Mount Everest (C), the world highest peak, and other peaks of the Himalayan range are seen from air during a mountain flight from Kathmandu April 24, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Tim Chong (Reuters) – Nepal said on Tuesday it was investigating whether a Chinese woman, this season’s sole climber of Mount Everest from the Nepalese side, used a helicopter to reach a high camp after a deadly avalanche last […]
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Forget the endless obsession with assigning blame for the attack in 2012 on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The United States has another large problem on its hands right now in Libya. Khalifa Hifter, a former Libyan general who is now an American citizen, is mounting what could be a de facto coup, with far-reaching consequences for Libya and the United States. […]
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 […]
India’s rupee fell the most in a month on speculation the central bank intervened to curb gains that threaten exports, while importers stepped up dollar purchases to pay month-end bills. The rupee has gained 2.8 percent this month in Asia’s best performance on optimism a new government will step up efforts to revive the economy. Narendra Modi will be sworn in as India’s prime minister today after […]
JERUSALEM — Making history for the second day running, Pope Francis laid a wreath Monday on the grave of the founder of Zionism, becoming the first pope to do so, a gesture of support to Israel after several symbolic signals the day before that lent a spiritual lift to Palestinian aspirations for sovereignty. At the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Francis added to his marathon morning […]
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 […]
DAMASCUS, Syria — For Younes al-Nasr, a lifelong train lover, the Hejaz railway station here in the heart of the Syrian capital is a repository of shelved ambitions. Every day, Mr. Nasr, 68, a Transportation Ministry employee, pads around his offices in the Ottoman-era building, where light filters through red, yellow and blue stained glass. He imagines the past — the few short years a century ago […]
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Former President Bill Clinton said on Sunday that he believed that New York University and the Abu Dhabi government would conduct a thorough investigation into worker rights abuses at the university’s new campus here in the country’s capital. Delivering the first graduation speech at the campus, Mr. Clinton said the controversy had “dominated the coverage” of the university during the days […]
J.P.Morgan expects USD/INR to test 57 per dollar in the next three months as Narendra Modi’s sweeping electoral victory “is a more transformational outcome for India macro than most could have imagined” and will thus attract foreign inflows. The bank adds it expects Modi to fight inflation through administrative measures, and the focus on the RBI should reduce. As a result, J.P.Morgan recommends receiving 5-year OIS expecting […]
Naomi Campbell during her birthday party At The Billionaire’s Club Photo: GETTY IMAGES Sir Cam makes a stand on Scotland If there’s one thing likely to get Sir Cameron Mackintosh’s goat, it’s asking him to comment on reports about run-ins with locals in the Scottish coastal village of Mallaig. Sir Cameron Mackintosh: Mallaig people ‘unbelievably supportive’ (REX FEATURES) Over the past decade, his nearly 15,000-acre estate in the […]
ON THE EAST BANK OF THE JORDAN RIVER — After visiting a site on Saturday where Jesus is believed to have been baptized, Pope Francis spoke about Jesus’s humility, “the fact that he bends down to wounded humanity in order to heal us.” So when some burly men prepared to carry a doctor in a wheelchair up four steps to the stage for a blessing, perhaps it […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Waving to television cameras and assembled dignitaries, President Michel Suleiman departed the presidential palace on Saturday, the last day of his six-year term, leaving behind a political vacuum caused by the failure of the country’s political powers to agree on a successor. The vacancy in the president’s office is the most recent crisis in Lebanon’s fragile political system, which relies on agreements among the […]
Investors built up the largest bullish bets on rupee in more than two years in recent weeks, while sentiment on the Thai baht turned the most sour in three months, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday, as the countries’ political fortunes turned in markedly different directions. Long positions in the Philippine peso and the Malaysian ringgit rose to their highest levels in more than one year as […]
Let’s analyze what we should be careful about in the midst of the recent eBay hacking scandal. There are many lessons that can be learned from the incident about our privacy and security online.(Photo : Brian Cantoni I Flickr) As many of us have already found out, eBay was recently hacked while asking users to change their information and passwords. The question, however, is what we have […]
CAIRO — The former general who is universally expected to win a landslide victory in next week’s presidential election has the support of only a narrow majority of Egyptians, according to a poll released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. The poll is the most significant measurement of Egyptian public opinion since the former general, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, led the ouster last summer of President Mohamed Morsi […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Government forces broke through a protracted rebel siege of one of Syria’s largest prisons on Thursday, dealing yet another blow to their opponents and highlighting the suffering that the country’s war has brought to those caught between the warring parties. Islamist rebels, including members of the Nusra Front, Syria’s Qaeda affiliate, surrounded the Aleppo central prison more than a year ago and had repeatedly […]
A severe shortfall in international support has left many Syrian refugees in Lebanon unable to access crucial medical care, according to a new report from Amnesty International. “In some cases, refugees have preferred to return to Syria, to receive the needed treatment” in spite of the dangerous security situation there, the report, entitled Agonizing Choices: Syrian refugees in need of health care in Lebanon, said. The situation […]
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. […]
New Delhi: Aam Aadmi Party convenor Arvind Kejriwal was on Wednesday taken into judicial custody by the Delhi Police in connection with the a criminal defamation complaint filed by senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Nitin Gadkari. Kejriwal had alleged that Gadkari was one of the most corrupt leaders of India following which the BJP leader had moved court. Kejriwal refused to submit a personal bond of Rs […]
Dubai’s index makes its one-day decline in eight months on Monday and technical indicators suggest it will fall further, while most other Middle East markets also retreated. Dubai fell 5.5 percent to 4,856 points, its lowest close in a month and biggest one-day loss since Aug. 27. “I think we’ll see more selling – the key is that Dubai broke and then closed below 5,000 points,” said […]
Analysts are predicting a pre-Ramadan correction on the Dubai Financial Market. They say this has happened twice before: in early 2006 after the near doubling of the market in 2005; and in 1999 when the Emaar-IPO bubble burst. It will happen again. The price-to-earnings ratio has swung from an under-valued 10 to an extremely over-sold 21. Emerging markets in the MSCI Index, whose highly prized inclusion of […]
JERUSALEM — President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority met Thursday in London with Israel’s justice minister, Tzipi Livni, the first known face-to-face talks between the two sides since the American-brokered peace negotiations collapsed last month. Ms. Livni, one of Israel’s two chief peace negotiators, and Mr. Abbas had each met separately in London with Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss the breakdown of the talks […]
Oil rig maker Lamprell said on Friday it would raise about $120 million to boost its productivity after returning to profit last year despite growing risk in the sector. Chief executive officer James Moffat said the rights issue marked “the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle in our recovery”, which had started around 18 months ago. It will be used to support investment, facilitate debt refinancing and […]
