Two weeks after a Tunisian man, Anis Amri, whose German asylum request had been rejected, rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market and was later shot dead by Italian police, the German state prosuector’s office said on Monday that a Syrian migrant who arrived in Germany two years ago was arrested on suspicion of seeking money from the Islamic State, to drive truck bombs into crowds. […]
Photo The remains of a suicide car bombing on Monday in a bustling outdoor market in Baghdad’s eastern Sadr City district. Credit Karim Kadim/Associated Press BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber detonated a pickup truck loaded with explosives on Monday in a busy Baghdad market, killing at least 36 people hours after President François Hollande of France arrived in the Iraqi capital. The Islamic State later claimed responsibility […]
Venezuela has issued $5bn in new bonds to state-run Banco de Venezuela in a private placement, as it seeks cash for imports of food and medicine as the country struggles with critical shortages of basic goods. France-based Global Emerging Markets Group said it advised on structuring and executing the deal. The operation was underwritten by China’s Haitong Securities, according to two bond traders who had seen preliminary […]
Doha, 02 January 2017 The global publishing, research and consultancy firm Oxford Business Group (OBG) has appointed a new team to oversee its latest project in Qatar. Izabela Kruk takes on the role of country director, while Simon Gaillard will be the Group’s editorial manager for The Report: Qatar 2017. Kruk moves into her new post from Nigeria, where she contributed to the Group’s most recent report […]
By Gul Yousafzai | QUETTA, Pakistan QUETTA, Pakistan Pakistan began a special five-day polio immunisation campaign in the southwestern city of Quetta on Monday for children under five after a rare strain of the virus was found in sewage samples, officials said. Local officials said they had recruited Muslim clerics to promote the immunisations for 400,000 children after past programmes were met with resistance and even violence […]
In a time of great change; upheaval of norms and establishment status quo dissolution, there is one steadfast member of the elite that the world can rely on to never change – no matter how the facts around him do. Nobel-prize-winner Paul Krugman has begun the year as he ended the last, with a New York Times’ op-ed exclaiming that “America has become a ‘Stan’.” In 2015 […]
The awards celebrates the top global banks on their performance through the year. Saudi Arabia, 2 January 2017 Alawwal Bank won The Banker’s ‘Bank of the Year’ (Saudi Arabia) at a ceremony hosted in London, England. The award win caps off a momentous year for the bank and follows a series of award wins in 2016 including ‘Best Mobile Application for Banking’ and ‘Best Call Center’. The […]
MANAMA, BAHRAIN – 02 January 2017 Ithmaar Bank B.S.C., a Bahrain-based Islamic retail bank, announced today (ed note: 020117) that it has obtained final approval from the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB), the Kingdom’s banking and financial services regulator on the completion of all requirements with respect to the reorganisation plan. This aims to further develop the growth achieved in Ithmaar Bank’s core retail banking business, the […]
By Alonso Soto | BRASILIA BRASILIA Around 60 people have been killed in a bloody prison riot sparked by a war between rival drug gangs in the Amazon jungle city of Manaus, officials said on Monday, in some of the worst violence in years in Brazil’s overcrowded penitentiary system. The head of security for Amazonas state, Sergio Fontes, told a news conference that the death toll could […]
LONDON Digital currency bitcoin kicked off the new year by jumping above $1,000 for the first time in three years late on Sunday, having outperformed all central-bank-issued currencies with a 125 percent climb in 2016. Bitcoin – a web-based “cryptocurrency” that has no central authority, relying instead on thousands of computers across the world that validate transactions and add new bitcoins to the system – jumped 2.5 […]
BP has opted out of the first wave of agreements to develop oil and gas reserves in Iran after the lifting of international sanctions — setting it apart from its two biggest European rivals Royal Dutch Shell and Total. Iran has struck a series of deals with foreign energy groups in recent weeks, including Total and Shell, and plans to award more contracts early in 2017 as […]
Welcome to a new year and the pressing market issues facing investors as they look to put money to work and navigate 2017. Geopolitical surprises upended expectations last year and few predicted that 2016 would end with a global bull market in equities, while bond yields remain relatively low. Will strategists be any better at forecasting this time around? Here are the big questions that will preoccupy […]
By Elizabeth Pineau | BAGHDAD BAGHDAD France will fight any French jihadists it finds on the battlefields of Iraq, arrest them if they return home and work to de-radicalise their children, President Francois Hollande said on a visit to Baghdad on Monday. There are about 60 French citizens fighting alongside Islamic State militants in the northern city of Mosul alone and hundreds more in the rest of […]
CAIRO Islamic State claimed responsibility on Monday for a New Year’s Day mass shooting in a packed Istanbul nightclub that killed 39 people, an attack carried out by a lone gunman who remains at large. The jihadist group made the claim in a statement on one of its Telegram channels, a method it has used to claim attacks in the past. There was no immediate comment from […]
MOGADISHU A suicide car bomb exploded at a checkpoint outside the main African peacekeepers (AMISOM) base in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Monday, police said. “A suicide car bomb rammed into the checkpoint outside the AMISOM base,” Abdikadir Hussein, a police officer, told Reuters. “There are Somali security forces at the checkpoint and it is too early to know the number of casualties.” A Reuters photographer at […]
Chinese companies invested a record $45.6bn in the US in 2016 despite a US presidential campaign heavy on China bashing, but Donald Trump’s imminent arrival in Washington is among factors making the feat unlikely to be matched this year, according to a new report. The surge in Chinese foreign direct investment into the US documented by Rhodium Group, a research firm, led the annual flow of corporate […]
In the last two months of the year, financial markets responded to the unanticipated election of Donald Trump in a textbook fashion — not only at the asset class level, with the major moves up in stocks and government yields, but also within asset classes as financials and the dollar surged. In doing so, they were responding to prospects for higher growth, inflation and market inflows following […]
Submitted by Federico Pieraccini via Strategic-Culture.org, The two previous articles have focused on the various geopolitical theories, their translations into modern concepts, and practical actions that the United States has taken in recent decades to aspire to global dominance. This segment will describe how Iran, China and Russia have over the years adopted a variety of economic and military actions to repel the continual assault on their sovereignty by the […]
BAGHDAD At least 10 people were killed and 35 wounded by a car bomb in a busy square in Baghdad’s sprawling Sadr City district on Monday, police and medical sources said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack but Islamic State regularly targets civilian areas in the heavily fortified capital, even after losing most of the northern and western territory it seized in 2014. […]
BEIRUT: Syrian government warplanes resumed their bombardment of a rebel-held valley near Damascus on Sunday after nearly 24 hours with no air raids, a rebel official and monitors said, during the third day of a fragile cease-fire.The truce deal, brokered by Russia and Turkey which back opposing sides in the conflict and welcomed unanimously by the United Nations Security Council, has been repeatedly violated since it began, […]
BAKU An explosion has occurred at a gas pipeline near Azerbaijan’s capital Baku early on Monday, the country’s Emergencies Ministry said, the second such incident in a week. An explosion hit the Baku-Alyat pipeline at around 0700 local time (0300 GMT), causing a fire that the ministry said had been contained. It gave no reason for the accident and there were no reports of casualties. Last week, […]
By Christine Kim | SEOUL SEOUL Danish police have arrested the daughter of a woman at the centre of a South Korean influence-peddling scandal that has engulfed President Park Geun-hye, police and prosecutors said on Monday. The scandal has led to Park’s impeachment by parliament on December 9, paralysed the government and drawn hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets of the capital, Seoul, for weekly […]
Donald Trump’s Indonesian business partner, a billionaire developer and media mogul, has announced he might run for president in Indonesia’s 2019 elections. “If there is no one I can believe who can fix the problems of the country, I may try to run for president,” Hary Tanoesoedibjo told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “Not for myself, for the country,” he said, adding that the nation of about 260 […]
IHG receives Qatar Financial Markets Authority (QFMA) approval for IPO: Doha, January 1st, 2017 Investment Holding Group (IHG), one of the leading contracting and trading firms in the Qatari construction sector, today announced that it has received approval from the Qatar Financial Markets Authority (QFMA) to list 60% of the Group’s paid-up share capital through an Initial Public Offering (IP0), making it the first Qatari family business […]
