Author: Farid Salagame

India’s oil refiners are looking to pick up a bit more Russian crude in last-minute purchases just weeks before new sanctions take effect. At least four companies are seeking Russian cargoes that can load by Dec. 5 and discharge before Jan. 19, according to people familiar with the matter. That timeframe fits with a grace period being granted on oil purchases under a US-led measure to cap the price of Moscow’s sales. The price cap is scheduled to be implemented alongside European Union sanctions on Russian seaborne imports on Dec. 5, and is designed to keep crude flowing but crimp the Kremlin’s…

At least two people were killed and 10 others injured, some of them critically, Wednesday after firecrackers triggered a fire and cylinder blast during a political party meeting in the southern Indian state of Telangana, police said. The accident took place at Cheemalapadu village in Khammam district, about 274 km east of Hyderabad, the capital city of Telangana. Police said the firecrackers were set off in honor of a lawmaker of Bharat Rashtra Samiti or BRS (India Nation Council) political party. Accidentally some of them landed on a hut, triggering a fire and blast of a Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG)…

The latest tiger census data released by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sunday revealed India is home to 3,167 tigers. The figures were released by Modi in Mysuru of Karnataka on the occasion of 50 years of India’s Project Tiger. According to data presented on the occasion, there were 1,411 tigers in 2006. The number grew to 1,706 in 2010. In 2014, the population went to 2,226. “With only 2.4 percent of the world’s land area, India contributes to about 8 percent of the known global diversity,” Modi said. Project Tiger was launched in 1973 to protect the big cat…

Passenger vehicle retail sales in India increased by 14 percent year-on-year in March, said the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA), India’s top body of the automotive retail industry. According to the latest data released by the FADA on Tuesday, two-wheelers, three-wheelers, passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles grew by 12 percent, 69 percent, 14 percent, and 10 percent, respectively, while tractors grew 4 percent. Although the two-wheeler segment demonstrated growth over the same period last year, it remains significantly below pre-pandemic levels, indicating that rural India is still bearing the burden of high inflationary costs. “The three-wheeler segment achieved record-high…

Belyaninov Andrey Yurievich, Secretary General, Eurasian Peoples’ Assembly spoke on the prominent presence of Indian industry across the world and development in trade and science & technology is commendable. “Indian and Eurasian business community needs to collaborate in the sectors of technology, manufacturing of spare parts, machine tools, education, pharmaceuticals,” he added. Natalya Kostenko, Deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation on Friday stated that India and Russia have a strong cultural and economic relation and there are a lot of sectors with potential collaboration. Addressing the ‘FICCI-Eurasian Peoples’ Assembly International Business Forum’, Kostenko remarked that tourism plays an important…

Berlin, March 22, 2023—Bosnia and Herzegovina authorities should swiftly and thoroughly investigate a recent attack on journalists covering a gathering of local LGBTQ activists, hold those responsible to account, and ensure that reporters can cover events of public interest safely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday. In the evening of March 18, a group of several dozen unidentified people, some of whom wore masks and other facial coverings, attacked a group of four journalists in the northwestern city of Banja Luka while they were leaving a meeting of a local group of LGBTQ activists, according to news reports, three of…

Two new parties have been founded to contest the general elections on April 2, the fifth parliamentary polls in two years, amid ongoing political turmoil in Bulgaria. The Together party was established on Tuesday, the second new party involving well-known Bulgarian politicians to be set up this week ahead of the April 2 general elections, the country’s fifth in two years. Together is rising from the ashes of There’s Such a People, the party formed in 2020 by one of the most popular entertainers in the country, Slavi Trifonov, which won the elections in July 2021 but then failed to…

Reform of Bulgaria’s anti-corruption system is something the US is following closely, particularly as it is so important for the EU, US, and UK, the head of the Office for Coordination of Sanctions in the US State Department, James O’Brien told Bulgarian National Radio. O’Brien travelled to Bulgaria after five more Bulgarians – among them, former ministers, and former heads of the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant – were sanctioned under the US Magnitsky Act for corruption last week. “The message of the sanctions is that the reform of the anti-corruption system, of the attorney general, of the anti-corruption commission, is…

Purchasing an e-car in the near future is completely unimaginable for most Czechs as the high cost of e-cars and misunderstandings on emissions rules ensure they remain sceptical about e-mobility, Czech expert Helena Truchlá told EURACTIV.cz. According to Ekovozy.cz, which monitors the number of e-vehicles in the Czech Republic, around 12,000 electric cars were in the country by mid-2022. “The Czech public perception of electromobility is still negative. This is related to the fact that electric cars are still simply too expensive for a large part of the population, and a bit too sci-fi for everyday life,” Truchlá, an analyst…

Cannabis nurseries in northern Kosovo and electricity are a new point of contention between Belgrade and Pristina. Belgrade, Cannabis nurseries in northern Kosovo and electricity are a new point of contention between Belgrade and Pristina The police of Kosovo discovered in the city of North Mitrovica three nurseries of cultivation of Indian hemp with 1200 seedlings . One nursery was in a building next to the courthouse. Kosovo’s Interior Minister Jelai Svetslia told a press conference that two ethnic Serbs had been arrested while accusing Belgrade of controlling and directing the activities of criminal groups in northern Kosovo. Svetslia also claimed that…