Kuwait City : The Saudi king said on Monday his country will donate $1 billion to help rebuild the Gaza Strip after the devastating Israeli offensive and told Israel that an Arab initiative offering peace will not remain on the table forever.
King Abdullah’s comments at an Arab economic summit in Kuwait City were his first since Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas declared a fragile cease-fire to halt three weeks of violence in Gaza that killed more than 1,250 Palestinians.
Vietnam’s latest export: Vietnamese women
Ho Chi Minh City: Vietnam is planning to profit from one of its greatest resources: The country’s notoriously beautiful women. Vietnamese government officials have been asked to set up a matchmaking office in Ho Chi Minh City specifically for the purpose of arranging marriages between Vietnamese women and foreign men.
The office will be given a generous marketing budget to advertise its services and the women that put themselves on its books. Currently many Korean and Taiwanese men come to Vietnam in the hope of finding a wife however westerners will be encouraged to use the agency as well. The Vietnamese government claims that the idea of a national matchmaking office is preferable to crime syndicates tunning such businesses.
Many rural women in Vietnam see marriage to a foreigner as a way out of poverty. ‘Vietnamese women are so beautiful, loyal, fabulous cooks and housekeepers, they are likely to make men around the world so happy’ commented Huyen, a Ho Chi Minh City beautician who is considering using the service. ‘My dream is to marry a well to do American and travel the world; I think I would make a great partner for someone.’
Others voiced criticism of the plan ‘This sets a bad precedent and seems to be a case of a government sanctioning the treating women as a commodity which is a step in the wrong direction’ commented Binh, a Vietnamese social worker in charge of a shelter for abused women in Ho Chi Minh City.
Satyam clients approached TCS
New Delhi: “Some Satyam Computer clients have turned to the Tata company on their own, adding it would not approach the clients of the scam-tainted firm,” The country’s largest software exporter, TCS, said.
“We are not approaching the clients of Satyam pro-actively … but some of them have approached us on their own,” TCS CFO S Mahalingam said here on the sidelines of the CII Partnership summit.
According to reports, a US client has terminated its contract with Satyam following the disclosures, citing uncertainty in the company.
It is widely believed that Satyam Computers’ clients will migrate to competitors such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro, and according to a broking house report, TCS is likely to gain the most from it because it has the highest number of common clients with the latter.
TCS to go slow on lateral hiring
New Delhi: The country’s largest software company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), plans to go slow on lateral hiring. According to a report in a
leading business daily, faced with the current tough business environment, TCS will be focusing more on trainees.
The company, however, is not planning any freeze on salary hike, though it said that the next year’s salary hike would be in single digit per cent range.
Britain may shut doors to foreign workers
London: Britain is planning to ban advertising jobs overseas due to economic meltdown, a process which could hit Indian professionals aspiring for employment opportunities in UK.
Indians form the largest group of foreign professionals working in Britain.
Every day, thousands of jobs are being cut across the sectors in Britain. Official figures suggest that unemployment figure is reaching the 2 million mark, for the first time since the mid-1990s.
Children victims of over 20,000 sex offences last year
London: Police recorded 50 child sex offences in England and Wales every day last year, meaning children were victims of sex crimes on more than 20,000 occasions, according to research by a charity.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said the figures showed that, in nearly one in four cases, victims were under 10 and more than 800 incidents involved children aged four and under.
NSPCC’s director of public policy, Phillip Noyes, said, “These shocking figures reveal just how young many of the reported victims of sex abuse are, with even one-year-olds being at risk, although the highest numbers of offences were against children in their early teens,”