Mumbai: From her debut Bollywood film ‘Om Shanti Om’ in 2007 to her latest ‘Pathaan’, Deepika Padukone has always managed to entertain her fans with several types of roles. The actress has made it to Hollywood too. She is considered among the most successful actresses of B-Town and has proved time and again why she is every director’s top choice. Apart from acting, she is also known for taking stands for herself and other Bollywood celebs. She has always been an inspiration to other women. In this write-up, we will tell you about Deepika’s one of the real-life stunts when she slapped a man for misbehavior.
Bollywood’s Mastaani revealed once during an interview with India Today that she had slapped a man in the middle of the street for misbehaving with her. She said, “I was 14 or 15. I remember one evening my family and I were walking down the street. We had probably finished eating at a restaurant. My sister and my father walked ahead and my mother and I were walking behind. And this man brushed past me. I could have, at that point, ignored, pretended like it didn’t happen.”
Deepika Padukone further added, “I turned back, followed this person, caught him by the collar – I was 14, in the middle of the street slapped him and walked away. From that day on my parents knew that this girl could take care of herself.”
This is how Deepika in her teenage years defended herself and proved that she is able to fight for herself on own. As she is loved by most of the Indians but whenever she gets trolled, she fights like a warrior. She remained in controversy for wearing an orange bikini in the ‘Besharam Rang’ track of the Pathaan, but she managed to come out in such a way that it is only song which became the most hit track of the blockbuster film ‘Pathaan’.
The YJHD actress has always been an inspiration for others. She also made a strong comeback after she broke up with Ranbir Kapoor. From fighting depression to finding her soulmate in Ranveer Singh, it might be not wrong to say that the actress has proved to be a role model for others.
On the work front, Deepika Padukone will be next seen in Fighter opposite Hrithik Roshan. She will also be seen in Project K with Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan, and Disha Patani. She is currently enjoying the success of Pathaan which has already crossed Rs 1000 crores worldwide.
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“These huge companies that get big tax advantages and have very good trade policies that have allowed them to invest billions in China and overlook Americans while they reap all these tax benefits — that’s something we’re going to be looking into.”
All of that is throwing K Street into a tizzy.
Corporate tax lobbyists are not used to taking heat from Republicans, and many don’t know what to make of Smith.
They didn’t know him well before his surprise win last month for the committee gavel over two more traditional, business-friendly Republicans.
And they’re not sure if this is merely a shift in rhetoric, without much actual change in policy, or if it signifies something deeper. Donald Trump struck a similarly populist note during his 2016 presidential campaign, when he railed against “carried interest.” But, once in office, he made only modest changes to tax policy as part of a largely traditional Republican tax package.
It adds up to a much more ambiguous situation for K Streeters than when Democrats were in charge of the House, pushing a slate of tax hikes on businesses and the rich that left little doubt where they stood.
“People are wondering how best to approach him with corporate issues,” said one former Republican tax aide. “People have spun themselves into a frenzy — but he’s still a Republican.”
The uncertainly comes at a bad time for the business community.
It’s not that there were great expectations that a deeply divided Congress would be able to make big tax changes. But big corporations still want some things addressed, and there will be must-pass legislation this year — dealing with the debt limit, the FAA, aid to farmers — that could also be used to change tax provisions.
Many corporate leaders can’t believe Congress has allowed a series of time-delayed tax increases included in Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts to actually take effect and are still hoping lawmakers will reconsider provisions now making it harder to deduct research, interest and capital expenses.
On top of that, there’s Democrats’ new “book income” minimum tax on big companies, an especially complicated levy that is giving corporate tax departments fits.
Tax payments by big companies are projected to jump this year by 12 percent “largely” because of those increases, budget forecasters said last week.
Smith’s ascent also comes amid a slow-motion break-up between Republicans and big business.
The last time they were running the House, Republicans pushed through the biggest cut in the corporate tax rate in decades.
Since then, they’ve had a major falling out with big business over everything from Trump to state voting restrictions to the 2021 Capitol riots to the rise of socially conscious investing.
For Smith, he says, it’s a question of emphasis.
He’s not anti-business and he’s unlikely to want to raise anyone’s taxes — no one would confuse him with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Asked what part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act shouldn’t be extended, Smith doesn’t point to any tax cuts that he thinks ought to lapse — but to Opportunity Zones, which he says should be rewritten to better benefit rural areas.
It’s more that he wants to focus on other things.
Smith, 42, is part of a contingent of younger Republican lawmakers who think it’s better politics for the party to focus on blue-collar workers — something that also happens to fit Smith’s district, a poor area covering the southeast corner of Missouri. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report calls it the sixth-most conservative district in the country. Trump won there last time with 75 percent of the vote.
And Smith emphasizes he’s not a stereotypical Republican.
“I grew up in a working-class family. My mother was a factory worker and my dad was an auto mechanic and a preacher, and I lived in a single-wide trailer for most of my life,” he said. “My background is what drives me and the policies I’m pushing.”
Things like the new corporate minimum tax are the “last” thing he’s focused on, Smith has said.
He’s trying to underscore that by taking the Ways and Means Committee on the road, to the districts of his colleagues. After the first trip, to West Virginia, where lawmakers heard from local small business owners, Smith is planning another hearing next month in Oklahoma City.
“They don’t have lobbyists in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
Yet, he’s not completely ignoring things corporate America would happily support.
Smith said his top priority on taxes is using the code to shore up businesses’ supply chains — something that got a lot of attention during the pandemic and which many Democrats want as well.
“We have to use our tax and trade mechanisms to make sure we help our strategic supply chains,” he said. “We saw over the past couple years that we have a lot of gaps.”
And he says he still supports undoing new restrictions on research and capital expenses. “Some of those issues like accelerated depreciation, R&D — they help a lot of small businesses and they help a lot of American workers.”
Smith also sad he can work with Democrats on the Child Tax Credit — which at least raises the prospect of reviving a deal Democrats proposed last year trading an expansion of that credit for beefed-up business breaks.
Like other Republicans, he is not willing to end work requirements long associated with the credit, as Democrats did temporarily during the pandemic. But “when it comes to looking at a number of increasing it — that’s very negotiable. I want to deliver for working-class families — the tax credit is something that delivers for them.”
He has previously proposed allowing pregnant women to claim the credit, something that many Democrats will not support because of its links to the abortion debate.
Even as he sounds a conciliatory note on the child credit, Smith scorches Democrats on other issues, raising questions about how much bipartisanship might actually be in the offing.
He’s accused the administration of “colluding” with the OECD against the United States with its push for a global minimum tax, for example, and is threatening what would surely be a hugely partisan investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes.
As for K Street, many say they are now strategizing over how to win over the committee.
One longtime lobbyist is focusing on other Republican members of the panel — 40 percent of whom joined Ways and Means just last month. The idea is that they will be more receptive, and Smith will have a harder time saying no to them.
“You’re going to have to work other members of Congress even harder,” the lobbyist said, speaking on condition on anonymity.
“He’s not going to ignore members of the committee who come to him and say, ‘We really think you need to do this.’”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Kolkata: The Hamro Party founded by Ajay Edwards on Wednesday suspended the call for street boycott in Darjeeling on Thursday in view of the Class 10 examinations being conducted by the West Bengal Board of Secondary Examination (WBBSE) starting on that day.
Explaining the rationale behind suspending the boycott call for the time-being, a Hamro Party leader said that the call for boycott of streets was being interpreted by the ruling Trinamool Congress and the administration as equivalent to a strike, which was creating confusion among the people, especially the examinees and their guardians.
Hence, to allay the fear on this count, the boycott call has been withdrawn.
The call for boycott of streets for 12 hours on Thursday was given by Hamro Party, supported by Gorkha Janmukti Morcha and estranged Trinamool leader Binoy Tamang in support of the demand for a separate Gorkhaland state, as well as condemning the recent special motion that was passed in the state Assembly against attempts to divide the state.
On Tuesday, Edwards, Gurung and six other members of Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) staged a 24-hour fasting agitation in support of the separate statehood demand.
From that agitation dais, Edwards gave the 12-hour ‘boycott the streets’ call.
Soon after that call was given, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had said that her government will not tolerate such strike attempts at any cost.
She had also threatened strong administrative and police action if there were attempts to observe the strike in demand of division of the state.
Recently, a new triangular political equation has evolved as GJM chief Bimal Gurung, Binoy Tamang and Ajay Edwards have come together raising fresh demand for a separate Gorkhaland state.
Elected leaders are eager to draw people back to the area that has seen steep declines in foot traffic since the start of the pandemic, threatening tax revenue that funds essential city services and a hospitality industry that’s a major driver of tourism and jobs. But they must weigh any changes against the street’s function as a major transportation artery for hundreds of thousands of bus riders with connections to several subway lines.
The move comes three years after former Mayor Bill de Blasio first attempted to transform Fifth Avenue into an express busway but pulled the plan amid opposition from the high-end shops that dot the corridor, drawing outcry from public transportation advocates. Top city officials said this time is different, with real estate players coming to the table with a vested interest in revitalizing an area that has struggled to adapt to the era of hybrid work. How the city will balance competing interests is still unclear.
“The value of public space is elevated considerably after Covid,” Meera Joshi, the deputy mayor for operations, said in an interview. “It’s an investment in the community. It’s an investment in increased foot traffic for the stores, which translates into tax dollars, which translates into jobs.”
The city said it will contract with a design firm this year to put together a plan that will add pedestrian space, speed up buses and improve street safety. Other major municipalities, from San Francisco to Columbus, Ohio, have released their own proposals to reinvigorate office-heavy downtowns in part by restricting access to private vehicles.
More than half of office workers in major U.S. cities returned to their desks last week, a first since the pandemic began, according to swipe data tracked by Kastle Systems. But major New York employers don’t expect that figure to budge much higher anytime soon, according to a recent survey by the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit membership organization of more than 300 city executives.
Drawing people back will require some incentives, said Madelyn Wils, chief adviser for the Fifth Avenue Association, the business group that represents retailers in the area.
“It’s the spine of Manhattan, and when you come there, you should be experiencing something beautiful,” Wils said. “You should want to walk all the way from Central Park to Bryant Park.”
Retail spending has come roaring back in virtually every business district in the city’s outer boroughs, but remains down 9 percent in midtown Manhattan, according to “Making New York Work for Everyone,” the state and city’s post-pandemic recovery plan. Restaurant and bar spending has declined 35 percent in the area spanning 34th Street to 60th Street, with foot traffic down 23 percent.
Manhattan’s business districts generate nearly 60 percent of the citywide office and retail property tax revenues and 18 percent of overall citywide property tax revenue, making their stabilization key to pay for municipal services.
“What is clear today in the wake of the pandemic is that Midtown is the area that has suffered the most,” said Dan Doctoroff, a deputy mayor in Mike Bloomberg’s administration who led Sept. 11 recovery efforts and helped create the city’s new economic recovery plan.
“But, in order to make Midtown more vibrant, it’s not just about public places and making it more mixed-use,” he added. “You also have to address transportation issues, and you also have to grow.”
Elected leaders in other major U.S. cities also see a need to limit space for cars if they want to draw people back to downtown cores that are highly dependent on the Monday-through-Friday office culture, but many of the visions still preserve at least some space for personal vehicles.
The strategic plan for Columbus, Ohio, which still needs approval from its City Council, notes that most residents want alternative transportation to reduce car dependency. The plan includes renderings that add protected bus and bike lanes on multi-lane roads that have limited sidewalk space. San Francisco’s action plan similarly proposes strategies like “road diet” and “pedestrianized street” to bring more use to downtown corridors.
In New York, Adams will wade into a territorial dispute over how best to approach the most expensive shopping street in the world that also serves roughly 115,000 bus riders on an average weekday.
De Blasio’s plan to block most vehicle traffic on Fifth Avenue to accommodate a new busway faced steep opposition from major real estate players whom the progressive Democratic publicly shunned. Steve Roth, the CEO of Vornado, which operates 2.6 million square feet of street retail space, personally implored de Blasio to reconsider before the plan was ultimately pulled, the New York Times reported. The Fifth Avenue Association, whose chair is a Vornado executive, continues to oppose the elimination of private car access.
“That would have exacerbated the exodus of a lot of tenants,” Wils, of the Fifth Avenue Association, said of the busway plan. The real estate-backed nonprofit funds supplementary services that help maintain the corridor, such as street cleaning.
Adams, a more moderate Democrat, has taken a notably friendlier posture toward real estate than his predecessor, once declaring, “I am real estate.” He has received more than $150,000 in donations from people working in real estate in support of his reelection.
The Fifth Avenue Association is helping pay for the city’s new vision plan, along with three other private groups that manage different areas along the street: the Grand Central Partnership, the Bryant Park Association and the Central Park Conservancy.
Dan Biederman, president of the Bryant Park Corporation, a not-for-profit founded in 1980 to renovate and operate the nearly 10-acre park, similarly said his “bias” would be to preserve vehicle access in some capacity.
“You hate to, and I’m sure the merchants feel this way; you hate to say no private cars ever on Fifth. It would be very hard to do that,” Biederman said.
Transportation advocacy groups said they will be holding Adams to his early promise to use the planning process as an opportunity to increase bus speeds along Fifth Avenue. Adams must meet a local mandate to add 150 miles of bus lanes throughout the five boroughs by the end of 2025, a target he’s not on track to hit after his first year in office.
“Fifth Avenue is not just one of New York’s most famous luxury boutique destinations. It’s also a major bus corridor, which is to say the whole avenue isn’t just for tourists,” said Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director for the Riders Alliance. “It’s also for New Yorkers, including folks from upper Manhattan and the Bronx, who elected Adams mayor.”
Early renderings from the mayor’s office showing Fifth Avenue’s potential transformation reflect the plan circulated by the Fifth Avenue Association in 2021 as an alternative to the express busway, said E.J. Kalafarski, the transportation chair of Manhattan Community Board 5, which plays an advisory role on local land use issues. It preserves two lanes for buses and reduces the number of lanes for private vehicles from three to one. It also adds a bike lane, widens sidewalks and improves green space.
“Mayor Adams’ proposal definitely sounded immediately like it was inspired by the Fifth Avenue Association’s proposal,” he said.
The board previously voted in support of the Fifth Avenue Association’s concept.
The goal this time around is to strike a potential compromise with all the vested interests, at a time where there’s big appetite for post-pandemic infrastructure improvements.
“Transit is central to this issue,” said City Council Member Keith Powers, whose district includes a sizable portion of Fifth Avenue. “But to do something there and ignore the pedestrian side of the equation, you’re missing a big component of it.”
Joshi, the deputy mayor, said the city’s goal is to make the street “more than just a shopping district,” with entertainment and seating that encourages people to spend the day walking the corridor. She’s pledged not to be swayed by the sizable real estate influence helping steer the project.
“It has to be grounded in reason and fact,” she said. “Private partners may have opinions about those things, but we can’t avoid our duty to the larger public.”
Areas of the city that closed their streets to traffic at the height of the pandemic recorded a 19 percent increase in average sales at restaurants and bars compared to before, the city reported in a recent study of its Open Streets program. A December pilot program that made a stretch of Fifth Avenue car-free for three Sundays helped increase foot traffic and resulted in a “moderate” boost in sales, Wils said, without giving specifics.
The Adams administration plans to make early improvements to Fifth Avenue this year and release a construction plan in two years. The ultimate cost — and who pays — is still unclear.
The city, which recently committed $375 million in the budget for new parks and plazas, expects it won’t be moving forward alone.
“Part of having a vested interest means you’re vested, and that often takes dollars,” Joshi said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Karachi: Karachi had witnessed 140 street crimes, including three murders and 36 incidents of cash snatching, ARY News reported.
Presenting a detailed copy of the criminal record in Karachi, Additional Inspector General (AIG) spokesperson said as many as 140 street crime incidents took place in the region in a single day.
The data was presented by AIG Javed Alam Odho to Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah.
The report further revealed that two vehicles and eight motorcycles were snatched, whereas, 9 vehicles including 85 motorcycles were stolen. Six shootouts took place between the criminals and police officials, reported ARY News.
As per ARY News, 10 criminals were arrested in wounded condition while six suspected criminals were caught red-handed.
In the last 24 hours, 129 suspects were arrested including 24 street criminals, 21 car lifters, three murderers and arms recovered from 15 suspects.
Moreover, the arrested persons included 23 drug peddlers and 155 others who were involved in different crimes. Police seized 25 illegal weapons, seven kilograms of charas, 13 stolen mobiles, and 25 vehicles, according to ARY News.
Pakistan is currently facing the worst time since its creation as the country is witnessing a food crisis, devaluation of the rupee, electricity shortage, and attacks.
Earlier, in the first week of January, Karachi Police Chief Javed Alam Odho admitted that the number of street crimes increased in the year 2022 as compared to the previous year, according to The Express Tribune.
“Due to the increase in street crimes, we are witnessing a greater loss of human lives,” he said, adding that 109 people died in street crimes-related incidents during the outgoing year, whereas in 2021, only 75 people were killed by robbers.
The Karachi police chief claimed that from 2021 to 2022, the overall crime rate decreased by 15.4 per cent.
“In the year 2022, street crime increased by 7 percent, however, the city has the least number of murders compared to other cities,” he said.
Odho said that 8,866 suspects were arrested in the incidents of street crimes, 110 suspects were arrested for extortion and 5,420 were held in carjacking and theft cases.
Odhu said 129 suspects were killed in 889 police encounters in 2022 while a total of 38,286 accused were arrested. Additionally, Karachi police arrested 8,632 drug dealers during the year, The Express Tribune reported.
He said that drugs and illegal weapons have always been a big problem for the police. The accountability of the police officers is necessary, and encouragement for good performance could also be done through that.
Also, in 2022, 58 cases were registered against police personnel and officers involved in crimes. Moreover, 10 police personnel were martyred and 70 injured in the battle against criminals.
The market’s expectation that the central bank will ease up is partly driven by the presence of new faces on the Fed’s seven-member board in Washington. In addition to reappointing Powell, President Joe Biden named three new members and promoted Lael Brainard, who in past years advocated for going slow on rate hikes, to Powell’s No. 2.
Other new Fed officials outside Washington are economists who have long pushed for broad and inclusive employment. Among them: Austan Goolsbee, a onetime chief economist to former President Barack Obama who recently became head of the Chicago Fed and joined his first central bank policy meeting this week.
“There’s a pretty strong view that they will ease sooner than they say they will,” said former Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig, whose tenure included the 2008 financial crisis when the economy was losing more than 700,000 jobs a month. “The pressure would be to say, ‘Well, we’re just about there, we can ease back.’”
Fed officials on Wednesday are expected to hike rates by another quarter of a percentage point, nearing the central bank’s target of 5 percent for its main borrowing rate. The aim is to get inflation down to 2 percent — less than half of where it is now.
The Fed wants to ensure that it keeps rates high long enough to bring inflation fully to heel, fearing a repeat of the 1970s and ‘80s when the central bank backed off, only to see price spikes return.
But investors are pricing in a greater than 75 percent chance that interest rates will be lower in December than in June, according to CME FedWatch. They aren’t convinced that the Fed will keep its key rate at a punishingly high level for long, particularly if inflation keeps falling and unemployment begins to spike.
Inflation has dropped for six straight months, fanning hopes that the surge in prices is on its way to ending. Quarterly data on companies’ labor costs released Tuesday shows that wage growth, a driver of inflation, also continues to tick down.
Yet even though consumer price increases have cooled, Fed officials are maintaining their tough talk with the idea of leaving borrowing costs high enough to keep inflation on its downward trend. They say wage growth will need to slow even further. And Fed policymakers have publicly been in lockstep on how fighting inflation is their most important priority.
That tone could shift if economic indicators allow some members of the rate-setting committee to make the case that inflation is easing even without a significant rise in joblessness from 3.5 percent now. The Department of Labor on Friday will report January’s employment numbers, and they’re expected to show a slower, but still steady increase in job creation.
“There is a growing contingent on the committee who will grow very uncomfortable in the second half of the year not cutting [rates] as unemployment rises,” said Derek Tang, an economist at LH Meyer Monetary Policy Analytics, a research firm chaired by former Fed Governor Larry Meyer. “By their own account, they think [the unemployment rate is] going to rise into the 4s. This is all in the service of trying to bring inflation down, but when the rubber meets the road, things might feel a bit different.”
Brainard, the Fed’s vice chair, recently pointed to high profit margins that might give companies room to hold onto workers, particularly as supply chains continue to improve and help them save some costs. That means inflation could ease further without as much of a hit to the job market, she said.
Meanwhile, getting inflation back to 2 percent in the short term might not even be feasible, depending on what’s causing it.
Officials like Goolsbee say that if the Fed tries to counteract inflation that’s caused by supply problems, rather than by overspending, that could run the risk of a recession without actually cooling prices — what’s often termed “stagflation.” That makes the risks facing the central bank more complicated, he told CNBC last year, before he joined the central bank.
“The Fed has got to balance out some things it doesn’t normally need to balance out,” Goolsbee said at the time.
Other prominent regional Fed presidents, who have rotated out of a voting seat this year but are still part of the debate at rate-setting meetings, might also make the case for a gentler approach to the economy, such as Boston Fed chief Susan Collins. In 2019, Collins, then a professor at the University of Michigan, supported raising the central bank’s inflation target slightly above 2 percent to give more room for the job market to recover during downturns.
Still, the ultimate stance of the committee will depend on how the economy actually evolves. Even Fed officials such as Brainard or San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, who are historically considered to be “doves” — in central bank parlance, more worried about harm to the labor market than the risk of inflation — have been resolute in the face of price spikes.
Policymakers across the board have said they don’t expect to cut rates this year because they will need to stay at a high level for a while to ensure that high inflation doesn’t become embedded in the economy. That could lead the Fed to keep the brakes on much longer than markets expect.
Tim Duy, chief U.S. economist at SGH Macro Advisors, noted that more dovish officials haven’t shifted their rhetoric yet, “even given the extent to which data has turned in their direction.”
And some officials have pushed for the central bank to be even more aggressive in the face of rising prices, including Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari and St. Louis Fed President James Bullard. Kashkari, who before the pandemic was an outlier in advocating for particularly low rates, has during this bout of inflation pressed for raising rates higher than officials’ median forecast. He has a vote on rates this year, as does Goolsbee.
“I’m just wary about assuming anybody’s priors anymore,” Duy said.
Meanwhile, the direction of debate could also shift considerably if Brainard leaves; she’s currently a contender to replace Brian Deese as head of the White House National Economic Council, according to people familiar with the matter.
“Given the working relationship that she and Powell have had over several years, I think she really plays an important part in the thought leadership and the direction things are moving,” said Claudia Sahm, a former senior economist at the Fed.
Still, even given Brainard’s worker focus, she will be pragmatic about how much progress is being made against inflation, Sahm said. “Maybe later in the year it will matter, but for now, dove, hawk, moderate — they’re going after inflation.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
London: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office has been forced to defend the country’s economic performance on Tuesday after a dire International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast that the UK is set to fare worse than any other country in the developed world.
In the latest update of its economic forecasts, the IMF said that it expected the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) to contract by 0.6 percent in 2023, a downgrade from its previous assessment.
Downing Street insisted that the UK’s economy is strong despite the IMF warning that Britain’s economy will go into reverse this year.
“The IMF itself said that UK economic policy is now on the right track,” Sunak’s official spokesperson told reporters.
The spokesperson added that the UK outperformed many forecasts last year and was “predicted to grow faster than Germany and Japan over the coming years”.
The Opposition Labour Party raised an urgent question in the House of Commons on the IMF forecast and blamed it on 13 years of a Conservative Party led government’s “failure”.
“Today’s IMF assessment holds a mirror up to the wasted opportunities and it is not a pretty sight,” said Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor.
“The UK is the only major economy forecast to shrink this year. Weaker growth compared to our competitors for both of the next two years. The world upgraded, Britain downgraded. Growth even worse than sanctions-hit Russia,” said Reeves.
IMF said in its latest analysis that while the broader global economy was doing better than expected, with inflation having peaked and investment beginning to turn around, the UK economy would face a downgrade “reflecting tighter fiscal and monetary policies and financial conditions and still-high energy retail prices weighing on household budgets”.
UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said of the forecast: “The governor of the Bank of England recently said that any UK recession this year is likely to be shallower than previously predicted, however these figures confirm we are not immune to the pressures hitting nearly all advanced economies.
“Short-term challenges should not obscure our long-term prospects the UK outperformed many forecasts last year, and if we stick to our plan to halve inflation, the UK is still predicted to grow faster than Germany and Japan over the coming years.”
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The person who left the bomb that exploded in Istanbul (Turkey) was arrested by police, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said on Monday, according to the state-run Anadolu agency’s English-language Twitter account.
On Sunday, an explosion rocked a busy pedestrian street in central Istanbul’s Istiklal Avenue, killing six people and injuring 81 others in what Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called it as a bomb strike that “smells like terrorism.”
Istanbul Terror attack
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the “vile attack” that ripped through central Istanbul on Sunday, killing six people and injuring dozens more.
“Our state’s relevant units are working to find the perpetrators… behind this heinous act,” President Erdogan said during a televised press conference on Sunday, according to AFP.
Turkish media also published a photo of a woman suspected of involvement in terrorist attack.
Image Source: Twitter
He also stated that first indications pointed to a “terror” attack in the Istanbul explosion.
A strong explosion of unknown origin shook the busy shopping street of Istiklal in Istanbul on Sunday, leaving six people dead and wounding dozens more, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. Turkey’s vice president said a suicide bomber carried out the attack.
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