David Cameron could place himself at the head of a movement to halt the European Union steam-roller and turn it around Photo: EPA Earthquake or not, British politics has certainly undergone a seismic change over the past few weeks. Familiar landmarks have vanished, fresh features emerged, and the outlook has fundamentally changed. Let’s start with an intrusion into private grief, and take a long look at the […]
Low voter turnout has been reported on the second and final day of Egyptian presidential elections, as former army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is expected to emerge as the country’s next president. While the Egyptian government declared a national holiday for Tuesday in an effort to get voters to cast their ballots, an official with international monitoring group Global Network for Rights and Development reported that voter turnout […]
Egypt’s election commission has extended the presidential poll by one day in an effort to increase voter turnout in an election that is widely expected to bring former army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to power. The two-day vote was expected to end Tuesday, but polling Monday was reported to be moderate in a country with 54 million registers voters. The extension is widely seen as an effort to boost […]
Egyptians were urged to vote on Tuesday, the second and final day of the presidential election, amid signs of a lower-than-expected turnout on Monday. Election monitoring groups said the turnout on the first day of the vote was moderate and often thin or non-existent in towns and areas where Islamists dominate. Victory for former military chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, 59, is a foregone conclusion. However, el-Sissi and his supporters have been […]
French President Francois Hollande has called for the European Union to reduce its role “where it is not necessary” after Eurosceptic parties made sweeping electoral gains across the bloc. Reacting to the spectacular success of parties like France’s own National Front and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in Sunday’s European Parliament elections, Hollande acknowledged that the EU had become “remote and incomprehensible” for many of its citizens. […]
Alex Salmond’s miscalculation gave No voters a perfect excuse to vote Ukip Photo: Christopher Pledger/Telegraph Has Alex Salmond lost it? The question becomes especially pertinent in the light of the SNP leader’s extraordinary reaction to his party’s decidedly underwhelming result in the Euro-elections. It is one thing for party bosses to be disappointed when their charges perform less well than anticipated. However, it is entirely another when they […]
CAIRO — Voters around the capital lined up Monday morning to cast ballots in an election universally expected to make Abdel Fattah el-Sisi the next president of Egypt, turning out to show their support in a contest where turnout is the biggest question. In an interview on a pro-Sisi talk show Sunday evening, Abdel Aziz Salman, the general secretary of the High Presidential Election Commission, said that […]
Millions of Egyptians are due to elect their third president in as many years, in a race largely expected to be won by the country’s former army chief. The two-day vote, which began on Monday, pits retired field marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi , who enjoys widespread popularity in the country of 90 million, against left-wing candidate Hamdeen Sabahi . A former legislator and long-term Nasserist activist, Sabahi […]
Far-right and anti-EU parties in France and the UK have made sweeping gains in the European Parliament elections. The majority of almost 388m eligible voters across 21 of the 28 member states, including Germany, France and Spain, cast their ballots on Sunday at polling stations across the EU. The other seven countries, including the UK and the Netherlands, in the bloc had already voted. The European Parliament’s […]
Egyptians head to the polls in a presidential election that ex-army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is expected to win easily. The two-day vote, which starts at 0600 GMT on Monday, follows more than three years of political turmoil that has seen two presidents overthrown, mass protests, thousands killed in clashes, deadly attacks and a battered economy. About 53 million people are registered to vote. Sisi is expected to trounce […]
CAIRO — Helicopters hovered over parts of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, early Monday as voting in the two-day presidential election began. Security was tight in many neighborhoods. Police blocked off streets and parts of city blocks to protect voters at polling stations. More than 400,000 Egyptian police and army soldiers were deployed Monday for the election, and more than 14,000 judges are overseeing the vote at polling stations across […]
An Egyptian elections worker guards boxes of ballots at the Giza courthouse in Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, May 25, 2014. TEXT SIZE – + VOA News May 26, 2014 12:35 AM Egyptians go to the polls Monday and Tuesday to elect a new president. Former Egyptian army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who ousted the elected Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi, is widely expected to win. The two-day election caps more than three […]
Far-right and anti-European Union parties have made sweeping gains in the European Parliament elections held over the 28 member states. Voters in 21 of the EU’s states went to the polls on Sunday, choosing members for the bloc’s 751-seat legislature. The other seven countries in the bloc had already voted in a sprawling exercise of democracy that began on Thursday in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. […]
Asian shares hit one-year high on Monday thanks to a strong session on Wall Street and a decisive win for billionaire Petro Poroshenko in Ukraine’s presidential election. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.15 percent while Japan’s Nikkei share average gained 0.7 percent to hit one-month high. Investors took their cue from upbeat U.S. hosing data on Friday, with sales of new single-family homes […]
Attacks on Nigel Farage, Ukip’s leader, by other politicians have not damaged his standing with voters Photo: EPA Nick Clegg was at his most priggish this week as he sought desperately to persuade the public not to back Ukip in the European elections. Indeed, he laid into not only Nigel Farage, but all those who back him – which, by my reckoning, could be some five million voters. […]
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is keeping a close watch on markets after shares rallied to record highs on speculation that exit polls would show the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies winning a majority in the election, a senior official with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. Several traders attributed the gains in Indian shares, which sent the Nifty to record […]
The BSE Sensex and Nifty surged to its second consecutive record high on Monday as blue-chips including ICICI Bank rallied on hopes that exit pulls due after the close of markets would show opposition Bharatiya Janata Party winning a majority in ongoing elections. India’s five-week long elections are set to conclude on Monday, with exit polls from media organisations to be released starting after 6:30 p.m. The […]
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) says it plans to clamp down on beef exports if it takes power after general elections that end on Monday, threatening supplies from one of the world’s biggest shippers of the meat. Surprisingly in a country where so many view cows as sacred, India has been poised to become the No.1 beef exporting nation, supplying markets such as Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and […]
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Barack Obama declared the pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace one of the two main U.S. foreign policy priorities for his second term. Fast-forward to today, the Obama administration faces a stark choice: expend more energy on a faltering peace process or absorb the hit to an already-troubled record in the Middle East and walk away from negotiations. Secretary of […]
India’s high-profile RBI governor is likely to come under political pressure to retreat from his hawkish stance on inflation if opposition leader Narendra Modi wins power in the general election. Strategists in Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), confident that his jobs-first policy pitch will secure a strong voter mandate, suggest that they would prefer to have one of their own at the helm of the Reserve Bank […]
Gold imports by India, the second-biggest consumer, will rebound in the second half as a new government may ease trade curbs while festivals and weddings spur demand, said billionaire jeweler T.S. Kalyanaraman. The pickup in shipments from mid-year will help overseas purchases over 2014 match the 825 metric tons imported in 2013, Kalyanaraman, chairman of the Thrissur-India based Kalyan Jewellers Ltd., said in an interview. The curbs […]
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has declined to stand in upcoming national elections, adding to a sense of gloom in the Congress party as a growing list of high-profile cabinet members shies away from facing voters at the ballot box. After ten years in office, the Congress party is trailing in opinion polls. Thanks to its failure to check corruption, cool inflation and spark an economic revival, it […]
|By Rajhkumar K Shaaw and Santanu Chakraborty| For the first time in five years, Nilesh Dedhia is buying Indian stocks. The 48-year-old owner of a die-casting factory in Mumbai is among a growing number of local investors returning to the $1.2 trillion equity market on speculation national elections in May will deliver a government with the mandate to revive economic growth from a decade low. That optimism […]
Indian politicians are expected to spend around $5 billion on campaigning for elections next month – a sum second only to the most expensive U.S. presidential campaign of all time – in a splurge that could give India’s floundering economy a temporary boost. India’s campaign spend, which can include cash stuffed in envelopes as well as multi-million-dollar ad campaigns, has been estimated at 300 billion rupees by […]
