Israeli police officers arrested a right-wing activist on Thursday after he tried to access the sacred plateau revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary in the Old City of Jerusalem. By ISABEL KERSHNER and JODI RUDOREN October 30, 2014 JERUSALEM — Under heavy pressure and the threat of new Israeli-Palestinian strife, Israel announced on Thursday that it would reopen a contested holy site in […]
Alongside the Dubai Mall, one of the world’s largest shopping centers, sits an ersatz version of what would be an authentic retail experience in most Persian Gulf cities: an Arab souk. If, in the evening, you stroll through this air-conditioned, hassle- and haggle-free caricature of a market, staffed mostly by smiling South Asians, you can amble out onto the shores of man-made Burj Khalifa Lake, named after […]
NEW DELHI: Life Insurance Corporation of India, the country’s largest insurer, will consider increasing its holding in companies in which the government plans to sell shares this year, possibly up to the 15% limit allowed. LIC, which is also the country’s largest investor, is expected to invest about Rs 55,000 crore in the equity markets this financial year, up from about Rs 51,000 crore in 2013-14. […]
New Delhi: In a bid to take advantage of the bullish stock market sentiment, the finance ministry has kicked off the exercise to cut government stake in public sector banks to 51% and enable them to raise fresh capital to meet their growth requirements. Sources told TOI that the ministry has moved a cabinet note as the government is keen that banks are well capitalized to meet […]
Harry Wallop: ‘What was the point in having four offspring, only to send them away the moment they become interesting individuals? Photo: Clara Molden/The Telegraph WHY I SAY ‘NO’ TO BOARDING The photo in my old school magazine is captioned “Lent 1983”. It shows 14 boys, all wearing Guernsey jumpers and corduroy trousers, posing on their first day at their new school: Summer Fields in north Oxford. I […]
Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters are headed to Kobani to help Syrian Kurds who have been fighting Islamic State militants since September for control of the town just south of the Turkish border. Saleh Moslem, co-chairman of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), told Reuters that some peshmerga fighters were expected to arrive in Kobani late Tuesday. Kurdish officials said 80 fighters, equipped with artillery and machine guns, […]
By Praful Bidwai With its impressive performance in the Maharashtra and Haryana Assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party has clearly reconfirmed its status, established by the Lok Sabha elections, as the principal pole or central point of reference in Indian politics. Behind its latest success, and not least its marginalisation of established regional parties in the two states, lie medium- and long-term factors which are likely to […]
New Delhi: The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government on Monday scrapped the selection of six chiefs of public sector banks, recommended under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime, following a high-level panel finding irregularities in the process followed. The probe into selections for banks such as Bank of Baroda and Canara Bank followed the arrest of tainted Syndicate Bank Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) S K Jain […]
Smart solutions… to enable low-energy living Shifting focus to smarter products MANAMA, 1 days ago As the world advances to its urban future and the global population rises, so does the degree of waste thereby causing major environmental challenges – in some cases catastrophes, said an industry expert. A quick glance at the growth in waste numbers (from water to industrial refuse to plastics) shows an alarming […]
NEW DELHI: With a decade’s existence of the Electricity Act of 2003 doing precious little in infusing efficiency and competition into the sector, the government has proposed some key changes in the Act to remedy the situation and prevent the loss-ridden sector, which is struggling to meet the reformist conditions of a financial restructuring package (FRP), from plumbing fresh depths. The Union power ministry’s draft amendments […]
Dubai is racing ahead to dominate the Middle East’s plastic surgery market with plans to attract half a million medical tourists in six years. Where cosmopolitan Beirut was once the region’s best known city for going under the knife, turmoil in Syria and violence often spilling into Lebanon is driving away wealthy Arab tourists. After splashing out on medical infrastructure over the past years, Dubai already ranks […]
Wintercroft’s 3D masks come as downloadable DIY kits that include templates and instructions that make construction and assembly of your mask a cinch. Using your own cardboard or cardstock material you simply cut out the template shapes, tape the pieces together and then decorate it however you want. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on […]
By Ashok B Sharma What is behind Modi magic BJP sweeping the polls in Haryana and emerging as the single largest party in Haryana? Some point to the record voter turnout of 76 per cent in Haryana and high turnout of 64 per cent in Maharashtra as the cause of BJP’s success. It is true that high voter turnout has always favoured the BJP. BJP had […]
Mumbai: After years of regulatory dithering, foreign and domestic institutions might look forward to entry into the commodity derivatives market. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) are meeting next week to consider the proposal, suggested by a sub-committee of the Financial Stability and Development Council. Allowing domestic financial institutions such as banks and mutual funds was made by the commodities markets […]
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 — […]
NEW DELHI: India Friday called for building the SAARC power grid so that excess power produced in one region of South Asia can be used to meet deficits elsewhere. Addressing the fifth South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation energy ministers meet here, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said that with the implementation of such a grid, hydel power generated in India’s northeast, for instance, could be transported […]
Ever been out to a fancy dinner at a Manhattan restaurant and had your credit card rejected? President Barack Obama knows your pain. After signing an order today directing the government to switch to payment cards with embedded microchips, rather than the less-safe magnetic strips, Obama related his own tale of credit misadventure during the United Nations meetings last month. “I went to a restaurant up in […]
By Subrata Majumder Paradoxically, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi succeeded in persuading the Japanese and Chinese investors, he failed to influence the big American investors. Instead, his political wave and speech impelled the Indian Diaspora only. While a number of billion dollar projects were signed during his visit to Japan and the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to India, no major deal was signed during his […]
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 Amulya Ganguli Even as the secular – sorry, “sickular” – brigade is upset over the live telecast of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s speech on Doordarshan, they seem to have missed a few tell-tale omissions in his address to the Hindu nation. For instance, there was no mention of the Ram temple or love jehad or conversions – issues that have agitated the saffronites for years […]
By ANNE BARNARD October 4, 2014 BEIRUT, Lebanon — Fighting continued Saturday across Syria, with the militant group Islamic State assaulting a Kurdish enclave on the Turkish border, American-led airstrikes hitting Islamic State positions in northeastern Syria and Syrian government airstrikes pounding other insurgents near Damascus, Syria’s capital. Video surfaced of Peter Kassig, an American medical worker held by the Islamic State, in which the militants threatened that he […]
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 […]
By Kalyani Shankar While there could be debate about the success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s five day visit to the US this week, there can be no doubt that he had conquered the 3 million strong Indian American community. The Madison square garden rock show on Sunday was a shining example to prove this. Although his meeting with the US President Obama was spent on substantive […]
Nicolas Parasie for The Wall Street Journal In the past six months, the United Arab Emirates’ official credit bureau has ramped up its efforts to procure information: it collected two years of financial records for every single retail customer of each financial institution in the country. That process involved digesting some 100 million transactions, half of which are now fully uploaded into the bureau’s data vault. Marwan […]
