World Affairs

THE PALESTINE issue might have dropped off the front pages of late, but it remains fundamental to peace in the region, a top US official has said. Talking to a select group of mediapersons in Muscat yesterday (June 21, 2011), Jeffrey D. Feltman, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, said a two-state solution was not only in the interest of the Middle East, but for the United States as well. “But we have to overcome a lot of mistrust, a lot of history for that,” he said, while adding that the solution has to be eked out through negotiations only. “The Israelis needRead More →

IN SEARCH of a new Afghanistan, a book by Indian author Sujeet Kumar Sarkar, treads the extra mile to unearth the layers and layers of myths about a war-ravaged country. These myths, Sarkar tells Mehre Alam, have been carefully nurtured by a ‘biased’ media (This article appeared in the Times of Oman newspaper on August 7, 2012) A13-Asia page (Aug.07, 2012) (2) IT’S A search that is bound to debunk a thousand myths. In search of a new Afghanistan. That goes the name of the new book authored by Sujeet Kumar Sarkar, an international developmental professional, who sheds completely new light on a region largely “stereotyped by the Western media”.Read More →

EVEN AS pundits see the race for the White House narrowing noticeably following the renewed FBI probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails, US entrepreneur and philanthropist Frank F Islam asserts it would have no impact on the outcome of the US presidential election. This is because, argues Frank, Donald Trump’s campaign has been in disarray and displayed little logic and even less of a focus on key issues. “Trump’s campaign was never well organised. There has been a lot of turnover at the top. His campaign has not had much of a ground game and it’s been out-manned in most of the critical states,” the civicRead More →

A WORLD largely in the developed parts of the globe this time accusing bankers and politicians of wrecking their economies’ it’s time, perhaps’ to cast a closer and more meticulous look at some of the basic premises of the corporate mantras so effortlessly ingrained into our collective conscience. While the global protests may — or may not — have been galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US, the fact is that it has been moving in all direc- tions so far — Auckland, Rome, Sydney, Tokyo, Manila, Taipei, Taiwan, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Frankfurt, Vien- na, Sweden, Helsinki… It perhaps was no sheerRead More →