|By Arabian Post Staff| Dubai is seeking $2.5 billion in loans to finance a 15-kilometer extension of its metro line to the World Expo site, Bloomberg reported quoting unnamed sources. The news agency said banks have submitted various proposals, including a $1.34 billion facility backed by European export credit agencies. Lenders also bid for a $1.12 billion unsecured, commercial facility that is guaranteed by the Dubai government, […]
|By Matein Khalid| When Ben Bernanke uttered the word “taper” in May 2013, he triggered a bloodbath in emerging markets and a free fall in “fragile five” currencies that included the Indian rupee and the Indonesian rupiah. However, Asian equities markets, while not immune to a Fed rate hike, are far better positioned for higher US dollar interest rates than in 2013, let alone 2007 or 1998. […]
WASHINGTON — The United States’ accidental bombing of Syrian troops over the weekend has put it on the defensive, undercutting American efforts to reduce violence in the civil war and open paths for humanitarian relief. The United States had thought that if a deal to ease hostilities in Syria, struck by Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart in Geneva nine days ago, fell apart, […]
The Interpreter By MAX FISHER You could be forgiven, after five years of Syria’s war dominating front pages, for feeling lost. It is easy to track the war’s toll: It has killed 400,000 people, displaced millions, opened space for the Islamic State, and sucked in foreign powers, including the United States. It is harder to keep track of the how and why. The basics can seem even […]
|By Luzi-Ann Javier| Central bankers are putting gold investors and traders on the defensive. More than 2,500 lots exchanged hands Friday for a put option giving owners the right to sell October futures at $1,300 an ounce, making it the most-traded option for the second straight day. The most active contract on the Comex slipped as much as 0.6 percent to $1,334.10. Holdings in exchange-traded funds backed by […]
By Francesco Guarascio and Jason Hovet | BRATISLAVA BRATISLAVA Multinationals should refrain from tax avoidance practices and pay their fair share of taxes, the head of euro zone finance ministers said on Saturday, in a new endorsement to the European Union fight against tax dodging. In the wake of the ‘Panama Papers’ revelations of widespread tax avoidance practices, Brussels has toughened up its drive […]
By Laurence Frost and Gilles Guillaume | PARIS PARIS Renault expects diesel engines to disappear from most of its European cars, company sources told Reuters, after the French automaker reviewed the costs of meeting tighter emissions standards following the Volkswagen scandal. The sober reassessment was delivered at an internal meeting before the summer break. It shows how, a year after VW admitted engineering software to cheat U.S. […]
By Tom Bergin | LONDON LONDON Apple CEO Tim Cook has said he will appeal the European Commission’s ruling that his company received an unlawful 13 billion euro ($14.5 billion) subsidy when Ireland gave it preferential tax deals and that he was confident the decision would be reversed. But over a dozen lawyers, including three advising companies on appeals, told Reuters it was impossible to predict how […]
Apple Says Several Billion Dollars Set Aside for U.S. Taxes Apple’s chief executive says the company has put aside “several billion dollars” to pay tax liabilities in the United States as it repatriates some of its huge overseas earnings. Tim Cook told Irish state network RTE in an interview broadcast Thursday that the money, part of profits from 2014, should be brought back to the U.S. next […]
BRUSSELS The European Commission rejected on Thursday Apple’s criticism that an EU order to the company to pay back taxes to Ireland was political, noting the calculations were based on facts and Apple’s own data. In an interview with the Irish Independent, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook on Thursday described the EU’s imposition of a 13 billion euro ($14.5 billion) back tax bill as “total political crap” […]
DUBLIN The European Union’s imposition of a 13 billion euro ($14.5 billion) back tax bill on Apple (AAPL.O) is “total political crap”, Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a newspaper interview on Thursday, and anti-U.S. bias may have played a role. But in a separate radio interview he vowed to boost Apple’s tax payments by repatriating billions of dollars in global profits to the United States next […]
In-depth review charts the scientific understanding of rainbows and highlights the many practical applications of this fascinating interaction between light, liquid and gas. There’s more to rainbows than meets the eye. Knowledge gained from studying these multicoloured arcs of scattered light can be incredibly useful in ways that may not immediately spring to mind. Rainbow effects can warn of chemical contamination in the atmosphere, help to develop […]
By ROD NORDLAND and ERIC SCHMITT August 13, 2016 CAIRO — American military drones monitored Islamic State militants loading up hundreds of cars, buses and trucks with fighters and civilians and fleeing the city of Manbij, Syria, on Friday, as Syrian rebels advanced and the extremists lost yet another stronghold. On Wednesday, the Libyan city of Surt, held by the Islamic State for more than a year, also fell to pro-government […]
Bomb-blasted roads, frequent blackouts, shortages of basic equipment and an untested consumer market are hardly conditions that make for natural entrepreneurial opportunities. But three Army veterans and one civilian who all served in Afghanistan have taken on those challenges in their new venture. Their company, Rumi Spice, buys saffron from Afghan farmers and sells it to international customers. Their business is part of a small crop of […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Marya Group, headquartered in Abu Dhabi, announced an increase to its investment portfolio, bringing the total invested to more than $ 1 billion. Marya Group focuses on making private and public equity investments in cash-generating business with strong fundamentals across core economic sectors that are resilient: education, health care, food and beverage processing as well as real estate. Its investments are centered on […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|After a period of near desperation, oil is once again getting into the limelight, with crude trading near the highest close in two weeks in the wake of OPEC plans for informal talks to control supply. Qatar Oil Minister Mohammed Al Sada said the other day that OPEC members are in “constant deliberations” on stabilizing the market, although it is not clear if there […]
When Shahram Amiri emerged from the shadows into the spotlight six years ago, he was a young Iranian scientist who suddenly appeared on YouTube from a safe house, telling a bizarre story of having been kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency. Then, in another video that quickly followed, his story changed: He had come to the United States voluntarily to study, but desperately missed his son back […]
UAE. [ME NewsWire] –The latest Global Economic Conditions Survey (GECS) from ACCA and IMA, suggested positive signs for businesses in the GCC but a stark forewarning of how the shock of Brexit will hit a fragile recovery in global business confidence. Responding to the findings, Lindsay Degouve de Nuncques, head of ACCA Middle East said: “It is encouraging to see that our members’ business confidence has improved […]
The fate of billions of dollars in investments in Turkish bonds hangs in the balance as Moody’s Investors Service prepares to reveal whether it’s handing the country a second junk rating on its debt. Moody’s, which put Turkey on review for a downgrade immediately after a failed military plot to oust the government last month, currently ranks the nation’s debt at Baa3, its lowest rung within investment […]
BREMEN, Germany — Believing he was answering a holy call, Harry Sarfo left his home in the working-class city of Bremen last year and drove for four straight days to reach the territory controlled by the Islamic State in Syria. He barely had time to settle in before members of the Islamic State’s secret service, wearing masks over their faces, came to inform him and his German […]
INTERNATIONAL. – Higher GDP per capita alone does not determine real quality of life. This is according to the Social Progress Index (SPI) 2016 published recently by US-based nonprofit, the Social Progress Imperative. The Index ranks Finland the world’s most socially progressive country, Canada in second place tops the G7 nations. Economic growth is not the sole determinant of quality of life The 2016 Index finds that whist […]
Faster, higher, stronger: those are the three qualities captured in the official Olympic Games motto “Citius, altius, fortius”– to which some will want to add “dubious”. With doping seemingly rife in sport generally and the Russian Olympic team in trouble, it’s hard to see the Rio Games as the embodiment of the famous dictum of Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, that it’s not the […]
Astronomers at the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) discovered for the first time that the hot gas in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy is spinning in the same direction and at comparable speed as the galaxy’s disk, which contains our stars, planets, gas, and dust. This new knowledge sheds light on how individual atoms have assembled into stars, planets, […]
Bears, wolves and other large carnivores are frightening beasts but the fear they inspire in their prey pales in comparison to that caused by the human ‘super predator.’ A new study by Western University demonstrates that smaller carnivores, like European badgers, that may be prey to large carnivores, actually perceive humans as far more frightening. Globally, humans now kill smaller carnivores at much higher rates than large […]
