TECH giant Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sales has hit $26.38 billion and set to zoom past its previous year record holding high hopes for the Chinese economy which has slowed down in the wake of a global trade war. The total merchandise value (GMV) of $26.38 billion was reached at 12 pm on Monday...

THE Indian-American community on Saturday lauded the Supreme Court’s historic verdict in the Ayodhya case, saying the decision in the decades-old land dispute is equally a victory for both Hindus and Muslims. The Indian Supreme Court in a unanimous verdict on Saturday cleared the way for the construction of a Ram Temple at the disputed site at Ayodhya, and directed the Centre to allot a 5-acre plot to the Sunni Waqf Board for building a mosque. A State Department spokesperson said the US is following ..

PAKISTAN is among the worst 10 countries in the world for Internet and digital media freedom, according to a report by an Internet watchdog. The Freedom House, an international Internet rights group, on Tuesday released its ‘Freedom on the Net’ (FoTN) report for the year 2019, titled ‘The Crisis of Social Media’, recording an overall decline in global Internet freedom between June 2018 and May 2019. The watchdog in its report placed Pakistan at 26, out of 100 (100 being the worst) — one place down ..

MORE than four decades after beginning its epic journey, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft has crossed the elusive boundary that marks the edge of the Sun’s realm and the start of interstellar space, scientists have announced. According to the researchers at the University of Iowa in the US, Voyager 2 has entered the interstellar medium (ISM), the region of space outside the bubble-shaped boundary produced by wind streaming outward from the Sun. This makes Voyager 2 the second human-made object to journey ..

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday that India will not join the mega Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) deal as negotiations failed to address New Delhi’s “outstanding issues and concerns”. Prime Minister Modi made the announcement during his speech at the RCEP Summit here, which was attended by several world leaders. “The present form of the RCEP Agreement does not fully reflect the basic spirit and the agreed guiding principles of the RCEP. It also does not address satisfactorily ..

LED by India, South Asia is moving towards becoming centre of global growth and could contribute about one-third of the world’s growth by 2040, according to a latest research by the International Monetary Fund. Notably, under the IMF’s geographical division of the world, South Asia does not include Afghanistan and Pakistan. For IMF, South Asia includes India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Maldives. Under a substantial liberalisation scenario, supported by stepped-up efforts to improve ..

THE 50th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) will honour superstar Rajinikanth with a special ‘Icon of Golden Jubilee’ award, Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javdekar announced on Saturday. The festival will be held in Goa from November 20 to 28 with close to 250 films from various countries being screened. “The festival’s steering committee had recommended a special icon award which will be conferred on legendary actor Rajinikanth...

BANGKOK INDIA has eliminated a big reason behind sowing of seeds of terrorism and separatism, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said here on Saturday, in a clear reference to abrogation of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir and reorganising of the State. Addressing the Indian diaspora here, Prime Minister Modi said his Government was working to fulfil those aims that seemed impossible. “You are aware that India has decided to eliminate a big reason behind sowing of seeds of terrorism and separatism,” Modi ..

THE international community should increase support for 16 countries in southern Africa, where a record 45 million people will be severely food insecure in the next six months, the UN World Food Programme (UNWFP) said on Thursday. “A record 45 million people across the 16-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) will be severely food insecure in the next six months,” the UNWFP said in a press release...

BRITISH Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office has defended his Brexit deal with the EU, after US President Donald Trump warned it would make it impossible for the two nations to strike a future trade agreement. The President, whose impeachment in the US has moved a stage closer following a key vote in Congress, waded into the British election campaign on Thursday to criticise Johnson’s divorce terms with the European bloc..

WASHINGTON THE Pentagon on Wednesday released short videos of the US forces’ raid in north-western Syria that resulted in the death of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Releasing a few short videos of the strike, US Central Command Commander General Kenneth Mckenzie told reporters at a Pentagon news conference that after the raid, Baghdadi’s compound looks “pretty much like a parking lot with large potholes.” The compound was destroyed in a way to ensure that it would not be a shrine or otherwise memorable ..

PAKISTAN violated its obligations under the Vienna Convention in the arrest and detention of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, International Court of Justice (ICJ) President Judge Abduylqawi Yusuf told the UN General Assembly here. Jadhav, 49, a retired Indian Navy officer, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of “espionage and terrorism” after a closed trial in April 2017. India has maintained that Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran where he had business interests after retiring ..

AN Islamic State (IS) insider played a major role in the US operation that resulted in the death of terror leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The informer, a man of unknown nationality, provided detailed information about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s final hideout, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported, citing a US daily. During the US operation, a “well-placed mole”, who was present inside Baghdadi’s Syrian compound, gave the precise interior layout as well as Baghdadi’s exact location...

A NEPALI mountaineer has created history by scaling the world’s 14 highest peaks in record 190 days after he climbed Mt Shishapangma in China on Tuesday. Nirmal Purja, 36, known as Nims, broke the previous record of a South Korean climber, Kim Chang-ho, who achieved the feat in 2003 to scale all the peaks higher than 8,000 metres in seven years, 10 months and six days. Mingma Sherpa, chairman of Seven Summit Treks, the agency handling Purja’s climb, told Efe news that the Nepali mountaineer reached ..

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday called on Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and the two leaders exchanged views on working closely together to strengthen the bilateral ties. Before his meeting with the Saudi King, top Ministers of the Gulf nation called on Prime Minister Modi and discussed ways to further deepen bilateral ties in areas of energy, labour, agriculture and water technologies. “A relationship reflecting centuries-old ties! Prime Minister Narendra Modi was warmly welcomed ..

ABU Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the elusive leader of the dreaded Islamic State (IS) terror group, died like a coward, “whimpering and crying” in a US raid, American President Donald Trump said, adding that an “innocent man, woman or child” would never be harmed again. Baghdadi, who was in his late 40s and carried a bounty of at least $25 million, was one of the most wanted terrorists in the world. He presided over the brutal ‘Caliphate’ that he had set up in Syria and Iraq enforcing a fundamentalist code and ..

WORLD Bank President David Malpass on Saturday said the multi-lateral funding agency will continue with USD 6 billion lending target for India. As many as 97 projects are being currently executed with loan assistance from the World Bank...

THE Congressional hearing on human rights situation in South Asiawitha focus on Kashmir was one sided, a top organisation of Kashmiri Pandits has alleged in a letterto the Congressman who chaired the committee, saying it left out one of the indigenous races of Jammu and Kashmir against whom Human Rights violations have been committed for the last 30 years. The Kashmiri Overseas Association (KOA), in a letter to Brad Sherman who chaired the Congressional hearing on Tuesday, said that the goal of the ..

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi onMondayhighlightedthesteps taken by his Government to improve the ease of doing business in the country when members of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) called on him here. The Prime Minister also referred to the evolving start-up ecosystem in the country, highlighting the entrepreneurial risk taking capacity of India’s youth. He also outlined the steps taken by the Government including Atal Tinkering Labs and conducting hackathons to boost innovation ..

FINANCE Minister Nirmala SItharaman has said that a calibrated and balanced approach to deploying a mix of fiscal, monetary and structural measures by countries can help achieve their growth potential and asked the IMF to evolve a policy framework to assess the vulnerability of fragile economies to capital flows. In her intervention during International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) Plenary Session in the ongoing Annual Meetings 2019 of the IMF and World Bank being held in Washington, US ..

By Lalit K Jha WASHINGTONINDIA remains among the fastest growing economies of the world and efforts are being made to make it grow faster, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said.   The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected a reduced growth rate for India, but the country’s economy is “still growing as the fastest”, she told a group of Indian reporters on Thursday. The Minister is here to attend the annual meeting of the IMF and the World ..

FUGITIVE diamond trader Nirav Modi, who is fighting extradition to India on charges over the nearly USD 2 billion Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud and money laundering case, on Thursday was remanded to prison until November 11 after he appeared via videolink from his London jail for a regular remand hearing. ..

INDIA has halved its poverty rate since the 1990s and achieved a seven plus growth rate over the last 15 years, the World Bank said on Wednesday. India is both critical to the success of global development efforts, including eliminating extreme poverty, and as an influential leader for global goods such as addressing climate change, the bank said ahead of the annual meeting between it and the International Monetary Fund. The country has achieved annual growth exceeding seven per cent over the last ..

A THIRD of the world’s nearly 700 million children under five years old are undernourished or overweight and face lifelong health problems as a consequence, according to a grim UN assessment of childhood nutrition released on Tuesday. “If children eat poorly, they live poorly,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore, unveiling the Fund’s first State of the World’s Children report since 1999. “We are losing ground in the fight for healthy diets.” Problems that once existed at opposite ends of ..

INDIAN nun Mariam Thresia and four others were declared Saints by Pope Francis at an impressive canonisation ceremony at the St Peter’s Square here on Sunday. Mariam Thresia, who founded the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family in Thrissur in May 1914, was raised to the highest position within the centuries-old institution during the open-air mass attended by thousands of people from across the world, including India...

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping will sit down in the 7th century Shore Temple complex overlooking the Bay of Bengal in this bustling ancient town on Friday in an attempt to reconfigure ties strained by tough talk on the Kashmir issue by both sides. A red-carpet welcome awaits Xi when he arrives here around 5 pm with both the State and the Central Government agencies making all-out efforts to deck up the coastal town which had strong historical linkages with China’s Fujian ..

THE new Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Kristalina Georgieva warned of an economic slowdown in 2019 in 90 per cent of the world during her first speech at the helm of the multilateral organisation. “In 2019, we expect slower growth in nearly 90 per cent of the world. The global economy is now in a synchronised slowdown,” Georgieva said at the IMF headquarters here on Tuesday, ‘Efe’ news reported...

THREE researchers won the Nobel Chemistry Prize on Wednesday for the development of lithium-ion batteries, paving the way for smartphones and a fossil fuel-free society. John Goodenough of the United States -- at 97 the oldest person to be awarded a Nobel prize -- Britain’s Stanley Whittingham, and Japan’s Akira Yoshino will share the nine million Swedish kronor (about USD 914,000 or 833,000 euros) prize equally, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said...

FORMER Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is planning to make a comeback in the national politics by reviving his party, the All Pakistan Muslim League (APML), a media report said. The 76-year-old former President had been recuperating in Dubai after suffering from what was reported in the media as a rare disease, Geo News said in the report on Saturday...

BAGHDADIRAQI security forces on Friday opened fired on dozens of protesters gathering in Baghdad for a fourth day of demonstrations against corruption, unemployment and poor public services. The security forces fired directly at the protesters, not in the air, the correspondent said. There was no immediate word on any casualties.  Iraqi men inspect damages in an office of Iraq’s Hezbollah party in the central city of Najaf after protesters set it on fire during demonstrations against ..

NASA has released recordings of eerie sounds on Mars picked up by one of its missions to the Red Planet, the InSight lander. Far below the human range of hearing, these recordings had to be speeded up and slightly processed to be audible through headphones, NASA said on Tuesday. The spacecraft’s exquisitely sensitive seismometer, called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), can pick up vibrations as subtle as a breeze...

NEW YORK, PRIME Minister Narendra Modi has held key bilateral discussions with several world leaders, including with his counterparts from New Zealand, Armenia and Belgiam on issues ranging from cooperation in terrorism, defence, support for India’s candidature for a permanent UN Security Council seat and cyber security. Modi met Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan on the sidelines of the High Level Segment of 74th United Nations General Assembly here on Wednesday. Modi thanked Pashinyan for ..

  PARIS :   “The Special Report on changing climate said that glaciers in Europe, East Africa, the tropical reaches of the Andes and Indonesia could lose 80 per cent of their mass by the end of the century if climate change advances at its present pace ”   SEA levels could rise by a meter and force millions of people to migrate by 2100 if current trends in climate change continue unabated, according to a UN report on Wednesday. The stark conclusions from the ..

PRIME Minster Narendra Modi, who was honoured with the prestigious “Global Goalkeeper” award by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for his Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, has said that the cleanliness campaign played a critical role in helping achieve the United Nations’ goals and targets. “Getting the award in the year of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary is personally significant for me. When 130 crore people take a pledge, any challenge can be overcome,” the Prime Minster said as he accepted the ..

Basking in mutual appreciation and comradeship and extending the warmth of the ‘Howdy Modi’ event two days earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and United States President Donald Trump, on Tuesday, engaged their respective nations in deals of lasting importance in a great show of solidarity on global issues. Meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump called Modi a ‘rockstar as popular as Elvis..