The quizzing of the 48-year-old daughter-in-law of superstar Amitabh Bachchan and Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan comes weeks after her husband Abhishek Bachchan was questioned by the agency in another case emerging from the same set of papers linked to the offshore leaks case, they said.
The IMF on Tuesday cut India's economic growth forecast by 0.5 percentage points to 9 per cent for the current fiscal year, with its chief economist Gita Gopinath saying that the slight downgrade is mainly due to the impact of the spread of the Omicron variant. "If you look at the 2021-22 fiscal year, we have a slight downgrade of -0.5 percentage points and for the next fiscal year 2022-23 we have a slight upgrade of 0.5 percentage points. So, growth for the previous fiscal year is now nine per cent and for this year now is at nine per cent. We moved it up slightly," Gopinath told reporters during a news conference in Washington. In its latest update of World Economic Outlook on Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund has cut India's economic growth forecast to 9 per cent for the current fiscal year ending March 31, joining a host of agencies which have downgraded their projections on concerns over the impact of the spread of Omicron on business activity and mobility.
Gita Gopinath, the IMF's Indian-American chief economist has been promoted as its First Deputy Managing Director recognising her exceptional intellectual leadership in helping the global economy and the Fund to navigate the "twists and turns" of the "worst economic crisis of our lives". Gopinath would replace Geoffrey Okamoto who plans to leave the International Monetary Fund early next year, Kristalina Georgieva, IMF's managing director announced on Thursday. Gopinath, who was scheduled to return to her academic position at Harvard University in January 2022, has decided to stay, she said. Gopinath, 49, has served as the first female chief economist of the Washington-based global lender for three years.
A look at the actors, who have been a part of the franchise and are no more.
A successful businessman, Ahluwalia, if elected, would be the first Indian American to be elected to a high position in the state of Virginia.
IMF's Chief Economist Gita Gopinath will leave her job in January next year and return to the prestigious Harvard University, according to the global financial institution.
'Siddiqui was alive when the Taliban captured him. The Taliban verified Siddiqui's identity and then executed him, as well as those with him'
As per the book, Trump insists to Woodward he would triumph over the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic calamity. "Don't worry about it, Bob. OK?" Trump told the author in July. "Don't worry about it. We'll get to do another book. You'll find I was right."
The Wire news portal, in the third part of its revelations from the international collaborative journalistic investigation called the Pegasus Project, reported that those marked as potential targets for surveillance include Ambedkarite activist Ashok Bharti; academic and chronicler of life in Naxal-dominated regions Bela Bhatia; railway union leader Shiv Gopal Mishra and Delhi-based labour rights activist Anjani Kumar.
The report also referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Israel in July 2017.
'Although Hong Kong weathered many a storm and displayed a remarkable resilience to bounce back, the developments in the territory have raised question marks with regard to its future stability and prosperity.' A revealing excerpt from Rup Narayan Das's Hong Kong Conundrum: Pangs of Transition.
Frances Tiafoe will be unable to compete for the Washington Kastles in the 2020 World TeamTennis season after testing positive for COVID-19 during the advance travel testing window, tournament chief Carlos Silva said on Monday. Tiafoe, 22, returned a positive test on Friday and was forced to withdraw from the All-American Team Cup exhibition tournament in Atlanta.
'We lost our place in being first in the epidemic, when it hit India so hard, but we were actually the epicentre of the epidemic from essentially April 2020, for almost an entire year. We had such high cases. We were the country that had the most mixed response.'
Murthy, who currently is the top Indian-American advisor to President-elect Joe Biden on COVID-19, is a potential pick for the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services and Stanford University Professor Arun Majumdar for the post of Secretary of Energy, The Washington Post and Politico said in their reports on Tuesday that mentions a list of potential picks for various Cabinet-level positions in the Biden administration.
'The term 'pro-growth' must be qualified somewhat because, while a rising tide will lift all boats, it will not necessarily do so equally.'
CIA Director William J. Burns held a secret meeting in Kabul on Monday with Baradar in the highest-level face-to-face encounter between the Taliban and the Biden administration since the militants seized the Afghan capital, the Washington Post reported, citing unnamed US officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity,
'The Post's coverage is not an authentic public discourse guided by unbiased Western intellectuals, but a slanted doomsday propaganda orchestrated by Indians and expatriate Indians,' argues Vivek Gumaste.
The Taliban's main challenge comes on the financial and economic front and there Pakistan doesn't have the capacity to be of any meaningful help, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Wearing masks, washing our hands, all those things are barriers to transmissibility, or contagion, but as the virus becomes more contagious it statistically is better at getting around those barriers'
'The India-Pakistan relationship is in a deep freeze, though it could be a lot worse had there not been a new LoC ceasefire a year ago.' 'The India-Pakistan relationship will only start to thaw if the Pakistani military decides it's prepared to push for detente.'
The book claimed during one of his meetings with Modi, Trump told him, "It's not like you've got China on your border."
The Delta variant is more transmissible than the viruses that cause MERS, SARS, Ebola, the common cold, the seasonal flu and smallpox, and it is as contagious as chickenpox, according to the document, a copy of which was also obtained by The New York Times.
The team said on July 3 it would conduct a thorough review of the club's name.
The Wire has reported that phone numbers of multiple people close to Dubai Princess Sheikha Latifa, who was captured by Indian soldiers in 2018, were added to a list of potential targets for surveillance.
'The phone numbers of over 40 Indian journalists appear on a leaked list of potential targets for surveillance, and forensic tests have confirmed that some of them were successfully snooped upon by an unidentified agency using Pegasus spyware,' report Anuj Srivas and Kabir Agarwal in The Wire.
Did Prime Minister Modi receive a different kind of reception at the Biden White House on Friday than he has has been used to at the American president's home?
A tribute to an incomparable photojournalist who was slain by the Taliban on Thursday night.
A photo symbolising "love and compassion" of an 85-year-old Brazilian woman getting her first embrace in five months from a nurse through a transparent "hug curtain" has been named the World Press Photo of the Year. This year, according to organisers, 74,470 images were submitted for judging, made by 4,315 photographers from 130 different countries. World Press Photo has been kind enough to allow to share some of this year's winning photos here with you.
The US will lift all restrictions for fully vaccinated international travellers, including from India, from November 8 but they will have to show proof of a negative coronavirus test before boarding a flight to the country, the White House has announced.
'He could indeed survive [the no confidence vote] even as he faces his biggest political test.'
The race for the White House appears to be headed towards an uncharted territory with the Trump and Biden campaigns gearing up for a protracted legal battle in the US Supreme Court as the election results in some of the key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan still being counted.
When corruption eats into the vitals of a nation, the State structures decompose and collapse. And when the leadership loses respect of the people, the war is lost, asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar, who played a stellar role in beginning India's systemic dealings in Afghanistan in 1994.
The Bharatiya Janata Party leader also claimed that the entire controversy was an "international conspiracy by the Left-wing organisations, including Amnesty International," to defame the Narendra Modi-led Central government.
The NBA has reached an agreement with the National Basketball Players Association to withhold 25% of each player's salary from May 15 due to the shutdown of the sport because of the coronavirus pandemic. The deal would provide a gradual reduction in player salaries in case a "force majeure" event, such as the pandemic, wipes out the rest of the regular season.
'All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state'
The government and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have dismissed the Pegasus Project reports as concocted and evidence-less.
The Joe Biden administration has come under intense pressure from various quarters, including the powerful US Chambers of Commerce, lawmakers and eminent Indian-Americans, to ship AstraZeneca and other Covid-19 vaccines along with several life-saving medical supplies to India, which is witnessing a deadly surge in coronavirus cases.
Roughly 300 secret service officers and agents have had to isolote or quarantine since March beacuse they were infected or exposed colleagues, according to two people with knowledgde of the figure.
'Vaccination is the only safe way to get immunity.'
India's recently-enacted agri laws have the potential to increase farmers' income, but there is a need to provide a social safety net to the vulnerable cultivators, IMF's Chief Economist Gita Gopinath has said. Indian agriculture is in need of reforms, she said. There are multiple areas where the reforms are needed, including infrastructure, the chief economist of the Washington-based global financial institution said on Tuesday. The three agri laws, enacted in September last year, have been projected by the Indian government as major reforms in the agriculture sector that will remove middlemen and allow farmers to sell their produce anywhere in the country.