News related to
First Half

|By Arabian Post Staff| The global oil market will most likely remain oversupplied for the rest of 2016 and well into 2017, rating agency Standard & Poor’s has forecast. The view has been attributed to global oil production remaining in excess of demand, and the resulting persistently high crude oil and product inventories putting spot prices and near-term futures under significant pressure. Members of the Organization of […]

Sometimes, things don’t turn out like we expect. This is the case with Chevrolet and the Chevelle. It started as a conventional car but evolved into a road warrior, carrying the muscle car torch for a new generation. The Chevelle had a body-on-frame design that, while basic, really unlocked its potential as a muscle machine. There was a time when the LS6 Chevelle was the fastest American car […]

|By Arabian Post Staff| The extent to which the economic slowdown has affected the performance of companies is fairly well known. Still, when Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund and corporate entity Mubadala announced its half yearly result, it came as a shocker. The Mubadala Development Co., which has announced a merger with International Petroleum Investment Co., has posted a first half loss of AED 4.43 billion ($1.2 […]

Apple announced its newest iPhones, the 7 and 7 plus, which are water and dust resistant. Analysts say the new iPhones could help Apple recover modestly from a recent dip in sales. But with few expected dramatic changes from previous models, Apple watchers aren’t expecting the kind of big spikes in consumer demand that the company saw two years ago, when it introduced larger screens. Apple sold […]

SAUDI ARABIA.  Saudi Arabia’s non-oil private sector continued on its upward trajectory in August, with business conditions improving to the greatest extent in a year. Output and new business remained the key growth drivers – both rose sharply and more quickly than in July. Employment and input stocks also increased, with a number of companies looking to expand capacity in line with rising workloads. Meanwhile, price pressures […]

By Adam Jourdan and Paul Carsten | SHANGHAI/BEIJING SHANGHAI/BEIJING Judging by the volume of online chatter, there’s a lot less buzz in China ahead of this week’s expected launch of the new Apple Inc iPhone, and people on the street say they’re more likely to “wait and see” what the latest device offers than rush out to buy. Posts on China’s popular Sina Weibo microblogging site show […]

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. […]

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By Joseph Menn | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO Apple Inc issued a patch on Thursday to fix a dangerous security flaw in iPhones and iPads after researchers discovered that a prominent United Arab Emirates dissident’s phone had been targeted with a previously unknown method of hacking.   The thwarted attack on the human rights activist, Ahmed Mansoor, used a text message that invited him to click on […]

ABU DHABI // Few people can say they have braved subzero temperatures and the virtually uninhabited, ice-covered landmass of Antarctic, but Fatma Al Sahlawi Al Ali can add her name to that list. After enduring mountainous hikes in the blistering cold, witnessing crumbling icebergs, observing fur seals, humpback whales and penguins on the frozen continent and plunging into icy waters during her expedition earlier this year, the […]

Are you ready for a smartphone battery that lasts twice as long as your current one? According to researchers, that battery is coming. MIT News reported this week that a new kind of lithium battery is on the way to being commercialized. Called lithium metal batteries, they can reportedly pack the same energy as standard lithium-ion cells in half the size — or put twice as much […]

While it already offers several ways for users to make video calls over various platforms, Google today launched a new phone-based app called Duo that’s designed for simplicity. Available for both Android and iOS smartphones, Google Duo doesn’t require anything more than a phone number to launch once the app is downloaded. Unlike Google’s Hangouts messaging, voice and video calling tool, people don’t even need Google accounts […]

|Arabian Post Special| Sale of gold jewellery for cash is emerging as one of the major sources of gold supply and is accounting for almost a third of total supplies to the market this year. According to the World Gold Council, the high price level of gold in recent times has taken its toll on the jewellery sector and conversely recycling has sparked into life. Jewellery consumers […]

People visit a Tesla Model S car during the Auto China 2016 in Beijing, China, April 25, 2016. Reuters/Jason Lee/File Photo BEIJING Tesla said on Wednesday that one of its cars had crashed in Beijing while in ‘autopilot’ mode, with the driver contending sales staff sold the function as ‘self-driving’, overplaying its actual capabilities. Tesla said it had reviewed data to confirm the car was in autopilot […]

A security guard stands guard outside a branch of Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) in Paranaque city, Metro Manila, Philippines August 2, 2016. Reuters/Erik De Castro/File Photo MANILA Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) officials say they have preserved ties with major U.S. banks despite the use of one of its branches in Manila by cyber criminals to funnel $81 million stolen from the Bangladesh central bank’s account […]

A solar storm that jammed radar and radio communications at the height of the Cold War could have led to a disastrous military conflict if not for the U.S. Air Force’s budding efforts to monitor the sun’s activity, a new study finds. On May 23, 1967, the Air Force prepared aircraft for war, thinking the nation’s surveillance radars in polar regions were being jammed by the Soviet […]

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 Chicago Beach Hotel, Hard Rock Café and Jumeirah TV Tower are famous Dubai landmarks that disappeared years ago. Next to be added to the list: the Ramada Dubai. The hotel is another link to an old Dubai receding into memory at a rapid rate. When the four-star Ramada opened in Bur Dubai in 1983, it was mostly surrounded by desert. Today, more than three decades on, […]

Today, Facebook officially took the wraps off what co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the “biggest and most advanced hardware lab” in the company’s history. Designed for Facebook engineers and designers working on everything from improved data center equipment to virtual-reality cameras, the Area 404 lab covers 22,000 square feet, “the size of half a football field,” at the company’s offices in Menlo Park, Calif., Zuckerberg said. […]

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 […]

UAE. Project activity in the UAE is forecast to recover in 2017 after a difficult 2016 on the back of a strong recovery in economic growth, according to a new report from Middle East business intelligence service MEED. MEED’s annual UAE Outlook Report for 2016 says that a recovery in oil prices combined with growing public and private sector activity boosted by Dubai’s preparations for the Expo […]

The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at its headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, July 28, 2016. Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji/Files SEOUL Samsung Electronics Co Ltd on Wednesday unveiled a new Galaxy Note smartphone with a curved screen and iris-recognition technology, seeking to build on the sales momentum that has helped it roar back to surging profit growth. Samsung, the world’s top smartphone maker, saw its January-June mobile profit […]

SolarCity Corp (SCTY.O) agreed to Tesla Motors Inc’s (TSLA.O) $2.6 billion offer to buy the solar panel installer, the companies said on Monday, clearing one obstacle in the way of Elon Musk’s ambitious plans for a carbon-free energy and transportation company. Tesla’s offer represented about half of SolarCity’s value a year ago, a tumble reflecting the solar company’s slowing growth, complex financial structure and the increased scrutiny […]

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 […]

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