Petrol and diesel prices, which have been on a freeze for the past four months in view of assembly elections in states like Uttar Pradesh, need to be increased by over Rs 12 per litre by March 16 for fuel retailers to break even. International crude oil prices shot above $120 a barrel for the first time in nine years on Thursday before retreating a little to $111 on Friday, but the gulf between cost and retail rates has only widened. With international oil prices - on which domestic fuel retails are directly benchmarked - spiking in the last two months, state-owned fuel retailers "need a massive price hike of Rs 12.1 per litre on or before March 16, 2022, just to breakeven and a price hike of Rs 15.1 is required" after including margins for oil firms, ICICI Securities said in a report.
Christine Fair, who infuriated New Delhi when she alleged that India was meddling in Balochistan, has been offered the India portfolio in the Obama administration.
The film is being submitted for BAFTA members' consideration in all categories including Best Film, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Leading Actress and Film Not in the English Language.
K K Mohammad, who took the US First Couple around Humayun's Tomb while explaining its history, tells Sheela Bhatt that the tour was a crash course in architecture and history for the Obamas.
Despite the government's hectic efforts to avoid voting on the no-confidence motion against Khan, the joint Opposition succeeded in its month-long efforts to oust Khan from the prime minister's office as 174 members of the 342-member National Assembly voted against him in the wee hours of Sunday after a day of high drama.
'India needs to be cautious that its differences with Pakistan do not obstruct SCO's functioning,' says Sana Hashmi.
The United States Administration believes that the involvement of India and neighbouring countries in the security component of the US-led war on terror in Afghanistan will complicate the situation, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Robert O Blake has said.
Senior Communist Party of India-Marxist leader and former Kerala health minister K K Shailaja has declined to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award as it was instituted in the name of late President of the Philippines, who was known allegedly for his brutality against the Communists.
The present happenings in Manipur are the wages of continued neglect, and not so benign at that, of a vital region and its people. Had we lavished on the North East even a fraction of the care and resources we do on Kashmir, things would not have come to this pass, asserts Shreekant Sambrani.
With Shanghai Cooperation Organisation set to admit India and Pakistan amid growing rancour over their Nuclear Supplies Group membership bid, a Chinese state-run daily expressed concern on Friday that the hostility between them may have a "negative effect" on the security grouping.
United States Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake, while briefing reporters on the meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and External Affairs Minister S M Krishna on the sidelines of the 65th United Nations General Assembly in New York, said the issue of direct and complete access to Pakistani American and Lashkar operative David Coleman had not come up at all at these talks.
Blinken will also attend a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Quad grouping and will hold bilateral talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar in Delhi.
Benchmark indices gained for the third day running on Friday, with the Sensex climbing over 300 points amid mixed global market trends. The 30-share BSE benchmark advanced 303.38 points or 0.56 per cent to settle at 54,481.84. During the day, it jumped 448.68 points or 0.82 per cent to 54,627.14. The broader NSE Nifty went higher by 87.70 points or 0.54 per cent to end at 16,220.60.
India is one of the key countries that will shape the 21st century, believes Robert D Blake, assistant secretary of state for south and central Asian affairs in the Barack Obama administration.Keynoting a conference titled 'Natural allies? US-Indian Relations in the Obama Era', organised by the Washington-based think tank American Enterprise Institute on Monday, Blake stressed that India's importance to the United States has not diminished.
With commodity markets remaining soft and uncertain, it is likely the money will flow into equity markets with strong upsides, such as India.
Once Mazar-i-Sharif falls, some isolate pockets of resistance may remain, which the Taliban would tackle through political work or coercion, asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
One of cricket's greatest players passed into the ages on Monday. Rediff.com salutes the legend.
The bloody riots that have engulfed the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan have had an unexpected fall out, a 100 indian students who are studying in Osh, the country's second largest city are trapped.
Police confirmed the explosion, near a shrine at a major Bangkok road, was from a bomb but no one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
India's economy continues to be robust, but downside risks such as rising crude oil prices, adverse weather conditions, and the global banking crisis outweigh the upside potential in gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the current financial year (FY24), the finance ministry said on Tuesday in its Monthly Economic Review for March. "We reiterate that downside risks to our official forecast of 6.5 per cent for real GDP growth in FY24 dominate upside risks," the review said. "Opec's surprise production cut has seen oil prices rise in April, off their lows of low-seventies per barrel in March.
Narendra Modi will be travelling to Israel, the first by an Indian prime minister to the Jewish country with which bilateral defence cooperation is on an upswing.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is very much aligned with the foreign policy priorities of the Modi 2.0 government, says Sana Hashmi.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Wednesday slashed India's GDP growth forecast for FY23 to 7 per cent from the earlier estimate of 7.2 per cent mainly on account of higher inflation and a tight monetary policy. India's economy grew 13.5 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2022-23, reflecting strong growth in services, ADB said in its second supplement to Asian Development Outlook Report 2022 (ADO 2022). "However, GDP growth is revised down from ADO 2022's forecasts to 7 per cent for FY2022 (ending March 2023) and 7.2 per cent for FY2023 (ending March 2024) as price pressures are expected to adversely impact domestic consumption, and sluggish global demand and elevated oil prices will likely be a drag on net exports," ADB said.
The Sikh taxi driver was assaulted by an unidentified man, who knocked off his turban and also used expletives against him.
The Bush administration apparently has no problem with the new Pakistani government's peace deal with militant groups in that country's North West Frontier Province, including Waziristan that have been sympathetic and allied with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It has even given the tentative agreement its cautious blessings.
Petrol and diesel prices are likely to be hiked this week as oil companies prepare to pare losses accumulated from keeping rates steady for over four months in the run-up to assembly elections in five states, including UP, despite international oil prices jumping to a 13-year high of $140 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude futures, the US oil benchmark, rose to $130.50 per barrel on Sunday evening, its highest since July 2008, before retreating. The international benchmark, Brent crude, hit a high of $139.13 at one point overnight, also its highest since July 2008.
'After the 4th of May we can expect thunderstorms, dust storms and some rain over a large area of north India.'
Similarly, in the class 10 syllabus, the topic 'impact of globalisation on agriculture' from a chapter on 'Food Security' has been dropped.
In what is seen as the first sign of China's exasperation over Russia's Ukraine war, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday raised 'questions and concerns' over the conflict in his meeting in Samarkand with Russian President Vladimir Putin who thanked Beijing for its 'balanced position' on the crisis.
'Katrina is so gorgeous, she shouldn't bother about how she is looking in a shot.' 'She doesn't need to come across to the monitor and say how am I looking?' 'You're always looking gorgeous, Katrina. Just go and do the shot.'
The broader economy risks a potential flight of foreign portfolio capital, therefore pressure on the rupee and more bad news on the stock market, warns T N Ninan.
Titan was the top loser in the Sensex pack, shedding over 3 per cent, followed by M&M, HUL, Maruti, Asian Paints and IndusInd Bank. Nifty fell 91 points to 17,157.40.
The rupee slipped by 4 paise to close at 77.59 (provisional) against the US dollar on Tuesday, weighed down by a negative trend in domestic equities and unabated foreign fund outflows. At the interbank foreign exchange market, the rupee opened lower at 77.56 against the greenback, and finally settled at 77.59, down 4 paise over its previous close. During the trading session, the rupee touched an intra-day low of 77.67 and a high of 77.51.
"The question of India-Pakistan relations is one that... they have actually made great strides forward in the last couple of years. And obviously, the tensions created by the Mumbai incident made that more difficult right now,"Richard Boucher, the US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, said.
US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Richard Boucher, has said those involved in the Mumbai terror attacks have links in Pakistan. "I would say it's clear that they had links in Pakistan, that the attackers had links that lead to Pakistani soil" Boucher said in Islamabad on Monday, according to transcripts released by State Department in Washington on Tuesday.
Kyrgyzstan rounded off their campaign in the five-nation Nehru Cup football tournament with a 4-1 victory over Sri Lanka at the Ambedkar stadium on Friday.
Urvashi Vaid dreamed of a common movement for social justice that could address them all: Racism, gender oppression and homophobia. Sandip Roy salutes the memory of Urvashi Vaid, one of America's most prominent LGBT activists, who passed into the ages this month.
'We continue to believe that the global economy will narrowly avoid a recession, despite expecting the US, Canada, and most of Europe to fall into recession at some point over the next year or so.'
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