WASHINGTON: The crown prince of Abu Dhabi has hired the founder of private security firm Blackwater Worldwide to set up an 800-member battalion of foreign troops for the United Arab Emirates, The New York Times reported on Sunday. Blackwater, which once had lucrative contracts to protect US officials in Iraq, […]
The United Arab Emirates has hired the in-famous private security firm ‘Blackwater’ to establish an 800 mercenary army (as a first step) to keep the Rulers safe… The crown prince insisted that no Muslim should be part of this ‘force’ (because a Muslim may refuse to kill another Muslim, presumably). […]
http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/05/14/florida_imams_arrested_for_pakistani_taliban_aid.html?wpisrc=newsletter_slatest Three U.S. citizens, including two imams of Florida mosques, were among the six people who have been indicted on charges of financing and supporting the Pakistani Taliban. Five are family members. The three U.S. citizens were arrested, while the other three are at large in Pakistan. The indictment accuses […]
Sheikh Suleiman Al Rajhi, one of the world’s richest men, plans to give away lion’s share of his $6bn fortune. Saudi Arabia’s Sheikh Suleiman Al Rajhi, one of the world’s richest men, can now also lay claim to be one of the most generous. The businessman has announced he is […]
The German bank Commerzbank received an unusual transfer order in late February. The amount was €1.9 million ($2.7 million) and the bank was instructed to immediately transfer the funds from a Commerzbank account to a foreign account with another bank. The holder of the Commerzbank account was Saif al-Arab al-Gadhafi, […]
RFI International Monetary Fund, IMF, chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault accusations on Sunday. Strauss-Kahn was set to appear in a New York court on Monday where his lawyers said he would deny all charges against him. Strauss-Kahn was set to appear in court on Monday after agreeing to “scientific […]
Fareed Zakaria: How to beat bribery One out of every four people on this planet paid a bribe last year. Bribery has been said to cost the world $1 trillion a year. The United Nations says bribes accounted for one fourth of Afghanistan’s annual GDP. So I was intrigued to […]
COMEDIAN-turned-radio DJ Salih Yaacob who will marry a fourth wife after Hari Raya is planning to present her with a house as a wedding gift. He plans to buy one for each of his present wives, too, reported Metro Ahad. The 50-year-old multi-talented artiste said the houses were special gifts […]
In her recent Wall Street Journal opinion-editorial, Irshad Manji claims that not just Muslims, but the Quran and Islam itself needs reformation. In conflating the two, Manji ignores the possibility that the owner’s manual might be fine, while the issues lie with the owner. Manji concludes by assuming, again incorrectly, […]
The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a High Court verdict that declared illegal the Truth and Accountability Commission which was formed by the caretaker government in 2008. A seven-member bench of the Appellate Division passed the order after dismissing a leave-to-appeal petition filed against the HC verdict. Manzur Ahmed Bhuiyan, […]
ISLAMABAD: US Senator John Kerry on Monday called Pakistan and the United States “strategic partners with a common enemy” as he sought to ease distrust in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Kerry also said that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will soon announce plans to […]
For Israel, the risk that Syria President Bashar Assad would undermine calm of northern border less threatening than prospect of him toppled; Israel blames Assad and Iran for border infiltration on Nakba Day. The Arab revolution knocked on Israel’s door yesterday, in Nakba Day demonstrations carried out by Palestinians from […]
It is possible and necessary to teach that this glory that is the establishment of Israel also has a dark side – so we can know our history, and understand the wishes of the Palestinians. Were Israel a little more confident of the righteousness of its case, and were its […]
Better Place has unveiled the price of the electric cars it will be selling in Israel, the Renault Fluence ZE: NIS 123,000. That’s a hair more than gasoline-fueled cars of similar size. Buyers can start placing orders in July and the cars should start arriving toward year-end Better Place, founded […]
History will remember the Libya war by how it ends, not how it began. And it’s far too early to declare success or failure. The manner in which the war started though, allows us to draw three broad conclusions: Barack Obama successfully delegated the burden of global policing. Europe, for […]
Last month, a Cairo court ordered that images of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his wife, Suzanne, as well as their names, be removed from all “public squares, streets, libraries and other public institutions around the country.” Posters and portraits of the Mubaraks are ubiquitous in Egypt. Squares, sports […]
A new crop circle has been reported by a group established to investigate UFO sightings in Indonesia. Beta-UFO, set up in 1997, said the latest crop circle had appeared in a rice field in Cikarang, Bekasi, West Java. “The locals didn’t know,” group member Julius Perdana told Detik.com on Monday. […]
Authorities are set to announce the return of five hand-carved 18th- and 19th-century human skulls to Indonesia. The intricately decorated skulls from the Dayak tribe raised suspicion when they arrived at a mail facility in Newark, New Jersey, last summer. They had been shipped from Bali, Indonesia, with a declared […]
The very limited use of the Maltese language online is a major setback to the mother tongue even if there seems to be a strong desire for more websites in the vernacular. According to a survey released in Brussels, only 6.5 per cent of Maltese internet users choose to browse, […]
In contrast to most South Asian countries, modern India has always been officially ‘secular’, a word the country inscribed in its Constitution in 1976. Secularism, here, is not synonymous with the French ‘laïcité’, which demands strong separation of religion and the state. India’s secularism does not require exclusion of religion from […]