Most Middle Eastern stock markets fell on Monday as a rebound by global equities turned out to be short-lived, but Saudi Arabia’s bourse rose after a string of strong quarterly earnings. Stock indexes in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar rose in early trade but quickly gave up all their gains after European bourses once again weakened. Dubai’s index, which was up as much as 2.5 percent […]
There were six in contention; four were dropped, and one became the Chosen One: The Rafale. In French, ‘Rafale’ poetically means a ‘sudden gust of wind.’ It was one of the six fighter aircraft in competition for the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft, MMRCA, when the Indian Air Force wanted to acquire 126 polyvalent fighter planes. In April 2011, the IAF shortlisted two birds — […]
The new Rera service charge index is focusing attention on the vast differences in the charges property owners in different areas of Dubai are being asked to pay for services. The index, which was launched by the regulatory arm of the Dubai Land Department last week, compiles a list of itemised annual service charges for 300 individual buildings located in 22 major developments. According to calculations by […]
A “limited fire” broke out on a subsidiary oil pipeline in eastern Saudi Arabia on Saturday after assailants fired shots at a security patrol, the state news agency SPA said. An industry source told Reuters there was no impact on oil operations in the world’s top crude exporter. SPA, citing the spokesman for police in Eastern Province, said authorities were at the scene quickly and had put […]
By Barun Das Gupta KOLKATA: One of the first priorities of the NDA Government on coming to power was to address the task of speedily narrowing down the asymmetrical gap in India’s defence vis-à-vis China along the entire Himalayan border. In fact, this should have begun in right earnest more than half a century ago, immediately after India’s disastrous military defeat at the hands of the […]
New Delhi: Shortly after 10 am on Friday, while the prime minister was exhorting an annual meeting of top military commanders from the Army, Navy and Air Force to be ready for any call to arms, India’s newest missile blasted off from a canister at the Chandipur test range on the coast of Odisha. This was the Nirbhay long-range cruise missile, which can hit a target […]
By Nora Chopra Congress is supposed to have conceded defeat both in Haryana and Maharashtra even before the results are out. The general secretaries in-charge of Haryana and Maharashtra Shakeel Ahmad and Mohan Prakash have submitted their reports to the Congress president Sonia Gandhi and are supposed to have made the submission that the Congress does not stand any chance to win in any of the two […]
NEW DELHI: DRDO is developing an air-launched version of the 1,500-km-range Nirbhay sub-sonic cruise missile which would be capable of being fired from the Air Force’s frontline Su-30MKI combat aircraft. “This Nirbhay missile would be capable of being used from air, land and ships and submarines. An air-launched version of the missile is also being planned,” DRDO chief Avinash Chander told PTI here. He said […]
An advertisement by the highway outside Dubai’s massive Jebel Ali Port tells firms they don’t need to ship goods through the Strait of Hormuz, the traditional gateway to the Gulf. Instead they can have goods delivered to a port in Oman, outside the Gulf, and bring them into the region by road. “Why go through the Strait when you can go straight to the Gulf,” the billboard […]
NEW DELHI: To expedite infrastructure projects — road and rail — along the border with China for strategic reasons and also for better connectivity, principal secretary to Prime Minister has called a meeting of top officials of key ministries such as defence, rail and road, head of Border Roads Organization (BRO), national security adviser and others on Thursday. Sources said the agenda of the meeting to […]
By Ashok B Sharma Recent unprovoked firing by Pakistan at the Line of Control and as well as at the international border shows the utter helplessness and desperation on its part. India has suspended the dialogue process as Pakistan opted to talk to Kashmiri separatists which the former said was against the spirit of the Shimla Agreement and Lahore Declaration. Subsequently, Pakistan resorted to unprovoked firing at […]
By BRIAN KNOWLTON October 12, 2014 WASHINGTON — Fighters for the Islamic State were managing to blend in with disenfranchised Sunni populations in some Iraqi towns and villages near the capital, raising the chances of militant attacks against targets in Baghdad, President Obama’s top military adviser said on Sunday. “I have no doubt there will be days when they use indirect fire into Baghdad,” the adviser, Gen. Martin E. […]
By Ashok B Sharma India’s foreign trade has badly suffered since the beginning of the global financial crisis in August-September 2008 and the subsequent shock of the sovereign crisis in Eurozone added to the problem. Over dependence on markets in the developed countries was the cause for shrinkage in Indian exports. As the recovery in developed countries and increase in demand is slow, India should […]
Hackers are threatening to post online a large collection of photos, including nude images, sent by Snapchat users and apparently intercepted via third-party apps, Business Insider is reporting. The number of photos in question — at least 100,000 — is much larger than number of the nude celebrity photos stolen from Apple’s iCloud earlier this year. Many images are likely to be of users under the age […]
Fast food chain Dairy Queen is pushing out a security story and it’s anything but sweet. The international firm on Thursday confirmed cyber criminals hit systems at some of its DQ locations and one Orange Julius location in the United States. Dairy Queen blamed the Backoff point-of-sale malware that has been infiltrating retail systems around the country. This is the same malware that invaded Target’s systems last […]
By Ashis Biswas KOLKATA: There are no two opinions about it: unless the Indian government cracks down hard on the unholy nexus between the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Bangladeshi Jamat-e-Islami, India’s regional foreign policy objectives will be seriously compromised. The recent accidental explosion at a house in Khagraghar, Burdwan town, where Muslim extremists with Bangladeshi links had set up an explosive manufacturing centre and […]
Video | Fighting Rages in Syrian Border Town President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey warned that the Syrian border town of Kobani might fall to Islamist militants as fighting intensified between Kurdish rebels and Islamic State fighters. By KARAM SHOUMALI and ANNE BARNARD October 7, 2014 MURSITPINAR, Turkey — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said Tuesday that the Syrian border town of Kobani, under siege from Islamic State fighters, was […]
For the second time since June, AT&T has acknowledged that it has been hit by an insider data breach. The telecom giant is warning consumers that an employee, who has since been fired, illegally accessed the personal information of some of its users, making off with Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers. In a letter sent to the Vermont attorney general earlier this month, AT&T officials […]
Remember BadUSB? If you use a USB device to move digital files from one machine to another, you need to know the latest news on this flaw in design specs that could put your computers at risk. Attack code for this flaw, which is impossible to patch, is now public. Security researchers Brandon Wilson and Adam Caudill released two patches to existing firmware for the Phison 2251-03, […]
A Luxembourg court on Friday rejected a request by two holding companies of Portugal’s Espirito Santo family for “controlled management”, a sort of bankruptcy protection from creditors. Espirito Santo Financial Group (ESFG) and its subsidiary Espirito Santo Financiere SA still have the right to appeal, and the court has yet to decide on two other holding companies controlled by the family. ESFG is Banco Espirito Santo’s largest shareholder, and […]
Virtual Piggy, a payments technology company and the provider of youth payment technologyOink, has partnered with Funcom. The agreement with the independent developer and publisher of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games, is to bring control to in-game payments. Oink is a payment technology designed to allow retailers and game publishers to reach under 21 consumers in a legal manner compliant with the FTC and other international regulations. The […]
Slide Show | Preparing for New Risks in Golan Heights The fighting in Syria has prompted residents of the Golan Heights, Israel’s quietest frontier, to reassess the potential danger. By JODI RUDOREN October 4, 2014 EIN ZIVAN, Golan Heights — The updates poured in by two-way radio and cellphone as Tomer Lahav’s pickup sped around this kibbutz near Israel’s cease-fire line with Syria one recent evening. Mortars were falling […]
SAUDI ARABIA. Jadwa Investment, the Saudi asset manager focused on Sharia’ah compliant mutual and private equity funds, has just issued its Quarterly Global Oil Market Update (Q3 2014). Summary of the report · The combination of accelerating US supply, weaker than expected global demand, stabilization in geopolitics, and an appreciation of the dollar, led to oil prices dropping by 7.3 percent in Q3 2014, to an average of […]
ABU DHABI // Concerns about the UAE’s food security should not be believed, according to the chief executive of a food retail company. Wisal Ahmed, who heads the Alam Group, which owns the eponymous supermarkets, said the country had sufficient resources to take care of any unforeseen circumstances, whether man-made or natural. A UK-based research centre, Chatham House, published a report in November last year in which […]
