Budget 2018-19

  Xie Zhenhua, a special climate envoy for China, spoke to reporters at the UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. China is at a special development stage that warrants its current status as the world’s biggest emitter of climate-damaging fossil fuel pollution, the nation’s senior climate negotiator said Tuesday. Xie Zhenhua, a special climate envoy for China, spoke to reporters at the UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. As a major climate polluter and as the world’s second-biggest economy, China has been much talked about, but little seen, at the summit. Chinese President  Xi Jinping  who is not known to have left the country during the pandemic has not joined the more than 100 other world leaders at the event, addressing observers and delegates in a written message Monday instead. Xie, who played a pivotal role in negotiations that achieved the 2015 Paris climate accord, underscored China’s longstanding position that the United States and other developed nations sh...

  Global food prices were up 33% in August from a year earlier with vegetable oil, grains and meat on the rise, data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization show Whether for bread, rice or tortillas, governments across the world know that rising food costs can come with a political price. The dilemma is whether they can do enough to prevent having to pay it. Global food prices were up 33% in August from a year earlier with vegetable oil, grains and meat on the rise, data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization show. And it’s not likely to get better as extreme weather, soaring freight and fertilizer costs, shipping bottlenecks and labor shortages compound the problem. Dwindling foreign currency reserves are also hampering the ability of some nations to import food. From Europe to Turkey and India, politicians are now handing out more aid, ordering sellers to cut prices and tinkering with trade rules to mitigate the impact on consumers. The issue ...

  Twelve of the 13 US service members killed in the August 26 Kabul airport bombing were “9/11 babies”, according to media reports Twelve of the 13 US service members killed in the August 26 Kabul airport bombing were “9/11 babies”, according to media reports. The Pentagon released their names and biographies on August 28. The victims, mostly aged from 20 to 25 years old, were born within a few years of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, which led the US to launch two lengthy and painful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Xinhua news agency reported. “They never knew a US that was not at war, never lived in the world before the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, a country without ID checks in office buildings, metal detectors at schools, shoes X-rayed at the airport,” said a Washington Post report on Sunday. “Our generation of Marines has been listening to the Iraq/Afghan vets tell their war stories for years,” Mallory Harrison, a f...

  India was trying to evacuate as many people as possible from Afghanistan, the minister said Evacuating Indian personnel from Afghanistan, where the situation is “critical”, was a top priority, the government said on Thursday at the all-party meet, convened to brief on the Afghan situation. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar briefed the leaders on the latest situation in  Afghanistan  after the Taliban captured power there last week. Besides Jaishankar, Union minister and Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha Piyush Goyal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi were also present during the briefing in the Parliament House Annexe. India was trying to evacuate as many people as possible from Afghanistan, the minister said and asserted that evacuating Indian personnel was a “top priority”, according to some of the participants at the meeting. The government also described the situation in the war-torn country as “critical” and said the Taliban has broken the promi...

  Officials said since Indian missions in Afghanistan are shut, the applications will be examined and processed in New Delhi The Union home ministry on Wednesday announced that all Afghan nationals henceforth must travel to India only on e-Visa in view of the prevailing situation in Afghanistan. The decision comes days after the government introduced a new category of visa called “e-Emergency X-Misc visa” for the Afghan nationals after the  Taliban  captured power in that country. “Owing to the prevailing security situation in Afghanistan and streamlining of the visa process by introduction of the ‘e-Emergency X-Misc visa’, it has been decided that all Afghan nationals henceforth must travel to India only on e-Visa,” a home ministry statement said. The home ministry also announced that keeping in view some reports that certain passports of Afghan nationals have been misplaced, previously issued visas to all Afghan national...

  President Joe Biden is popular across much of the world and expected to provide greater U.S. leadership on issues such as fighting Covid, terrorism and climate change, a new multi-nation survey shows President Joe Biden is popular across much of the world and expected to provide greater US leadership on issues such as fighting Covid-19, terrorism and climate change, a new multi-nation survey shows. But trust is low both in the US as a nation and Biden’s ability to deliver. “We wanted to know: If there is a change of administration and if the US is ready to lead again, will anyone follow?” said Michael Broening, Executive Director of the New York office of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the German think tank that commissioned the survey. The answer from the survey’s 12,400 respondents in Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Kenya, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Turkey and the US itself: ‘Yes, but’. “Whatever was here in terms of US trust has really dissipated a lot,” sa...

  With the US economy still far from its inflation and employment goals it is too early for the Federal Reserve to discuss changing its monthly bond purchases, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said (Reuters) – With the U.S. economy still far from its inflation and employment goals it is too early for the Federal Reserve to discuss changing its monthly bond purchases, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday. “Now is not the time to be talking about exit,” from the $120 billion in government securities the Fed is buying each month, Powell said in a web symposium with Princeton University. “A lesson of the Global Financial Crisis is be careful not to exit too early, and by the way try not to talk about exit all the time…because the markets are listening.””The economy is far from our goals…and we are strongly committed…to using our monetary policy tools until the job is well and truly done,” Powell said, pushing back against recent suggestions from some of his colleagues that the Fed might consid...

  An Iraqi court has issued an arrest warrant for outgoing US President Donald Trump over the killing of deputy chief of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, commander of the paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces An Iraqi court has issued an arrest warrant for outgoing US President Donald Trump over the killing of deputy chief of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, commander of the paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces, in January 2020. On January 3, 2020, a US drone strike struck a convoy near Baghdad International Airport that killed al-Muhandis, as well as Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. “A judge in Baghdad’s al-Rusafa court in charge of investigating the killing of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq’s paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces, issued an arrest warrant (on Thursday) against the US President  Donald Trump ,” Xinhua news agency quoted the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council as saying in a statement. The judge issued the warrant after hearing the...

  The pandemic found three of the world’s most prominent democracies shockingly underprepared, governed by leaders as incompetent as they were deluded The year 2020 was, by any measure, rich in awakenings and reckonings. None were as earth-shaking as those forced upon the United States, Britain and India. The pandemic found three of the world’s most prominent democracies shockingly underprepared, governed by leaders as incompetent as they were deluded and encumbered with states that had steadily rendered themselves incapable of performing their most basic duty: protecting human lives. In each case, stridently advanced claims — whether to be a new superpower (India), to become one again (Britain) or to provide moral leadership to the world (U.S.) — were broken on the wheel of an unforgiving virus. The socio-economic challenges before these countries suddenly seem immense, greater even than those faced after the calamity of two world wars. The conventional formulas for national uplif...

  The Coca-Cola Company has said that it was laying off 2,200 workers, or 17 per cent of its global workforce, as part of a larger restructuring aimed at paring down its business units and brands. The Coca-Cola Company has said that it was laying off 2,200 workers, or 17 per cent of its global workforce, as part of a larger restructuring aimed at paring down its business units and brands. The Atlanta-based company said on Thursday that around half of the layoffs will occur in the US, where Coke employs around 10,400 people. Coke employed 86,200 people worldwide at the end of 2019. The coronavirus pandemic has hammered Coke’s business, as sales at places like stadiums and movie theaters dried up due to lockdowns. Its revenue fell 9 per cent to USD 8.7 billion in the July-September period. The downturn forced the company to accelerate a restructuring that was already underway. “We’ve been challenging legacy ways of doing business and the pandemic helped us realize we could be bolder ...

  The US will soon issue results of probes into Austria, Italy and India’s decisions to tax local revenue of Internet companies such as Facebook Inc., which could pave the way for retaliatory tariffs The U.S. will soon issue the results of probes into Austria, Italy and India’s decisions to tax local revenue of Internet companies such as Facebook Inc., which could pave the way for retaliatory tariffs, people familiar with the situation said. Determinations on the three countries are due because all of them have instituted so-called digital services taxes — or levies on local sales of companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google — this year, said the people who couldn’t be identified because the information is private. There may also be findings on Indonesia, U.K. and Turkey, one of the people said. The  U.S. Trade  Representative in June started investigations into the moves of at least 10 countries, citing Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974, which allows it to retalia...

  Taiwan holds the world’s best virus record by far and reached the new landmark on Thursday, even as the pathogen explodes anew in Europe and the US While many countries around the world are hitting new highs in coronavirus cases, Taiwan has achieved a different kind of record — 200 days without a locally transmitted case. Taiwan holds the world’s best virus record by far and reached the new landmark on Thursday, even as the pathogen explodes anew in Europe and the US. Taiwan’s last local case came on April 12; there has been no second wave. What did this island of 23 million people do right? It has had 553 confirmed cases, with only seven deaths. Experts say closing borders early and tightly regulating travel have gone a long way toward fighting the virus. Other factors include rigorous contact tracing, technology-enforced quarantine and widespread mask wearing. Further,  Taiwan ’s deadly experience with SARS has scared people into compliance. “Taiwan is the only major count...