Gali Nagaraja

Samsung Electronics estimated Friday its fresh record quarterly high of operating profit for the third quarter at $7.29 billion.

At 8.1 trillion won or $7.29 billion, the preliminary operating profit estimated by Samsung in the July-September period was up 90.59 percent from a year earlier, topping the previous record high of 6.72 trillion won tallied in the prior quarter, reported Xinhua.

Sales were estimated at 52 trillion won in the three months ending Sep 30, up 26 percent from a year before. The figure was up 9.24 percent from three months earlier.

Nigeria will double its production of cocoa, one of its major export crops, from 250,000 to 500,000 metric tonnes by 2015, Minister of Agriculture Akinwumi Adesina said.

Adesina told an audience at the First International Cocoa Conference held in Ibadan, capital of Oyo State in southwestern Nigeria, that 3.6 million hybrid cocoa pods would be distributed free to cocoa farmers in the country to meet the target, reported Xinhua.

The new hybrid cocoa pods were developed by Nigerian researchers for local farmers.

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) Friday decided to keep the monetary policy unchanged.

The BOJ’s Policy Board voted unanimously, to keep the key short-term interest rate at around zero to 0.1 percent and decided to keep the size of its asset purchase program at the current 80 trillion yen, after expanding the fund by 10 trillion yen at the previous meeting Sep 19, reported Xinhua.

The BOJ’s assessment on domestic economy is “leveling off more or less”, as the exports and industrial production weaken by strong yen and economic troubles in Europe.

—IANS

Chandigarh, termed The City Beautiful by its French founder-architect Le Corbusier, has always been the subject of controversy between Punjab and Haryana with both laying claims over it. Now, a third and new dimension has been added with a demand from some quarters that the city be made the 29th state of India.

Officially a union territory (UT) administered by the central government, Chandigarh has the unique distinction of being the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, even though both the states have no control over its administration.

The Pakistani government Friday submitted to the Supreme Court a fresh draft of a letter that has to be sent to Swiss authorities to reopen corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari. However, the court said the draft was not in the spirit of its order.

Federal Law Minister Farooq H. Naek presented the amended draft of the letter to be sent to Swiss authorities when the Supreme Court resumed the hearing in the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) implementation case, reported Dawn.

A five-member bench of the apex court headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa heard the case.

Not everybody can be hypnotized, because of differences in brain structures of people, says a Stanford research.

Hypnosis is described as a trance-like state during which a person has a heightened focus and concentration. It has been used clinically to help patients manage pain, control stress and anxiety and combat phobias.

A new US study has found a daily slice of watermelon could help prevent heart disease by halting the build-up of harmful cholesterol and also be a help in weight control.

Scientists who carried out studies on mice fed a high-fat diet found the fruit halved the rate at which ‘bad’ low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, accumulated, Daily Mail reported.

LDL is a form of cholesterol that leads to clogged arteries and heart disease.

In an attempt to recover from a disappointing presidential debate, President Barack Obama blasted his Republican challenger for not being “the real Mitt Romney” by contradicting his own beliefs.

In campaign appearances after the debate, Obama said the Romney he met on the stage on Wednesday night was not the same Romney he knew.

The killing of a journalist in Balochistan and similar attacks in the past are “an assault on the right to information”, said a daily, ruing that it had become impossible for media personnel to work safely.

Abdul Haq Baloch, who worked for a private television news channel in the city of Khuzdar, Balochistan, was gunned down in late September.

An editorial in the News International noted that since 2002, some 80 journalists have been killed, most of them in the ‘war zones’ that have crept up across the country.

Others have been gunned down in cities.

Tens of thousands of Pakistan’s wealthy are not paying their taxes, revealing “how large and how audacious the picture of tax evasion” is in Pakistan, said a leading daily Friday.

An editorial in the Dawn said there are times “when the audacity and mismatch between what is being said and what is being done leaves us all dumbfounded”.

The National Database and Registration Authority has completed an exercise aimed at identifying those individuals who have lifestyles of opulence and luxury yet pay no taxes.

One girl was killed and two injured Thursday when a wall collapsed at an elementary school in the Panamanian capital, authorities said.

The accident happened before the start of classes as the three students were playing with a rope anchored to the wall that gave way.

A parent told a television reporter he had warned the school administration that the wall posed a danger to students because it was badly built.

Education Minister Lucy Molinar expressed regret over the accident a promised a full investigation.

The Big Apple is set to host a two-day educational conference, themed “Bollywood: Beyond the Song and Dance,” featuring some of the most successful Indian filmmakers in the business.

Scheduled for Oct 6 and 7, it also provides a platform for aspiring and established actors, directors, and producers to glean “insider” information about direction, production, script writing, and financing movies in the largest film industry in the world – Bollywood, as the Indian film industry is known, according to the organisers.

A cabinet minister was roughed up and three people were killed in an attack by machete-wielding militiamen in Kenya, Xinhua reported.

The attack took place Thursday in the coastal town of Kilifi.

Police said the three men were killed after a mob disrupted a meeting addressed by Fisheries Minister Amason Kingi in Mtwapa in Kilifi county.

The minister’s bodyguards were injured.

Sources tod Xinhua that Kingi, who opposes the Mombasa Republic Council’s call for secession of the coastal region, escaped unhurt after a gang suspected to be from the council disrupted the meeting.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said he is alarmed by the escalating tensions along the Syrian-Turkish border and warned that the Syrian crisis may spill over into neighbouring countries.

“As the situation inside Syria deteriorates yet further – including the atrocious terrorist bombings in Aleppo this week which killed dozens of people including civilians – the risks of regional conflict and the threat to international peace and security are also increasing,” Ban was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

The US State Department has blacklisted the outfit Ansar al-Shari’a, which it said was a “new alias” of the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The move bars American citizens from doing business with or providing support to the group, and freezes all of its assets under US jurisdiction, Xinhua reported.

A UN sanctions committee also added the outfit to its list Thursday, a move that subjects the group to a worldwide assets freeze, a travel ban and an arms embargo, the department said.

A 21-year-old man has been arrested in Spain for plotting to blow up a university with 140 kg of explosives, Xinhua reported.

The man, identified as Jose Manuel M.S. and hailing from Palma de Mallorca in eastern Spain, planned to attack the University of the Balearic Islands.

Police said the man wrote about his hatred for society in diaries and a blog.

He allegedly professed a special hatred for university students, which was why he chose to attack the university, police said.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, whose bold move overturned a longstanding ban on uranium sale to India, comes here Oct 15 on a three-day visit that could see India and Australia sign a landmark civil nuclear pact.

Gillard’s visit takes place months after a reversal of Canberra’s long-standing policy by the ruling Labour Party on supply of uranium to India, paving the way for the sealing of a civil nuclear deal that could have a force-multiplier effect on broader ties both bilaterally and regionally.

Sania Mirza and her partner Nuria Llagostera Vives progressed to the China Open semifinals after coming from behind to pip Julia Goerges and Barbora Zahlavova Strycova, here today.

The fifth seed Indo-Spanish pair overcame the fighting German-Czech pair 4-6 6-4 16-14 in one hour and 34 minutes in the quarter-finals.

Sania and Nuria were profligate as they squandered as many as eight breakpoints in the first set before conceding lead.

A human-trafficking bid was foiled in Chhattisgarh with 35 workers, majority of them minors, rescued from a Odisha-bound private bus, a police official said Thursday.

“Police rescued about three dozen labourers from the clutches of agents from an Odisha-bound bus Wednesday. Four people have been arrested in this connection,” Bastar Superintendent of Police Badri Narayan Meena told IANS.

India’s Tata Power is looking to acquire coal assets in the US, Colombia and Africa, and set up power plants in Myanmar and Vietnam, Managing Director Anil Sardana said Thursday.

“We are continuously looking at the other geographies and today the options are the US, Colombia and Africa,” Sardana told mediapersons here at the “Clean Coal India 2012” conference, which is part-sponsored by the company.

Sardana also said Tata Power is looking to import 50 million tonnes of coal by 2020. The company has plans to import 10 million tonnes in the current fiscal.

President Pranab Mukherjee Thursday called on the Indian chemical industry to promote sustainable development by investing in green technologies.

Speaking in Mumbai, after inaugurating the India Chem 2012, Mukherjee said the industry must ensure increased adherence to safety and international health and environmental standards.

“Indian chemical industry would need to set targets and standards and take up research and collaborations without delay,” the president said.

Vivek Oberoi and Mallika Sherawat-starrer “Kismet Love Paisa Dilli” (KLPD) seeks inspiration from yesteryear actor Manoj Kumar’s film’s “Roti Kapada Aur Makaan”.

“The title of a film is the closest interpretation of the story. If Steven Soderbergh can keep abstract name like ‘Sex Lies and Video Tapes’, Dibanker Banerjee as ‘Love Sex Aur Dhoka’ or Manoj Kumar as ‘Roti Kapda Aur Makaan’ then why not ‘Kismet Love Paisa Dilli,” said director Sanjay Khanduri.

Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi said Thursday that his party would do everything possible to address the problems of people in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir.

Addressing a public meeting at the Polo Grounds in Leh town that drew a large crowd, Gandhi said work on the tunnel across the Zojilla Pass would commence Thursday.

Once the tunnel was completed, the Ladakh region would enjoy round-the-year road connectivity. The region is otherwise cut off, under a thick layer of snow, for almost half the year.

A determined Australian outfit will be aiming to eliminate the ‘Chris Gayle factor’ when they meet a rejuvenated West Indies in the semi-final of the ICC World Twenty20 here tomorrow.

For Australia, it will be a chance to get into the final for the second time in succession after the 2010 edition and once again stamp their class as world’s premier cricketing outfit.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi Thursday launched a blistering attack on Congress president Sonia Gandhi and claimed the BJP would win a thumping majority in the coming elections.

Speaking to TimesNow, Modi criticised Gandhi for comparing Gujarat’s development with other states and accused her of making false claims about cooking gas availability in the state.

“Our track record is one of development, our track record is one of irrigation, our track record is one of peace, unity and brotherhood,” the chief minister said.