin's dirty words. China's stock market mess and economic slowdown started to take its toll on the stock over the summer.

So what now? It's hard to imagine how VW can quickly recover. On Wednesday, credit ratings agency Fitch warned that it may downgrade Volkwsagen's debt due to the scandal.

Fitch said its biggest concerns were the "reputational damage" to the VW brand, a likely hit to the company's profits and that the company's corporate governance is weaker than its main rivals.

It's also unclear just how much the emissions scandal will cost VW. The potential of 11 million vehicles worldwide will be ridiculously expensive. And the lawsuits against VW are predictably starting to pile up.

JPMorgan analyst Jose Asumendi downgraded VW's stock to neutral on Tuesday. He warned in his report that it's possible VW's liabilities associated with the scandal could be as high as 40 billion euro ($45 billion) -- although he noted that's the most pessimistic forecast.

Still, a quick look at some other companies that have had to deal with big scandals (including two other major automakers) in the past few years shows that it's possible to rebound. It will just take some time.

GM's (GM) stock is still below the level it was trading at last February before it issued its first recall tied to faulty ignition switches -- although shares have been highly volatile in the past few months along with the broader market.

The stock peaked at $39 this March -- which is actually 20% above where it was trading before GM's recall problems began. So you could argue that GM has recovered from the worst of that scandal already.

Toyota's stock tumbled shortly after it started recalling cars in November 2009 due to a problem with unintended acceleration from sticky gas pedals. But shares were back at pre-November 2009 levels by early 2011 .

And it's worth noting that people actually died because of the problems in GM and Toyota vehicles. VW's scandal essentially amounts to trying to get one over on regulators. There are no safety concerns as of yet with its diesel engines.

Other scandal stocks outside of the auto industry have bounced back too. There were a lot of people who thought BP (BP) would never recover after the Deepwater explosion in the Gulf Of Mexico that killed 11 workers and led to a massive oil spill.

But BP eventually climbed back to its pre-Deepwater levels by June 2014. Of course, oil prices have since collapsed. And so has BP's stock again.

Finally, Goldman Sachs (GS) only needed a few months to recover from the hit its stock took in April 2010 after the SEC accused it of fraud for how it sold and marketed supbrime mortgage securities.

So VW is not necessarily doomed. But it needs to act swiftly and decisively. GM CEO Mary Barra, for example, has won praise for taking responsibility early on in last year's recall crisis. VW needs a new leader to do the same.

"How can VW polish themselves off and move on? It's not a simple matter," Torrenzano said. "They need a strategy to move through this carefully. It's a matter of credibility. Cheating is a terrible sin."

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this happens once in a... maybe never - Facebook is down 

It's on — again.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said Wednesday he won’t be appearing on Fox News Channel any more because the “fair and balanced” network isn’t fair and balanced with him.

“@FoxNews has been treating me very unfairly & I have therefore decided that I won’t be doing any more Fox shows for the foreseeable future,” Trump tweeted.

The bombastic billionaire, who for weeks blasted the network for its treatment of him during the first GOP debate in August before agreeing to a truce, has in recent days escalated the feud.

On Tuesday evening, Trump again took aim at Megyn Kelly, the Fox anchor who moderated the first GOP debate and questioned him about his treatment of women.

“Do you ever notice that lightweight @megynkelly constantly goes after me but when I hit back it is totally sexist. She is highly overrated!” he tweeted.

Fox and Trump have been on shaky ground since the Aug. 6 debate, when Kelly asked the mogul pointed questions about his personal insults against women.

Afterward, Trump said Kelly had “blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever,” during the debate, a meanspirited barb that many assumed was a reference to her menstrual cycle.

Later Wednesday, Trump, who has been blasted for his disparaging remarks about minorities, touted his popularity among black voters.

Speaking at a black business conference in South Carolina, Trump cited a poll from SurveyUSA that showed him getting 25% of the black vote against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

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IBM is adding new smarts to its Watson artificial intelligence system, including the ability to scour photos on social networks to see what you've been up to.

Watson began life as a hardware system built to win the TV quiz show Jeopardy, but it’s evolved into more than a dozen cloud services that developers can use to add cognitive capabilities to applications.

IBM says there are now more than 100 commercial applications making use of Watson, and at an event in San Francisco Thursday it's showing off new computing services to encourage more developers to get on board.

The services are offered in the form of APIs (application programming interfaces) that are accessed via IBM’s Bluemix cloud development platform. Companies that use them in commercial applications pay IBM a share of revenue, while businesses that use them internally pay by the number of API calls they make.

The new services include Visual Insights, which analyzes images and videos posted to services like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, then looks for patterns and trends in what people have been posting.

The stock might fluctuate a lot today due to the news.

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