From Sri Lanka's most popular political family to its most despised -- going by the voices on the streets calling for the Rajapaksas' ouster -- what went wrong for the clan? Veteran Sri Lanka watcher N Sathiya Moorthy offers an insight.
The fundamental debate remains where you stand on the long-term growth question. That is what every investor must monitor and come to their own conclusions, suggests Akash Prakash.
Government think tank Niti Aayog has suggested 100 per cent income tax exemption for donations and provision of working capital loans with lower interest rates for not-for-profit hospitals to strengthen healthcare services in India. In a report titled 'Not-for-Profit Hospital Model in India', the Aayog also pitched for involving high performing hospitals in public private partnership (PPP) models for managing primary health care (PHCs), operations of government facilities and PSU hospitals. "Income-tax exemption could be increased from the current 50 per cent exemption to 100 per cent exemption for philanthropy toward the identified not-for-profit hospitals.
At the end of his France visit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the Indian Diaspora at the Louvre in Paris.
Israel's parliament is set to vote on Sunday on a new government led by Yamina head Naftali Bennett, ousting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power after an uninterrupted 12 years at the helm of affairs.
He said the aim has been to create firewalls to deal with the cyber attacks and that the issue is being addressed in a "serious way".
'The growth drivers are mostly invisible, but the growth is undeniable at least for now,' notes Debashis Basu.
The COVID-19 pandemic affected the residential property market during the April-June period last year but sales have improved in affordable homes segment since July onwards, reflecting economic recovery in the real estate sector, according to the Economic Survey. The National Housing Bank's (NHB) Housing Price Indices (HPIs) are a broad measure of movement of residential property prices observed within a geographic boundary. The NHB-RESIDEX captures two housing price indices -- HPI@ Assessment Prices and HPI@ Market Prices - Under Construction Properties based on the data available for 50 cities with quarterly updation.
Dr Murthy, 43, a former United States Surgeon General, along with two other co-chairs -- Dr David Kessler and Dr Marcella Nunez-Smith -- would lead a team of leading public health experts who will advise Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on the deadly virus.
Will appeasement, rising unemployment and her dictatorial style become major obstacles in her path? asks Payal Singh Mohanka.
Chief Justice of India Justice T S Thakur today said that "corresponding upgradation" of judiciary was a must to face the challenges of emerging social and economic scenario and observed that "unpolluted and speedy justice still remains a distant dream".
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Seeking to energise his second term, US President Obama on Tuesday said he will issue an executive order to raise the minimum wage for government contract workers to $10.10 an hour, a step which he argued would help reduce poverty in the country.
US proposal to raise the global corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% might face resistance from countries unwilling to give up their edge and compete with America on its terms.
'In the freedom struggle and immediately after that, we had a sense of belonging to the same world, to the same country, to India. We have lost that sense of oneness. We have been manipulated and divided and that saddens me today, says Dhoom 3 Director Vijay Krishna Acharya.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday condemned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's remarks that Narendra Modi as premier will be disastrous for the nation and said it was unfortunate he was saying this even after the clean chit given to him by the Special Investigation Team and a court.
The Biden administration has announced that it is delaying the H-1B policy of the previous Trump administration on allocation of the popular foreign work visas by continuing with the lottery system until December 31, 2021, to give the immigration agency more time to develop, test and implement the modifications to the registration system. On January 7, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced to do away with the traditional lottery system in deciding the successful applicants for the H-1B visas. The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.
In a virtual roundtable with healthcare workers on COVID-19, Biden alleged on Wednesday that his transition team has not been receiving any cooperation from the Trump administration.
US President-elect Joe Biden plans to increase the number of high-skilled visas, including H-1B, and eliminate the limit on employment-based visas by country, both of which are expected to benefit tens of thousands of Indian professionals impacted by some immigration policies of the outgoing Trump administration.
Pelosi, 80, secured 216 votes in a tight contest against Republican Kevin McCarthy, who got support from 209 Congressmen, after Democrats lost 11 seats in the November elections to command a narrower 222-212 majority.
'It may take two years for the economy to return to normal.' 'We should ensure that the vulnerable do not dig into their savings or give up their assets because that will set them back by several years.'
Opponents of the CAA and NRC have gone to town accusing the BJP of an ulterior motive (read, disenfranchisement of Muslims) in implementing the NRC. By the same token it can be alleged that anti-CAA opponents have a nefarious agenda in mind that would be scuttled by the implementation of the NRC: Namely the accrual of dedicated vote banks and the restoration of Muslim hegemony over at least parts of India, especially Bengal and Assam, argues Vivek Gumaste.
The government needs to work on how to better converge various social schemes without duplication to effectively address the issues of unemployment and poverty, the Economic Survey said.
Neither Modi nor Shah had held legislative or executive power in Delhi before 2014. They have no training in appealing to the diversity of India as represented in Parliament. Their prism is the provincial politics of Gujarat. An exclusive excerpt from Vinay Sitapati's fascinating new book, Jugalbandi: The BJP Before Modi.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has resorted to a rath yatra to press for a separate Vidarbha state. For a change, the party does not want to make it an emotional issue like the Ram temple but reach out to the people of 11 districts.Party legislator from Vidarbha, Sudhir Mungantiwar, a frontrunner to take over from Nitin Gadkari as the president of the Maharashtra unit of the party, and Devendra Phadanvis, a confidante of Gadkari, would begin the 'yatra' from Friday.
On reforms in pipeline, she said the government is for universal right to minimum wages and wants to remove regional disparity through a national floor wage.
With increasing terror attacks in Pakistan raising concerns over the safety of its nuclear arsenal, Defence Minister A K Antony said the threat of these weapons falling in wrong hands was an "area of serious concern" and its consequences would be "unimaginable".
Shriya Saran on her roles in the Tamil movie Kandasamy.
A grouping of Indian and Indian-origin professionals working with tech giants like Google, Uber, Amazon and Facebook have written an open letter against the new religion-based citizenship law and the planned national register of citizens, terming them as "fascist". The letter by 'TechAgainstFascism' on online publishing platform Medium also urged the leaders to refuse to shut off the Internet at the "government's whim" and to ensure that content moderation is not skewing pro-government.
Delivering a public speech hours after the RBI launched a rescue act for Yes Bank on March 6, Governor Shaktikanta Das reiterated the RBI's affirmation to do whatever was needed to combat the coronavirus impact. On that day, India had only one confirmed COVID-19 infection, the World Health Organisation was five days off from declaring it as a pandemic and the financially debilitating lockdowns were not even on the horizon. Das' promise on efforts to mitigate COVID-19 impact appeared as a footnote in news reports from the event.
"The government is trying to promote vote-bank politics by avoiding a discussion on terrorism. Terrorism is the biggest enemy of the country but still the government has no courage to say so," Modi told media persons. Accusing the Centre of adopting a 'casual approach' on the issue at the NIC, he said the government was not ready to discuss terrorism which has affected the whole country badly.
Capping a prolonged power struggle within the country's ruling African National Congress, South African President Thabo Mbeki on Sunday night announced his resignation but denied the charge of interfering with justice in a corruption case to nail his challenger for the top post Jacob Zuma."Fellow South Africans, since the attainment of our freedom in 1994, we have acted consistently to respect and defend the independence of the judiciary," he said.
Meel Patthar is, both by theme and design, a tragedy of inertia, observes Rohit Satish Nair.
The report by the reseach firm calls this double-digit growth as a welcome news for technology vendors - who see slackness in the US and European markets, and advises them to now recognise India as a consumer of IT than just a supplier. The report -- the State Of A-PAC Enterprise Technology Adoption: 2008, gives highlights of data collected from 777 companies in the Asia Pacific region via Forrester's Enterprise Technology Adoption Survery (Asia Pacific, Q4 2007).
With Delhi maintaining lead as the crime capital of the country, experts attribute lack of resources, police-criminal nexus and slow judicial process as some of the reasons behind the rising crime graph. The Union Home Ministry, in its latest study, has listed Delhi as on the top in incidents of crime in the country for the fifth consecutive year.
"We believe that the new relationship between the Muslim world and the West has to be built on a dialogue and understanding, which would effectively deal with the threats to world peace," Musharraf said addressing the inaugural session of a meeting in Islamabad of the Standing Committee on Science and Technological Cooperation of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.
It is time he stood up and assured the middle class that they can count on him as one of their own, says Dr Sudhir Bisht.
A blood-soaked Nandigram made Mamata Banerjee what she is today and underpins the hopes of the combustible West Bengal leader of clinching a third straight term in office.
All that India must aim for is to match China's military prowess adjusted to equal Beijing's India-specific military capability, argues Vivek Gumaste.
Paying homage to martyrs, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urged people to ensure that 'their sacrifice is not in vain.'
The film is good enough to hold your attention.
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