United States President-elect Barack Obama plans to issue an executive order, within his first week in office, to close down the infamous American detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, a media report said on Tuesday. The order, however, would not immediately close the prison, the Wall Street Journal said, citing two people with knowledge of the plan. It is the first step in what is expected to be a long process of determining what to do with the approximately 250 prisoners.
The size of the job cuts could not be ascertained.
According to the Wall Street Journal, one of the characteristics of the long market downturns in the 1930s and the 1970s has returned and rank-and-file investors (retail investors) are losing faith in stocks and have pulled out record sums from equity schemes of mutual funds.
The stress of financial turmoil is literally showing on the faces of Americans, with many unemployed individuals growing beard in the country.
Arun Sarin, who recently retired as the Vodafone group CEO, is being considered for the post of chief executive of internet major Yahoo! Inc, the Wall Street Journal says.
Days after Citi's global CEO Vikram Pandit said the group planned to reduce head-count by 52,000, there are reports that the financial major will lay off over 1,000 employees in India. The financial services company has around 10,000 employees in India.
Amjad Farooqi was wanted in connection with an assassination attempt on president General Pervez Musharraf last December, and was indicted in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Favouring 'aggressive action' to boost the shaky American economy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has proposed a two-stage effort with a $60-100 billion stimulus package this month followed early next year by a 'permanent tax cut'.
One of the big arrests in Pakistan is that of an Egyptian national who was a member of an Al Qaeda cell known as Islambouli group.
Faced with criticism over offshoring jobs to India and other developing countries, IBM Corp has adopted new internal transfer policies aimed at filling vacant positions in the company with workers who would otherwise get a pink slip.\n\n\n\n
'India has never been a threat to Pakistan. I, for one, and our democratic government is not scared of Indian influence abroad,' Zardari told Wall Street Journal in an interview.
A few years ago, reports from Hollywood indicated that Oscar-winning actor Halle Berry was to play the Indian-American activist-lawyer Vanita Gupta, who won the 2004 India Abroad Publisher's Special Award, in a film called Tulia.
The approval, first in December 2002 and later in a January 8, 2003 memo, allowed for inflicting 'fear of dogs', and 'mild non-injurious physical contact', The Wall Street Journal said.
The selection of Sarah Palin as a running mate has given a major impetus to the campaign of Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, according to the latest poll.The poll, released on Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal and NBC, shows that the Palin factor has lifted enthusiasm among McCain's supporters.It shows that a majority of voters are comfortable with the idea of the first term Alaska governor as vice-president.
The US Department of Treasury plans to sell its 27 per cent stake in Citigroup Inc, says a media report. The stake selling is part of a programme of regularly scheduled sales.
Outsourcing of information technology jobs, which is likely to continue to countries like India, has had an unexpected resul
Omar Sheikh's lawyer Rai Bashir said he might use extracts from the book to seek a fresh hearing and trial for his client, a British citizen of Pakistani origin.
GM Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner is scheduled to outline the plan to employees, the Wall Street Journal reported. "This is real, hard stuff," one person briefed on the plan told the paper. "It not only assures our survival, but will make us a radically leaner, more focused company with much lower fixed cost."
A deal between MTN and RCom could be announced this weekend despite threats of legal action to block the deal, the Wall Street Journal said in a report in its online edition on Thursday, quoting two unnamed people familiar with the situation. The report added that the two companies are "getting very close to announcing the deal. If there are no last-minute disagreements, the announcement may come as early as Sunday or sometime next week."
The overall freedom to start, operate, and close a business remains restricted by India's regulatory environment.
Pakistan interrogating businessman over nuke links: report
Citigroup Inc is closing a hedge fund co-founded by chief executive officer Vikram Pandit, 11 months after the bank bought the fund management company for more than $800 million.
Apple is set to unveil its much awaited tablet PC later this month and the company is likely to ship the product in March, says a media report.
Indian Parliament would need to ratify New Delhi's commitment to the agreement by June in order for Congress to have the time to pass the nuclear pact into US law before President George W Bush leaves office, The Wall Street Journal noted, citing State Department officials. "But a lack of action in India in recent months is leading many in Washington to believe the Bush administration has run out of time," the paper said.
Bharti's talks with South African mobile operator MTN Group Ltd are now centered on a full takeover by the Indian operator for a combination of cash and stock, The Wall Street Journal said quoting a person familiar with the situation. The person said Bharti was considering paying as much as $20 billion in cash, said the paper. Bharti said on Tuesday it was in talks with MTN to 'combine the strengths of the two leading players from emerging markets.
Google, the popular Internet search engine, has chosen India's Silicon Valley Bangalore for its first engineering research and development centre outside the United States to be set up next year.
In an interview to the 'Wall Street Journal', Benmosche said that AIG, in its current form, is too large. "I feel strongly that AIG is too big today -- it is extremely complex to manage and we need to make sure it's more transparent, that it's smaller, and that we can make it on our own."
Hinting at hard measures like further ban on exports to control rising prices, Finance Minister P Chidambaram has said inflation is also being stoked by cartel like behaviour in some sectors of Indian economy. Noting that soaring prices of rice and other basic food items are a matter of worry, Chindambaram said inflation is also being stoked by a mismatch of supply and demand and by cartel-like behaviour in some sectors of the economy. Export bans in steel were considered.
India's largest private carrier Jet Airways will report a full-year loss for 2007-08 fiscal and break even only in the financial year ending next March, said its chairman Naresh Goyal. Earlier in January, Jet Airways had reported a net loss of Rs 91.12 crore (Rs 911 million) for the quarter ended December 31, 2007 as against net profit of Rs 40.04 crore (Rs 400 million) for the year-ago period. Goyal expects Jet Airways to break even in the current fiscal, ending Mar 31, 09.
Attributing to a person familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal said, GM plans to begin paying back a $6.7 billion loan it owes to the US government starting late this year, which would put it on track to potentially repay the entire loan by the middle of 2011.
While poll participants were clear that they prefer a Democrat in the White House, when asked to pick between McCain, Obama and Clinton, the votes were tied. Voters prefer Democrats for issues such as the economy and health-care, but on terrorism and social issues, the Republicans came out as the preferred party.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has said he is not planning to resign or retire despite his allies suffering a crushing defeat in the general election and asserted that he intends to stay in office to guide the democratic transition in the country.
Attributing to a person familiar with the situation, The Wall Street Journal said that Bank of America's directors plan this week to settle on an emergency CEO pick, in case legal turmoil forces Lewis to step down before year-end.