Saudi Arabia has advised the kingdom’s citizens and residents to avoid all travel to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea until further notice due to the Ebola outbreak. The warning issued late Wednesday by the Ministry of Health comes after a Saudi man, who recently visited Sierra Leone and was suspected of having the virus, died earlier in the day when his heart stopped and attempts to resuscitate him […]
NEW DELHI: The government will bring a Bill, amending the Central Electricity Act, in winter session of Parliament to improve the tariff policy and regulations in the power sector. The power ministry is working out different tariff structure for different times of the day for easy availability of power for maximum hours in electricity deficit areas. It will soon consult states over the issue as the tariff matter comes under the states’ domain.
Besides, the government has decided to promote domestic power companies to help increase solar power generation in the country. Announcing these decisions in Rajya Sabha, power minister Piyush Goyal said the government will allow only 100% indigenous domestic companies to participate in the
MUMBAI: The Adani Group and Indian Oil Corporation are in talks to build a Rs 30,000-crore joint venture refinery at Mundra, which would give Gautam Adani an entry into the oil sector while the state-run company would get land port facilities for the proposed export-focused unit.
The proposed 30-million-tonne refinery at Mundra will make Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s native state, Gujarat, a bigger energy hub. It already has refineries of Reliance Industries, Essar Oil and Indian Oil, apart from two LNG terminals and the country’s biggest city-gas distribution network.
Industry sources said Gautam Adani has held initial talks with top executives at IOC and offered around 3,500-4,000 acres of land for th
NEW DELHI: The Obama administration will push for the stalled mega deals for M-777 ultra-light howitzers and Javelin anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) when US defence secretary Chuck Hagel comes visiting from Thursday.
There will be talks on ways to further bolster the already expansive strategic partnership, ranging from sharing of intelligence and cooperation on counter-terrorism to joint combat exercises, but the cornerstone will remain the US offer to provide India with “ground-breaking” weapon technology on par with its closest allies.
Having bagged defence deals worth over $10 billion over the last decade, the US is obviously hungry for more. Of the different co-development and co-prod
|TAP Special| Dubai is going ahead with plans to submit candidature to host the 2024 Olympics and is expanding sports facilities across the emirate as part of the move. “Hosting the Olympics is a dream. We hope to submit such a bid within the next eight years, God willing,” Ali Omar, the director of Dubai Sports Council (DSC) sports development department, said The bidding process for the […]
Qatar’s emir has issued a law providing for foreign investors to own up to 49 percent of listed Qatari companies, part of reforms to expand the stock market and develop the financial industry. “The law stipulates that non-Qatari investors are allowed to own no more than 49 percent of the shares of Qatari shareholding companies listed on Qatar Exchange,” the official Qatar News Agency (QNA) said on […]
A return to an era of higher interest rates could derail attempts by Islamic finance to create alternatives to a short-term funding instrument that has dominated the industry, but which some scholars and regulators want to see replaced. Islamic finance has been trying to diversify away from so-called commodity murabaha, a common cost-plus profit arrangement, in an attempt to reduce reliance on a single tool, stop money […]
|By TAP Staff| A Dubai-based company has launched the UAE’s first offline business directory for Smart phones, named Call UAE, which can work without an internet connection or a mobile network. With over 400,000 listings and more than 5,000 search categories, Call UAE is claimed to be the only “patented” offline Search Engine for Business Data in the UAE. can work without an internet connection or a mobile […]
The village of Kerwas, or Yalaza in Turkish, located near the town of Lice in Turkey’s southeast. Ayla Albayrak for The Wall Street Journal A sleepy little village in Turkey’s southeast has an ambitious project for the country’s estimated 15 million Kurds: to build the country’s first Kurdish-language primary school and set a model for modern Kurdish village life. In a country where Kurdish-language public education remains […]
|Dianne Depra|Tech Times| A couple of days shy of closing its acquisition of the company, Apple is reportedly laying off 200 employees from Beats Electronics. Job cuts are standard in mergers and it looks like Apple is not taking a different route. In the latest round of tech company layoffs, Apple will be doing some restructuring and 200 positions are in its line of sight. Like any effort […]
By Kofi Bofah: Last June, BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY) CEO John Chen first revealed the Passport phone at the company annual general meeting at Waterloo. Originally codenamed Windermere, the Passport is scheduled for official showing at a launch event in London this September. Already, the optimistic Chen has argued that the Passport will reclaim original BlackBerry customers lost to the iOS ecosystem. Going forward, however, the initial optimism […]
The finance ministry is likely to put out a note soon, detailing its road map to capitalise state-run lenders while explicitly stating the government’s intent to maintain control over public sector banks with at least 52% stake.
This marks a shift from the previous UPA government’s decision to keep 58% shareholding in state-run banks. It is in keeping with the Narendra Modi-led government’s stand articulated in the Budget 2014-15 that it would encourage banks to raise capital from the market.
The government will push banks this way to the point of its own stake falling to 52%, to reduce reliance on the budget.
It has set aside only Rs 11,200 crore for bank capitalisation this f
NEW DELHI: The central government’s worries on the Insurance Bill aggravated on Tuesday with Congress accusing it of adopting double standards on the issue and dismissing threats from the treasury benches that a joint session may be convened, forcing BJP ministers to knock on the doors of parties like SP and BSP to muster the numbers in the Rajya Sabha. Congress sources maintained the government was reportedly keen on passing the insurance bill in Parliament in this session so that Prime Minister Narendra Modi can showcase it to the US during his visit in September and hence wants to hurry through the process without sending it to a select committee of the Rajya Sabha. BJP leaders, on the other hand, alleged Congress was playing politics on
NEW DELHI: The power ministry plans to create a fund to provide long-term finances to hydropower developers, and aims to play an active role in resolving state level sues that are blocking such projects.
“Hydropower did not get the desired attention as concerned ministries and departments were working in silos, and problems with states and central authorities could be resolved.
However, the new government is working in tandem as a team and we are hopeful to resolve pending issues to give conducive environment to hydropower sector,” power, coal and renewable energy minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday.
He said one of his first projects Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated was the
JAIPUR: The Rajasthan government while censuring previous Congress government for ignoring state’s interests while signing memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL), has banked on the HPCL’s own consulting firm, SBI Caps’ report.
Chief minister, Vasundhara Raje, during her budget speech, said that based on appraisal report, the project will earn revenue of more than 68,000 crore within 15 years, from the day of production.
According to government officials, the data was cited from the report prepared by HPCL-appointed consulting firm, SBI Caps. Riding on these figures, the government is firming its stand on renegotiating the terms. “These facts came
By Bill Maurer: Back in late May, I provided an initial dividend raise prediction for cigarette giant Altria (NYSE:MO). Based on Altria’s yearly guidance and payout target, I estimated a $2.05 to $2.08 range for the annual dividend when the 2014 raise came. I promised investors that I would return with an update later in the year if I felt a change to my range was needed, […]
Samsung Electronics, the global leader in mobile-phone sales, is being outflanked in the two biggest markets by newcomers catering to domestic tastes. Xiaomi Corp. became the largest smartphone vendor in China during the second quarter, while Micromax Informatics Ltd. topped Indian mobile-phone shipments, according to data from research firms this week. In both cases, Samsung fell to No. 2. Earnings and shipments at Samsung are shrinking as […]
ByBlack Coral Research: By Clinton Holmes Seriously, when I first saw AT&T’s (NYSE:T) dividend yield was above 5%, I couldn’t believe it. AT&T is a long-standing proven company. Over the last two decades, AT&T has had multiple periods of explosive growth. The first period of growth came between 1995 and 2005 when revenue and net income almost tripled due to the activation of AT&T’s mobile infrastructure. T […]
‘We will not weaken the Data Protection Act’ Photo: Rii Schroer SIR – Citizens rightly have concerns about privacy and how personal data is handled. We share such concerns: one of this Government’s first acts was to cancel the illiberal ID card scheme. We are not interested in building large databases. We will not weaken the Data Protection Act. Nor will we collect more data about people, or […]
NEW DELHI: The government is working on developing a bankruptcy framework to offer easier exit routes to sick companies while helping revive those with viable options, said Kalraj Mishra, the new minister for micro small & medium enterprises (MSMEs).
Another issue the ministry is dealing with is availability of land for industrial units. It is asking states to create land pools by listing out all unused land available with them.
“Entrepreneur bankruptcy framework will be developed to enable easy exit of sick units,” Mishra told ET. “It has been a major demand of the MSME sector for a very long time. The details will be worked out soon.”
SMEs employ close to 40 per cen
New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday said the government was open to accommodating minor modifications to the Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2008, so that it could be passed in the current session of Parliament. He also said calling a joint session of Parliament was a real option if the Bill was defeated in one of the Houses. After an all-party meeting failed to break the deadlock on the issue between the government and Opposition, Jaitley on Monday reached out to the Congress. But the Congress continued to insist the Bill be sent to a select committee of Parliament, as it now was much changed from the one the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had tabled in the Rajya Sabha. The party added it would be willing to support the legisl
NEW DELHI: In a move aimed at ensuring India’s energy security, the Narendra Modi-led government plans to import huge volumes of natural gas from Russia. The Centre is working out the contours of a $40-billion (Rs 2.4 lakh-crore) mega onland pipeline project carrying gas from Russia to India, in one of India’s biggest energy projects till date.
Top government officials told HT that the move follows Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Brazil on the sidelines of the Brics summit.
The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) along with the ministry of petroleum and natural gas are preparing a blueprint to examine the feasibility of this new project, they added.
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Video | Cease-Fires of the Gaza-Israel Conflict With the Israeli Army now moving into defensive positions, a historical look at how the fighting could end. By MARK LANDLER August 4, 2014 WASHINGTON — When the State Department condemned Israel’s strike on a United Nations school in Gaza on Sunday, saying it was “appalled” by this “disgraceful” act, it gave full vent to what has been weeks of mounting American […]
Op-Ed Contributor Eight Days in Gaza: A Wartime Diary By ATEF ABU SAIF August 4, 2014 Sunday, July 27 For the last two hours we’ve heard nothing but sonic booms and the sound of rockets and mortars. Shells have fallen on our street a few hundred yards from my father-in-law’s house, where my wife and I, and our five kids, are staying, and on the street behind us. My wife, […]
