Blood sucking locusts on the loose, a honeymoon gone awry, a disenchanted school teacher and a singing tropical rainforest mammal, Sukanya Verma lets you take your pick from the OTT spread this week.
The threat of war in Iraq and fear of terrorism in the United States and Britain pushed oil prices to near two-year highs on Thursday, drove investors into the safety of bonds but battered stocks and the dollar.
Reserve Bank of India governor Bimal Jalan said the country would have no problems in meeting its oil bill in the event of a war in Iraq.
The former UN weapons chief inspector accused the British prime minister of dramatising pre-war intelligence on Iraq's supposed WMDs.
A few years ago, when top officials of Indian state-run refiners went to Dubai to negotiate a crude oil supply contract, a senior official from state-owned Saudi Aramco told them, "We can negotiate on anything, but I am the last man standing for you. "Nobody can offer the range of crudes we do with certainty," an official who was part of the negotiating team recalls. Perhaps that explains why Saudi Arabia is less concerned about losing its place as India's premier oil supplier to an upstart like Russia, which emerged from nowhere to become India's biggest crude oil supplier in September and October.
Major General S C N Jatar, who passed into the ages on Monday night, thwarted anti-national forces at the peak of the Assam agitation. Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) salutes this officer and gentleman.
The government said on Monday that a prolonged US-led war against Iraq, along with the conflict's impact on oil prices, could hurt the nation's export performance.
The death of six military personnel on Tuesday made 2007 the deadliest year for American troops since the start of the war in Iraq, The Washington Post reported. The record death toll of at least 852 US military personnel killed this year underscores the high cost of the American troop increase, launched in February, which has begun to drive down the sectarian violence that once gripped much of the country, the paper reported.
Qatar returns to the spotlight on Friday little more than a year after the first World Cup held in the Arab world when the relocated and delayed 2023 Asian Cup gets underway amid a seismic shift in football's global order.
The government has set up a standing group on the economic fallout of the ongoing US-led war on Iraq to look into issues particularly related to exports, inward remittances, oil prices and tourism.
'An ambassador may not be sure whether there would be a war next month, but prudence requires him to take action to see to it that people leave early.' 'Because once the war starts, it will be very difficult to move out.'
The post-war reconstruction work in Iraq will open fresh opportunities for the Indian infotech sector and would not remain constrained to the United States and United Kingdom companies only.
World Bank on Wednesday warned that a prolonged war in Iraq may adversely affect India's GDP growth prospects in this fiscal.
'But unlike Bond who killed an individual, Israel is killing a nation.'
There were 406 such incidents, which include IED and ordnance explosive blasts, in the country. Iraq came second with almost half the number at 221, the report by the National Bomb Data Centre said though it did not mention the casualties.
United States President Barack Obama will on Wednesday announce the strategy to tackle the threat posed by the Islamic States, earlier known as ISIS, the terrorist outfit which has gained control over a large part of Iraq and Syria, and has brutally killed two American journalists in the recent past.
'India has both the wherewithal and the will to fight the enemy, but is living in a make believe world of its own since it is yet to accept that it is indeed at war,' says military historian Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
The Iraq war veteran has become the first-ever Hindu to be running for the presidency in the US.
'To get control over world affairs Americans need to fight many wars. But American soldiers are not ready to die,' says the Iraqi ambassador.
Finance Minister Jaswant Singh said on Thursday that the country's economy had successfully weathered the impact of volatility in world oil prices because of the war in Iraq and that the worst was over.
With this, the total cost of the worldwide war on terror and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan has crossed $300 billion since 9/11.
Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Thursday said the 46 Indian nurses, a majority of them are from his state, who have been moved out of their hospital in Islamic State of Iraq and Syria-controlled Tikrit town of war-torn Iraq, are "safe" and there was no need for "anxiety".
Subahani Haja Moideen, a Keralite, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency in 2016 following a crackdown in Tamil Nadu with the help of central security agencies and other state police, foiling designs of Islamic State operatives to attack or eliminate certain prominent persons and target places of public importance.
'We're there until the Iraqi people have a democracy and make sure they are not a threat to their neighbors.' General Richard B Myers talks to Hamid Mir.
Forty six Indian nurses initially stranded at a hospital in Tikrit and later moved to Mosul have been freed by the fighters of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
There is only one perpetrator, Hamas. It is a terrorist organisation. It is obscene to argue that until the Palestinian question is solved, anybody has the right to use terrorism as an instrument of policy, argues Shekhar Gupta.
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that the attack near the Iraqi border was carried out by 'terrorists recruited, trained, armed & paid by a foreign regime'.
Pakistan's ministry of foreign affairs said that the violation of Pakistan's sovereignty is "completely unacceptable" and warned of serious consequences.
United States President-elect Joe Biden concluded his victory speech by reciting his deceased son Beau's favourite popular Catholic hymn 'On Eagles' Wings', hoping that the carol will give comfort to many Americans grieving the loss of their loved ones due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Within days of the release of the names of 30 individuals, including eight South Asians, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Arshad Muhammad, a Pakistani, was arrested in Mississauga, Canada
The rupee ended at 47.80/81, up from the previous close of 47.8200/8275
