Kathmandu, Nepal (AHN) – Nepali Diasporas living in New York face a language barrier, creating a major challenge that causes immigrants to miss out on jobs and other opportunities in the United States.

Most of the Nepalis who reached the U.S. in search of green pastures are at the receiving end of downward socio-economic mobility, forcing them to lower their living standards in order to survive and support family members back home, a study has revealed.

“While in Nepal, people have dreams of doing well in the U.S. However, there is a huge difference between what you think of America and when you actually come here,” says New York-based non-profit organisation Adhikaar. “People have to work really hard to survive here.”

“Even if you are educated, you won’t be able to find a job of your choice if you don’t have the [right] documents,” a Nepali worker told the group. “You can earn money here, but not respect.”

Much of the problems faced by the Nepali-speaking community in New York City are typical of those faced by emerging communities. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 is not enough to survive and support a family in New York City, the report adds. Making matters worse, migrant workers in the informal sector are often exploited by the employers and are paid below the legal minimum wage.

The report titled “Snapshots of the Nepali-speaking Community in New York City: Demographics and Challenges” reveals that language barrier has become a major challenge for most of the Nepali-speaking people in finding jobs and other services. For example, many Nepalis in the U.S. do not have health insurance, and almost three-fourths of them face challenges in obtaining healthcare.

Many Nepali migrants are unable to transfer their work experience, skills and education from Nepal. Over half of the Nepalis in New York were involved in business or a professional sector in Nepal. While most Nepali immigrants are able to find jobs in New York, they are often low-wage jobs consuming long hours and providing few benefits. While immigration status is a reason for Nepali immigrants doing low-wage jobs, it is not the only one, the report adds. “Nearly half of the respondents to survey have the legal right to work in the U.S., yet most of them faced challenges.”

The most common types of job for men are works in restaurant, gas station, taxi or limousine and moving industry, while women often work as domestic workers and at nail salons or beauty parlours. Report has it that those who intend to earn degrees find themselves unable to attain their goal due to the number of hours they must work to pay for their education and living expenses.

View full post on Social Issue Stories

Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.

View full post on Business Stories

Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.

View full post on Business Stories

Dubai, United Arab Emirates Michael Grubb – Dubai International Airport, the largest in the Gulf, is outpacing the world aviation industry’s recovery this year as it capitalizes on its role as a pivot for business travelers arbitraging between a struggling Europe and the burgeoning economies of Asia. But analysts warn that Dubai’s success makes it a likely magnet for new competition.

Traffic through Dubai International rose by close to 16 percent in the first nine months of the year, well ahead of the 12.9 percent average increase in the Asia-Pacific market, making it the world’s fastest growing, according to Airports Council International. The pace of growth for Dubai continued in October, when traffic exceeded 4 million people for the second time ever, Dubai Airports reported Wednesday.

Aviation is a big and thriving business for tiny Dubai, whose economy is otherwise struggling with some $100 billion of real estate debt. Dubai is home to the world’s 14th busiest airport, just behind New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and ahead of Amsterdam’s Schiphol. The number of people passing through the airport in October alone was equal to more than twice the country’s entire population.

Dubai Airports has ambitious plans for expanding. Annual capacity at Dubai International will grow from 60 million passengers to 75 million next year when it dedicates Concourse 3, the world’s only facility dedicated to servicing the Airbus A380, the largest passenger airliner in the world.

Meanwhile, a second airport, the Al-Maktoum International, is under development next door. Al-Maktoum began cargo operations six months ago and will be opening for passenger travel in March 2011.

Dubai Airports is expecting growth to continue at a strong double-digit rate in 2011, with annual passenger traffic jumping 13.1 percent to 52.2 million from a forecast 46.1 million for all of 2010. Dubai’s flag carrier Emirates is counting on its passenger numbers growing 10 percent next year while the discount carrier Flydubai forecasts its traffic doubling.

“Before the end of the decade passenger numbers will approach 90 million making Dubai International the busiest airport in the world in terms of international passenger traffic,” Paul Griffiths, chief executive officer of Dubai Airports, said last week.

But Dubai’s airports – and its airlines — are vulnerable to emerging competition because it is entirely dependent on funneling passengers from Europe and Asia through its airports and sending them on to their final destinations, he said. The airport has no domestic market and a tiny regional one. Indeed, measured by international traffic alone, Dubai rises in the world airport rankings to No. 6.

“They will have competition, the dynamics will definitely change,” Philip Butterworth-Hayes, lead consultant of the aviation advisory firm PMi Media, told The Media Line. “I would look at Indian airlines in particular. Once you have a strong home market like India, you have the ability to capture traffic.”

Dubai has not only benefited from huge investment in its airport and carriers but also from low costs, the absence of environmental constraints to airport expansion and its strategic location. Demand for Europe-Asian travel has grown as European companies focus sales on the growing economies of China and the rest of Asia while newly wealthy Asians have the disposable income to travel to Europe for holidays. Dubai is about 5,500 kilometers (3,400 miles) from London and 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) from Shanghai.

Adding to world-class airports, Dubai’s state-owned Emirates airlines has been an aggressive competitor, taking market share from hobbled European rivals by adding capacity – the airline has the biggest fleet of the giant A380s on order – and is keeping fares and costs low.

But India could match many of these assets. Mumbai, the country’s commercial capital is about 7,200 kilometers (4,500 miles) from London and 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) from Shanghai, on top of being a business and tourism destination in its own right.

As India’s economy grows, demand for domestic air travel for its 1 billion people has also increased. Domestic air traffic in India grew 15 percent in October compared with a year ago to 4.6 million passengers, the government said last week. What the country still lacks to take on Dubai is a competitive airline to service an Indian hub, Griffiths said.

“If you were to have an Emirates-like operation in India, you could make it a major hub,” he said. “But they would also benefit from the presence of a huge domestic market.”

View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories

New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Commodities prices for precious metals, oil and agricultural raw materials took the hardest fall in 18 months on news that China might take steps to avert inflation. Prices of commodities futures fell by up to 3.8 percent on news that China’s central bank might increase interest rates. The step is to prevent further inflation there after consumer prices rose by 4.4 percent in October.

Precious metals had been at near record highs before plunging. Gold dropped 2.7 percent to $1,365.50 an ounce on Friday while silver plunged 5.3 percent to $25.94 an ounce and copper fell 2.8 percent to $3.91 an ounce.

Refined sugar in London dove down by a record 12 percent while corn and soybeans on the Chicago market plunged by the exchange limit.

Oil prices also took a dip. Prices for crude oil for December delivery fell 3.4 percent to $84.81 a barrel at midday on the New York Mercantile Exchange while futures in New York dropped by as much as $3.29 on Friday.

View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories

Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.

View full post on Business Stories

|||

New York – Wall Street navigated through three major landmines last week – the elections, the US Federal Reserve meeting and jobs report – with barely a scratch. Now what?

With earnings season winding down and a light economic calendar this week, the market will be left to its own devices to sort out its direction.

A rise of more than 16 percent in the S&P 500 since the start of September had many investors expecting a pullback after the trio of big events. But it appears to have emboldened them instead.

The CBOE Volatility Index, a measure of market anxiety, has slipped below 19 and the late-week action suggests a market getting ready for more gains – not a sell-off.

“Some of the alternatives to stocks (bonds, cash, etc.) now look much less attractive, which should push money in the direction of stocks,” said Bill Luby, a private investor in San Francisco, who writes the VIX and More blog.

This will result in “reducing some of the downside risk for owning stocks, and also putting downward pressure on the VIX.”

With the Fed supporting markets through quantitative easing, rates could remain low for quite some time. That, in turn, should help stimulate borrowing and make riskier assets more attractive. It could take data of a momentous nature – something that suggests the economy is not responding to the Fed’s plan to buy $600 billion in Treasuries – to cause anything more than a minor slip-up in the market.

“What the Fed is doing is a consistent increase in money supply. Consistency will be much more important to the psyche of investors than big spikes,” said Edward Hemmelgarn, chief investment officer of Shaker Investments in Cleveland.

That feeling permeated the market even before Friday’s jobs data, which showed the fastest payroll growth in the private sector since April. It is difficult to see the market fighting Fed-led stimulus, strong corporate results and labor force improvements.

The Fed’s intentions make the search for yield even more intense, which could bolster financial stocks in coming days.

Financials climbed solidly higher on Friday, with the KBW Bank index up 2.2 percent, on talk the Fed may allow stronger banks to increase dividends. They could continue to climb as they have underperformed the rally since September.

Call volume in the Financial Select Sector ETF SPDR fund surged, as option traders exchanged about 618 000 contracts in the XLF on Friday, led by the trading of 480,000 call options. The overall options volume was three times greater than its average daily turnover, according to options analytics firm Trade Alert.

A correction might still occur, though. A number of indicators suggest the market is in position to consolidate.

The 14-day relative strength index is at 88.5. A reading above 70 usually indicates an overbought condition. However, some analysts say the indicator for an overbought market expands in a bull market. So this level may not necessarily be a bearish indicator.

Bespoke Investment Group noted the rally has put the major indexes and sectors into “extreme overbought territory” in the near-term, with the S&P 500 and six sectors at or near two standard deviations above their 50-day moving averages.

“Some sort of correction may be in order at some point from after the events of” last week, “and the ‘feel good’ holiday seasonality period looming a few weeks away,” said Robert Zavell, a derivatives analyst at Jones Trading. “Is it possible we will be up every day from now through New Year’s? I thought not every day, but you never know.”

The S&P 500 faces strong resistance at around 1228, a key retracement of the benchmark’s slide from its historic high in 2007 to the 12-year low in March 2009.

The first attempt at piercing that level in April failed and preceded a decline that took the S&P to its 2010 low in early July.

“It’s the second test of a very important number so what the market does here is pretty critical,” said Richard Ross, global technical strategist at Auerbach Grayson in New York.

“The difference from last time is that we had a pretty sizable correction from that April high, so we have a much stronger base now,” he said.

Another factor that may add fuel to the breakout is performance chasing, with investors who may be behind the rally jumping into winning stocks with the hope they will continue to gain in an effort to enhance their portfolio’s performance.

“You are seeing momentum investing – managers just moving into stocks that have been doing well,” said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Asset Management in Bedford Hills, New York. – Reuters

View full post on Business Stories

New York, NY, United States (AHN PR) – MTV Networks International has revealed the contents of the 2010 MTV EMA Goodie Bag, the ultimate in trend-setting luxury and indulgence.

MTV EMA 2010 is sponsored by the new Suzuki Swift, Calvin Klein Jeans and Dell.

Each of the performers and presenters at the 2010 MTV EMAs including host Eva Longoria will receive a fabulous MTV EMA goodie bag, with contents provided by the world’s top designers and brands.

Among the sumptuous contents of this year’s EMA Goodie Bag are the very latest must-have items for the stylish star-about-town including:

• Dell Streak – the much-talked-about tablet hits the sweet spot between traditional smartphones and larger screen tablets with its built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G connectivity, high resolution 5MP camera and VGA front facing camera
• An ultra-chic belt and buckle courtesy of pan-European sponsor Suzuki
• Ultra skinny Calvin Klein Jeans X
• Rimowa suitcases
• M.A.C make-up boxes
• Hilfiger Loud fragrances
• Fashionable Colour Codes and New Gent Swatch watches
• The very latest FLIP Ultra III and Mino III HD cameras
• Rockband 3 for Xbox
• Paolita swimwear
• Dora the Explorer in World School Day Adventure written by Shakira
• MTV Pop And Rock World Records 2011
• SpongeBob SquarePants full-size skateboard
• Limited edition signed artwork by Max Wiedemann
• Sonos S5 Wireless Multi Room music system
• Footwear by Reebok
• Cashmere & silk scarves by Charlotte Sparre
• Vanity X Cell Booster Serum
• Diamond bracelet by Shamballa Jewels
• Mobile phone purses by Deamond
• StriVectin eye serum
• Ole Henriksen skincare products
• Glass Votives by Kosta Boda
• Von Rita hat
• Limited Edition Gemini III Microphone & sE2200a Microphone from SE Electronics
• Trashy Bags bags (range of sports bags, ladies handbags, record bags)
• Thalita Jones Jewellery: handmade necklaces made from Swarovski Crystal and gem stones
• Codello black and grey scarves
• Stella McCartney body lotion and bag
• Watches by Kyboe
• Onora silver jewellery by Mojca Sapla
• Morrocanoil hair products
• Drop Watches by Ritmo Mundo.

Performers and artists at the 2010 MTV EMAs will also be able to luxuriate in the backstage spa provided courtesy of Kiara Kare.

Hosted by Eva Longoria, the MTV EMAs will broadcast live from Madrid on MTV platforms across the globe from Sunday, November 7th, 2010, 21:00 CET, and will feature performances by Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Kid Rock, Kings of Leon, Linkin Park, B.o.B & Hayley Williams, Plan B, Miley Cyrus, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Bon Jovi, Shakira and Rihanna.

MTV EMA 2010 will also stream live on www.mtvema.com and Facebook from 21:00 CET on Sunday 7 November 2010.

About the MTV EMAs

The EMAs, MTV Networks International’s global awards ceremony, celebrate the best in music, youth culture and entertainment. The annual event, now in its 17th year, broadcasts on MTV entertainment platforms around the world reaching more than 600 million households. The show is hosted in a different city each year, taking the culture and ethos of each destination to a world-wide audience. Renowned for attracting global A-list talent from across the music and entertainment spectrum, the MTV EMAs draws nominees, performers and presenters from every corner of the world, delivering groundbreaking and unforgettable performances – from the first ever holographic performance with Gorillaz in Lisbon in 2005, to Beyoncé’s infamous ‘Ring of Fire’ performance in Edinburgh in 2002 and Tokio Hotel’s ‘Wet Monsoon’ set in Munich in 2007.

EMA Voting Notes:

Winner of Best European Act, Best Push Act and Best World Stage Performance will be announced online at www.mtvema.com during the 2010 MTV EMAs on Sunday 7th November 2010

Show Credits:

The 2010 MTV EMAs is executive produced by Richard Godfrey and Jane Fraser. Co-executive producer is Bruce Gillmer with Debbie Philips as producer, Raffaele Sangiovanni as executive in charge of production, line producer Sil Mcllveen and director Paul Shyvers. The 2010 MTV EMAs is an MTV Italia S.r.l – 360°Playmaker Production for MTV NETWOKS EUROPE” © MTV NETWORKS EUROPE 2010 – All rights reserved.

About MTV Networks International:

MTV Networks International (MTVNI) includes the premier multimedia entertainment brands MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, MTVNHD, Tr3s: MTV, Musicá y Mas, TMF (The Music Factory), VIVA, Comedy Central and Game One. MTV Networks’ brands are seen globally in 645 million households in 161 territories and 34 languages via 165 locally programmed and operated TV channels and more than 500 digital media properties. The company’s diverse holdings also include interests in television syndication, digital media, publishing, home video, licensing & merchandising and feature films. MTV Networks International is a unit of Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B).

About Suzuki:

The Suzuki Motor Corporation with headquarters in Hamamatsu (Japan) is the leading international manufacturer of small automobiles and the 10th largest car manufacturer of the world. Founded in 1909, Suzuki today employs about 51,500 people around the world and has business activities in 196 countries and regions and production bases in 23 different countries and regions. In the fiscal year 2009/10 Suzuki posted 2.47 trillion Yen (18.8 billion Euro*) net sales and 79.4 billion Yen (605.03 million Euro*) operating income. Its global sales reached 2.35 million automobiles and 3.02 million motorcycles and ATV. With its three lines of business – automobiles, motorcycles and outboard motors – Suzuki embodies a unique “Way of Life!” that stands for the brand values “excitement”, “straightforward”, “value”, “sporty” and “spirit”. (* Exchange rate: 131.18 Yen/Euro)

About Calvin Klein, Inc:

Calvin Klein, Inc. is one of the leading fashion design and marketing studios in the world. It designs and markets women’s and men’s designer collection apparel and a range of other products that are manufactured and marketed through an extensive network of licensing agreements and other arrangements worldwide. Brands/lifestyles include Calvin Klein Collection, ck Calvin Klein, Calvin Klein, Calvin Klein Jeans, and Calvin Klein Underwear. Product lines under the various Calvin Klein brands include apparel, accessories, shoes, sleepwear, hosiery, socks, swimwear, belts, eyewear, watches, jewelry, coats, suits, fragrances, and cosmetics, as well as products for the home. For more information, visit www.calvinklein.com.

About Dell:

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers worldwide innovative technology, business solutions and services they trust and value. For more information, visit www.dell.com.

View full post on Economy, Business And Finance Stories

New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Norway topped the United Nations’ 2010 Quality of Life Index released Thursday. Norway was followed by Australia, New Zealand, United States and Ireland.

The European nation, which has been number one on the list since 2001 except for two years, is rich in oil resources where life expectancy is 81 years and average yearly income of Norwegians is $58,810. The average education is 12.6 years and the country’s health care system is rated excellent.

On sixth to 10th places are Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Canada, Sweden and Germany. Canada has significantly gone done to eighth place from fourth place in 2009.

On the opposite end is African nation Zimbabwe, which has been the cellar dweller for the past five years. The average life expectancy of a Zimbabwean is only 47 years, while yearly average income is a paltry $176.

Also on the bottom list are other African nations such as Mozambique, Burundi, Niger and Congo.

Economic growth has spurred the upward movement of some countries in the list such as China, Indonesia and South Korea. China ranked 89th and is on the High Development group.

View full post on Social Issue Stories