No one really believed that the latest round of international negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program would produce a breakthrough. So it was no surprise that itdid not, despite the concessions that were made at the meeting in Kazakhstan by the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus Germany). […]
In the eyes of the rest of the world, war-torn Afghanistan is a place with a beaten-down infrastructure, the minimum of modern amenities and certainly none of the services made possible by the latest technological advances powering the Internet, financial services and telecommunications. Surprisingly, however, Afghanistan is on the leading edge of the mobile-money and banking revolution sweeping […]
The stand-up comedian Beppe Grillo, like the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini before him, has a craving to take over the piazza and mesmerise the crowd. Where once young Italians chanted the mantra ‘Du-ce! Du-ce!’ now they chant ‘Bep-pe! Bep-pe!’. But it is not just a shared need to rant and rave at large numbers of […]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Egyptians officials and opposition politicians to overcome their differences for the sake of the country’s faltering economy…Kerry, making his first visit to Egypt as secretary of state, urged Egyptians to respect democratic rights, engage with each other and compromise in order to restore the economy. Kerry’s goal is […]
A case can be made that most significant political actor in the past six years in Pakistan is the country’s Supreme Court chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. After all, it is Chaudhry who has redefined the role of the country’s high courts in matters of public interest. Read Here – The Diplomat
Will India rival or even surpass China’s rise?…Lee Kuan Yew disagrees strongly. As he puts it, provocatively: “When Nehru was in charge, I thought India showed promise of becoming a thriving society and a great power,” but it has not “because of its stifling bureaucracy” and its “rigid caste system.” Being deliberately provocative, Lee says: […]
China plans major bond market reform to raise the money the ruling Communist Party needs for a 40 trillion yuan ($6.4 trillion) urbanization program to buoy economic growth and close a chasm between the country’s urban rich and rural poor. The Party aims to bring 400 million people to cities over the next decade as the […]
The Malian version of Islam has been practiced since the 11th century. It has only recently been targeted by foreign elements who seek to impose their own stricter and often violent interpretation onto the country’s population. Specifically, Wahhabism, which espouses a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran and condemns anything considered to be an innovation, has […]
Even as the government promises to set up a new spy centre, intelligence services say little effort has been made to enhance existing capacities. Read Here – The Hindu
India’s government may curb spending growth in the budget tomorrow to pare the widest fiscal deficit in major emerging nations, seeking to boost the central bank’s scope to reduce interest rates as the economy falters. Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram will keep deficit goals set in October of 4.8 percent of gross domestic product for the year through March […]
