By Mohamed Zaki and Mohamed Abd El-Ghany | CAIRO CAIRO In an economic crisis that has led to a shortage of medicines, Egyptians are skipping trips to drug stores and instead turning to herbal remedies to treat every-day illnesses. In the Cairo working class neighborhood of Basateen, dozens can be seen lining up outside a decades-old herbal spice shop with pyramid-shaped stacks of jars on display, filled […]
HONG KONG Property developer China Vanke (000002.SZ) (2202.HK), embroiled in a high-profile corporate power tussle for over a year, said on Thursday its No. 2 shareholder China Resources Group is considering a major plan. The country’s second-largest developer said in a statement it had been informed on Wednesday that China Resources and a unit were ‘formulating a major plan involving its holdings in Vanke but are still […]
Having publicly trashed the US economy’s performance during the presidential campaign, Donald Trump has become its most prominent cheerleader. The president-elect has in recent weeks claimed credit for surging consumer confidence, stellar equity prices and stronger end-of-year household spending, arguing there was “no hope” before he arrived on the scene. To Barack Obama’s supporters, claims from Mr Trump that the US was cloaked in economic gloom before […]
By Gopal Sharma | KATHMANDU KATHMANDU Nepal fired the head of its earthquake reconstruction agency and named his predecessor to the job in a game of musical chairs that critics say is only making conditions worse for the survivors of the 2015 disaster. Thousands of homeless people remain in temporary shelters after the 2015 quakes that left 9,000 people dead and destroyed more than 626,000 homes, monuments […]
Foreclosure proceedings affected nearly a million U.S. homes and other real estate last year, down 14 percent from 2015 and down 70 percent from the worst of the housing crisis in 2009, a report released Thursday shows. Foreclosures hit a 10-year low and property owners in all but 15 states experienced fewer of the early stages of foreclosure, usually begun after owners have missed four mortgage payments, […]
ABU DHABI // The relationship between the UAE and Afghanistan goes back for more than a decade, with the Emirates involved in the country’s military stabilisation since the collapse of the Taliban regime. Since 2003, it has had an effective presence in Afghanistan, ensuring stability as the country continues to suffer attacks from Taliban militants, and delivering aid while helping it to rebuild. “Afghans appreciated UAE officers […]
Volkswagen will plead guilty to three felonies and pay $4.3bn in penalties to settle a US Department of Justice investigation into the diesel emissions scandal that has engulfed the German carmaker for the past 15 months. Six VW executives based in Germany have also been indicted in connection with the case, including Oliver Schmidt who was arrested in the US on Monday, said Loretta Lynch, US attorney-general. “For years, […]
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attempt to take control of all levers of power and a mounting terrorist threat has begun to alarm investors, sending the Turkish lira down 4 per cent to an all-time low on Wednesday. The lira traded at 3.93 to the dollar, down 12 per cent since the beginning of January, clocking its worst performance since a failed coup in July which prompted […]
Turkey’s lira cemented its reputation as the most fragile of emerging market currencies on Wednesday, falling 4 per cent against the dollar to a fresh record low after the country’s current account deficit took a turn for the worse. Turkey’s currency has plunged 11.5 per cent so far this year and depreciated nearly 30 per cent in the last three months. The lira’s travails eclipse the South […]
By Andreas Cremer | BERLIN BERLIN Volkswagen’s (VOWG_p.DE) supervisory board is meeting on Wednesday to approve a draft $4.3 billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, marking a milestone in its attempts to recover from its emissions test cheating scandal. Shares in Europe’s biggest carmaker rose as much as 4 percent as investors welcomed the latest move to draw a line under the biggest business scandal in […]
In order to survive, the Syrian regime has had to rely to an extraordinary degree on Russian and Iranian forces, and their proxies, like Hezbollah. It really wasn’t the Syrian Arab Army that retook Aleppo. Indeed, the Syrian military is stretched so thin by geography and attrition that last month it lost most of the city of Palmyra (again) to the Islamic State while pro-government forces were […]
By Se Young Lee and Ju-min Park | SEOUL SEOUL A South Korean special prosecutor’s office will question Samsung Group [SAGR.UL] leader Jay Y. Lee as a suspect in a widening influence-peddling scandal that may force President Park Geun-hye from office. Prosecutors have been looking into whether Samsung payments of about 30 billion won ($25 million) for a business and foundations backed by Park’s friend, Choi Soon-sil, […]
Bjarni Benediktsson, leader of the conservative Independence Party, is Iceland’s new prime minister. (Halldor Kolbeins/Agence France-Presse) The Panama Papers — a huge leak of documents detailing the alleged secret offshore holdings of a global elite — were released in April 2016. The leak made headlines all over the world, but its impact was probably most keenly felt in Iceland. Just two days after the leak appeared, Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson […]
Since the start of the 21st century the South American nation of Suriname, population 540,000, has been riding a commodity boom that yielded major benefits for a country rich in bauxite, gold, oil and bananas. From 2000 to 2014, annual per capita income more than quintupled to almost $10,000. Child mortality fell by a third. A child born there today can expect to live to 70, up […]
By Amanda Ferguson | BELFAST BELFAST After a decade of bitter compromises over paramilitaries and policing, Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government finally fell apart this week over the abuse by farmers of a green-energy grant to burn fuels such as wood pellets instead of coal. The confrontation has exposed a growing rupture in trust between Catholic Irish nationalists and pro-British Protestant unionists whose cooperation underpins the 1998 Good […]
Submitted by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute, Sharia courts administering Islamic justice in Britain are run by clerics who believe some offenders should have their hands chopped off, according to Muslim scholar Elham Manea. She described the prevailing attitude as “totalitarian” and as more backward than some parts of Pakistan. Teaching children fundamental British values is an act of “cultural supremacism,” according to the National Union […]
Photo Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2016. Credit Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images Relations between the United States and Iran, which improved under President Obama to the point where the two sides were able to strike a nuclear deal, were already facing an uncertain future under Donald Trump, who has taken a tough line against Tehran. The death on Sunday of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi […]
The Federal Reserve should be ready to consider reducing the size of its balance sheet as part of its efforts to prevent overheating in the US, a senior policymaker said as he noted the pick-up in wage inflation and predicted a return of inflation to target by the end of the year. Eric Rosengren, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said that if the […]
Reykjavik (AFP) – The Panama Papers came back to haunt Iceland’s right-wing parties Monday as they prepare to form a new government, after the candidate for prime minister admitted hiding a report on offshore accounts. Iceland was rocked in April when the Panama Papers revealed a global tax evasion scandal that ensnared several senior politicians and triggered the resignation of former prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, with […]
ABIDJAN Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara dismissed the heads of the army, police and gendarmes on Monday after a two-day army mutiny that spread unrest across the West African nation, according to a statement from the presidency. Disgruntled soldiers demanding the payment of bonuses and wage increases began their revolt on Friday, seizing control of Bouake, the second largest city, before troops in military camps in cities […]
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Volkswagen’s senior management was briefed in the summer of 2015 on the cheating software at the centre of the company’s diesel emissions scandal, and ordered its continued concealment, according to criminal charges unsealed by US prosecutors on Monday. VW employees briefed “executive management” in July 2015 at the German carmaker’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany, about the use of software-based defeat devices to understate emissions in official tests, […]
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” So Henry Temple, the third Viscount Palmerston, described British foreign policy in 1848, at the height of its imperial pomp. “England is a power sufficiently strong, sufficiently powerful to steer her own course.” It is more than fanciful to imagine US […]
BAGHDAD Iraqi special forces made further advances against Islamic State in Mosul on Monday, pushing militants out of another district a day after driving them back to the eastern bank of the Tigris river, a spokesman said. The elite counter-terrorism service (CTS) had taken full control of the Baladiyat district and encircled neighbouring Sukkar, Sabah al-Numan told Reuters. The advance also consolidated Iraqi forces’ control of several […]
