|By S. K. Basu| Since time immemorial Afghanistan has been a flashpoint of human history in Asia. From the days of the reign of the erstwhile Persian Empire till the time of invasion by Alexander, Afghanistan has continued to see bloody battles that stretched into the Colonial Era and the period the Great Games between British and Russian Empires, World Wars, the infamous Russian occupation to the […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The Port Fund called on the general manager of the Kuwait Port Authority (KPA), Sheik Yousef Al-Abdullah, to correct misstatements he made in a CNBC Arabia interview aired on Tuesday, January 8, 2019 regarding The Port Fund and its efforts to distribute $496 million to its investors and stakeholders. The general manager made inaccurate statements that conflict with the official position of the […]
By James M. Dorsey Traditionally focussed on ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim Islam, Saudi funding in the era of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has been streamlined and finetuned to ensure that it serves his geopolitical ambitions, primarily stymying the expansion of Iranian influence in the Middle East and North Africa and enhancing the kingdom’s global impact. The effort, however, has so far produced a mixed bag. Spending is […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Dubai Land Department (DLD) recorded an unprecedented growth in the last ten days of 2018, Sultan Butti bin Mejren, Director General of DLD, announced. The-transaction volume during the last ten days of 2018 was worth over AED 19 billion through 2,081 transactions. .Bin Mejren added: “This activity affirms the attractiveness of Dubai’s real estate sector, specifically the demand from buyers and investors who are […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The CEOs Advisory Council of the UAE Banks Federation (UBF) reviewed the adoption of Blockchain to enhance know your customer (KYC) processes at banks. Other key topics on the agenda included Emiratization, and digital transformation. AbdulAziz Al Ghurair, Chairman of UAE Banks Federation, said: “As part of our efforts aimed at creating and sustaining a thriving banking ecosystem, we have undertaken a number […]
|By James M. Dorsey| A series of Gulf and Middle East-related developments suggest that resolving some of the Middle East’s most debilitating and devastating crises while ensuring that efforts to pressure Iran do not perpetuate the mayhem may be easier said than done. They also suggest that the same is true for keeping US and Saudi interests aligned. Optimists garner hope from the fact that the US Senate may […]
|By Raj Samani |As 2018 draws to a close, we should perhaps be grateful that the year has not been entirely dominated by ransomware, although the rise of the GandCrab and SamSam variants show that the threat remains active. Our predictions for 2019 move away from simply providing an assessment on the rise or fall of a particular threat, and instead focus on current rumblings we see […]
James M. Dorsey The killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and potential Western sanctions against Saudi Arabia has sparked renewed debate about the value of the longstanding alliance between the United States and the kingdom. The debate is not limited to the US or the kingdom, both of which are assessing the reliability of the other even if that is a debate that is waged in Saudi Arabia behind […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Barwa Bank and International Bank of Qatar (ibq) have announced that they have signed a final agreement regarding the merger of the two banks to create a leading Sharia compliant financial institution with a solid financial position and robust liquidity to support Qatar’s economic growth and finance development initiatives in line with Qatar National Vision 2030. According to this merger agreement, the two […]
|By Allan Leinwand| According to a recent research report from PwC, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to account for approximately 13.6% of the United Arab Emirates’ GDP in 2030. However, AI is seen by many as being either a hero or a villain. On one hand, AI is currently driving nearly every CIO’s agenda because it intelligently automates work processes, making it possible to do things that have never been […]
By James M. Dorsey The failure of Western allies to rally around Canada in its dispute with Saudi Arabia risks luring the kingdom into a false belief that economic sanctions will shield it from, if not reverse mounting criticism of its human rights record and conduct of the war in Yemen. It also risks convincing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that acting with impunity will not impinge on […]
By James M. Dorsey China appears to be shifting gears in its multi-billion dollar Belt and Road initiative. Long projected as driven by economics and the benefit of infrastructure linkages, China appears to be increasingly adding a security component to the initiative against the backdrop of President Xi Jinping positioning of his country as a superpower rather than a developing nation. The emergence of a security component […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Hindustan Infralog Private Limited (HIPL), a joint venture between DP World and the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), announced closure of the transaction to acquire 90% stake in Continental Warehousing Corporation (Nhava Seva) Ltd. CWCNSL’s founders, the Reddy family, will retain the remaining 10% shareholding and will remain involved in the business operations. It is the first investment of HIPL, the recently created […]
By James M. Dorsey Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman could well dash expectations that he is gunning for a break with Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism rather than a shaving off of the rough edges of Wahhabi ideology that has been woven into the kingdom’s fabric since its founding more than eighty years ago. Prince Mohammed has fuelled expectations by fostering Islamic scholars who advocate a revision of […]
By James M. Dorsey Nothing in a swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to China is undisputed. Food is often emblematic of disputes over identity, history and political claims that underlie an arc of crisis wracked by ethnic and religious conflict; clamour for political, economic, social, national and minority rights; efforts by states and ethnic groups to garner soft power or assert hegemony, […]
|By Saifur Rahman, Executive Editor| The International Monetary Fund (IMF) finally recognised the Islamic banking principles by endorsing a proposal on the use of the Core Principles for Islamic Finance Regulation (CPIFR), according to a statement. This effectively means that the IMF now accepts Islamic financial principles to become a globally accepted system in parallel to the conventional interest-based economy. “The CPIFR will complement the international architecture for financial […]
| M A Hossain |United States has walked- out of the Iran deal that had been touted mainly by Barack Obama. Washington’s argument in this latest development is pretty clear. In their opinion, Iran though had stopped its nuclear development program, still was pursuing the ballistic missile development project. Meaning, Tehran did not abandon its nuclear ambition. Most importantly, Iran is seen as a potential threat to […]
By James M. Dorsey A Saudi Moroccan soccer spat speaks volumes about the depth of change in the Arab world. The spat over Saudi Arabia’s refusal to support a Moroccan bid for the hosting rights of the 2026 World Cup tells the tale of the rise of individual country nationalism at the expense of Arab solidarity, Saudi determination to safeguard its alliance with the United States at whatever cost, […]
By James M. Dorsey The Gulf crisis that pits a United Arab Emirates-Saudi-led alliance against Qatar is escalating in discreet but no less worrisome ways that effect major third-party commercial interests and could increase international pressure for a resolution of the dispute. In a major shift away from Saudi and UAE restraint in attempting to force the international community and multi-nationals from taking sides in the 11-month […]
By James M. Dorsey Bangladesh, in a twist of irony, is looking to Saudi Arabia to fund a $ 1 billion plan to build hundreds of mosques and religious centres to counter militant Islam that for much of the past decade traced its roots to ultra-conservative strands of the faith promoted by a multi-billion dollar Saudi campaign. The Bangladeshi plan constitutes the first effort by a Muslim country to enlist […]
By James M. Dorsey There’s a cutting-off-the-nose-to-spite-the face aspect to a Saudi plan to turn Qatar into an island by digging a 60-kilometre ocean channel through the two countries’ land border that would accommodate a nuclear waste heap as well as a military base. If implemented, the channel would signal the kingdom’s belief that relations between the world’s only two Wahhabi states will not any time soon return to […]
By James M. Dorsey Iranian leaders are struggling, three months after anti-government protests swept the Islamic republic, to ensure that environmental issues that helped sparked a popular uprising in Syria in 2011 leading to a brutal civil war don’t threaten the clergy’s grip on power. Like Syria, Iran has been confronting a drought that has affected much of the country for more than a decade with precipitation dropping to its lowest […]
By James M. Dorsey In his effort to improve Saudi Arabia’s badly tarnished image and project the kingdom as embracing an unidentified form of moderate Islam, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has hinted that he envisions a conservative rather than an ultra-conservative society, but not one in which citizens are fully free to make personal, let alone political choices of their own. Prince Mohammed’s vision, although […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Hindustan Infralog Private Limited (HIPL), a joint venture between DP World and the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), announces the acquisition of a 90% stake in Continental Warehousing Corporation (Nhava Seva) Ltd (CWCNSL), an integrated multimodal logistics player in India. CWCNSL’s founders, the Reddy family, will retain the remaining 10% shareholding and will remain involved in the business operations. The purchase consideration is […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) announced the signing of two historic agreements awarding Italy’s multinational oil and gas company Eni stakes in two of Abu Dhabi’s offshore concession areas. Eni joins an Indian consortium, led by ONGC Videsh, and Japan’s INPEX as stakeholders in the Lower Zakum concession. The awards mark the first time an Italian energy company has been given concession rights in Abu Dhabi’soil and gas sector. […]
While there are many ways in which medical science is using digital techniques and artificial intelligence (AI) to make life-saving decisions., the science and art of animation holds the potential to help revolutionize healthcare. Once the province of movies and cartoons, more realistic computer-generated imagery in medical science is providing solace to patients undergoing harsh treatments. And at the meeting point of movies and medicine, doctors are […]
Heart Disease – An infographic by GeriatricNursing.org Every year over 1.2 million people suffer from a heart attack due to coronary heart disease. The probability that a person may die from heart attack is 40 out of 100. According to the latest estimations, more than 335,000 of these heart attack patients are estimated to die even before reaching the hospital or the emergency ward. In the […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Gold prices were on track for their biggest weekly fall since May ahead of US employment data later that could influence the pace of US interest rate rises. The yellow metal broke below a recent trading range and tumbled through technical levels to its lowest since July as progress on US tax reform fuelled optimism about the US economy and boosted the dollar. […]
|By Alaa Al Ghamdi| One of the most common distinctions made in the discourse of international relations is that of hard versus soft power. Hard power refers to traditional modes of influencing international relations through force, such as through military might or economic power (such as withholding a critical natural resource like oil). Soft power refers to cultural power, such as the arts, intellectual ideas, and tourism. Saudi […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| In a major endorsement to Saudi economic reforms initiated by Crown Prince Mohammad Salman, a top executive of American financial giant Bank of America Merrill Lynch said Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation will be “unstoppable” and there has already been a positive shift in the Kingdom’s business culture. Hootan Yazhari, managing director of the bank’s Dubai-based research department, said there are key moves being […]
