Money News

A Going Global the Easy Way

International funds are gunning for your wallet promising theallure of foreign assets. Should you invest in them?

Nitya Varadarajan

All along only foreigners could play movers and shakers inemerging markets-buy stocks and exit at will for betteropportunities. If the Emerging Portfolio Fund Research shows thatthere were inflows of $23 billion (Rs 96,600 crore) into emergingmarkets between January and March 2006 and likewise an outflow ofinvestments of $1.67 billion (7,014 crore) from the same markets inthe January-March quarter of 2007, an Indian could only shake hishead in helplessness for not participating in this game.

No …

USA Waste is still hungry in Houston

After gobbling up a string of waste management companies over the past few years, Houston, Texas-based USA Waste Services, Inc. is ready to go whole hog. Since joining USA Waste as chairman and chief executive in 1994, John E. Drury began a series of acquisitions that included Chambers Development, Western Waste Industries, Sanifill and United Waste Systems. According to The Wall Street Journal, presently owns 250 collection operations, 182 landfills and 175 transfer stations across the United States and Canada. Those numbers could almost double by next fall, however, as USA Waste and Waste Management, Inc. (WM) announced in March, 1998 that they will merge. Drury's company will take over …

UAE cancels billions of dollars debt owed by Iraq, names new ambassador to Baghdad

The United Arab Emirates canceled billions of dollars of Iraqi debt Sunday and moved to restore a full diplomatic mission in Baghdad, evidence of Iraq's improved security and growing acceptance of its Shiite-led government.

The Abu Dhabi government announced the debt relief and the naming of a new UAE ambassador to Baghdad shortly after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki began a visit to the wealthy Gulf nation.

The news was sure to bolster al-Maliki's government, which has been urging Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbors to forgive loans taken during Saddam Hussein's regime and restore diplomatic relations.

Al-Maliki, who has been in office since May …

Court grants Zain case appeal

The state Supreme Court today unanimously agreed to hear anappealof a fraud case against discredited State Police chemist Fred Zainthat had been dismissed by a lower court.

A date to argue the case was not immediately set.

Zain's entire body of work was discredited in 1993, when theSupreme Court ruled the former serologist had either fabricated ormisrepresented evidence.About a dozen people Zain helped convict have since been releasedor given new trials, and the state has awarded more than $4 millionin damages to people who were convicted on his testimony orevidence.Several agencies have since accused Zain of accepting paymentunder false pretenses when he served as …

CAMERA OBSCURA

They might not be good, but by god, they're on TV. Join us as wespotlight cable's camp classics . . .What he really wants to do is act.

Quentin Tarantino, the nerd video clerk-turned-trendy-director,is living the American dream and sleeping with Mira Sorvino. One ofthe perks of being staggeringly successful is the cameo role.Tarantino is spreading himself so thin that soon he'll rival theCameo King, Spalding Gray.

You've probably seen Tarantino's flashy bit parts in "ReservoirDogs" as Mr. Brown (he's killed very early) and as Jimmy in "PulpFiction" (he makes very good coffee). Tune in to "Sleep With Me"(1994) to see him as a dorky partygoer who hits on girls in …

Nighttime or violent TV tied to tots' sleep woes

CHICAGO (AP) — If your preschooler can't sleep — turn off the violence and nighttime TV.

That's the message in a new study that found sleep problems are more common in 3- to 5-year-olds who watch television after 7 p.m. Watching shows with violence — including kids' cartoons — also was tied to sleeping difficulties.

Watching nonviolent shows during the day didn't seem to have any connection with sleep problems in the 617 youngsters studied.

The study builds on previous research linking media use with kids' sleep problems, and also bolsters arguments for limiting children's screen time.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time for children up to …

Once-a-decade passion play opening

Time advances slowly in this Alpine village, measured in decade-long spans between performances of Oberammergau's nearly 400-year-old enactment of the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Changes to the ritual, started in 1633 as a promise to God by the village's Roman Catholic populace in exchange for calling off the plague, are always hotly debated.

In this year's edition, director Christian Stueckl _ who normally directs at Munich's Volkstheater _ has altered the script, staging and lighting of his third Oberammergau Passion Play to make it a highly political and polished retelling of Jesus' final days.

In 2000, he worked with Jewish …