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. Despite significantly increasing investment in compliance and being continuously under the scrutiny of regulators, economic crime in financial services has increased, showing new thinking is needed to make investment in compliance deliver more value and tackle economic crime. The views are published in a new paper by PwC examining how the financial services sector (including Banking & Capital Markets and Insurance) responds to economic crime. Financial […]
INTERNATIONAL. Even before the failed military coup, Turkey’s President Erdogan governed like a dictator who had the last word on all state matters. The botched coup was nothing but, as he put it, “a gift from God” to purge what is left of Turkey’s democracy and cleanse the army and judiciary in order to ensure the total subordination of all institutions to his whims. For Erdogan, being […]
|By Matein Khalid|Brexit will have a profound impact on international banking. It was no coincidence that the shares of UK, German, Swiss, Italian, Spanish and other banks fell 20-25% in a single trading session on news of Brexit. Even American money center banks and investment banks with a large footprint in the City of London fell 8 – 10% on Friday, June 24, 2016. As Deutsche Bank […]
Turkish policemen cordon up around a military vehicle in Ankara, Turkey July 16, 2016. Reuters/Stringer SAN FRANCISCO The attempted military coup in Turkey exploded across social media late on Friday despite restricted access to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube during the first hours of the putsch. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, an avowed enemy of social media who has frequently made Twitter and Facebook a target, addressed the country […]
Are there places where Pokémon should not be allowed to tread? The digital creatures, which appear overlaid on the real world as part of the hit smartphone game Pokémon Go, have been reported at the former concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. and the National September 11 Memorial in New York, provoking frustrated responses from the representatives of some […]
BAGHDAD — President Obama will deploy 560 more troops to Iraq to help retake Mosul, the largest city controlled by the Islamic State, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter announced on Monday. It is the latest escalation of the United States’ role in the Iraq war by Mr. Obama, who ran for office on a pledge to end America’s involvement in the conflict. Many of the newly deployed […]
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — For most of his adult life, Ahmed Qassim al-Ghamdi worked among the bearded enforcers of Saudi Arabia. He was a dedicated employee of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice — known abroad as the religious police — serving with the front-line troops protecting the Islamic kingdom from Westernization, secularism and anything but the most conservative Islamic practices. […]
BAGHDAD — As Britain on Wednesday looked back on its decision to go to war in Iraq 13 years ago, Thamir al-Shemmary went to the funeral of his brother and two nephews, killed over the weekend in Baghdad’s deadliest terrorist attack since that war began. Mr. Shemmary had a question for Tony Blair, the former British prime minister whose decision to join the invasion came under critique […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — As the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approached, jihadist propagandists told their followers that it was a good time to kill people. The spokesman for the Islamic State said in late May that jihadists should “make it, with God’s permission, a month of pain for infidels everywhere.” Another extremist distributed a manual for using poisons, adding, in poor English: “Dont forget […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|The coordinated militant attack on the eve of Eid is the biggest challenge yet to Saudi Arabia’s internal security since it crushed an al-Qaeda insurgency a decade ago, according to Bloomberg. With no claims of responsibility, suspicion has fallen on Islamic State, which has vowed to overthrow Gulf rulers they see as betraying Islam. One of the bombings on Monday, near the Prophet’s Mosque […]
BAGHDAD — As celebrations for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan stretched past midnight into Sunday in central Baghdad, where Iraqis had gathered to eat, shop and just be together, a minivan packed with explosives blew up and killed at least 143 people — the third mass slaughter across three countries in less than a week. The attack was the deadliest in Baghdad in years — at […]
The Interpreter By MAX FISHER When three suicide bombers attacked Istanbul’s main airport on Tuesday, killing at least 41 people, Turkey began a ritual that it has refined with so many recent bombings: looking for hints as to which of the country’s two major terror threats was responsible. Over the past year, Turkey has endured at least 14 major terrorist attacks, killing more than 200 people. The […]
BAGHDAD — Long before Falluja was known the world over for deadly jihadists, it was known all over Iraq for its kebab — fatty lamb, ground and mixed with onion, grilled on a skewer over an open fire and served with a pinch of sumac — at a joint called Haji Hussein. Everyone, it seemed, ate at Haji Hussein: locals, soldiers, tourists and businessmen traveling the Baghdad-to-Amman […]
By RANA F. SWEIS June 21, 2016 AMMAN, Jordan — Four Jordanian soldiers, a police officer and a civil defense officer were killed on Tuesday after a car bomb exploded on the Jordanian border with Syria, according to a statement by the Jordanian Armed Forces. The attack took place around 5:30 a.m. on the sand berm across from a camp for Syrian refugees in Rukban with more than 55,000 people […]
In a small study looking at pain assessments in adults with sickle cell disease, researchers at Johns Hopkins says overall, those treated long-term with opioids often fared worse in measures of pain, fatigue and curtailed daily activities than those not on long-term opioids. In a report on the new research, published online on June 15 in a special sickle cell disease supplement of the American Journal of […]
|By Matein Khalid| Sterling sell off in the world currency markets and the sheer populist appeal of Boris Johnson suggests the world should not rule out a geopolitical shock that will unnerve financial markets and lead to the mother of all rate cuts at the Bank of England. If Britain votes to leave the EU, the only currency I want to own is the Swiss franc and gold, […]
Deal Professor By STEVEN DAVIDOFF SOLOMON It’s hard to get one’s head around it: An initial public offering that would value a company in the trillions of dollars. That’s trillions, with a T. Saudi Arabia is considering selling shares in its state oil company. With 261 billion barrels of oil in reserves and a yearly output of over three billion barrels of oil, the company, Saudi Aramco, […]
LONDON — After years of international isolation under the rule of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Libya sought to emulate its Middle Eastern neighbors by creating a sovereign wealth fund in 2006 to invest the proceeds from its sale of oil. The North African nation soon turned to Goldman Sachs to help it invest some of the more than $35 billion in funds it had available in late 2007. […]
Last bastion of financial system pays salaries on both sides of civil war as governor maintains ‘economic traduce’ Yemeni locals and secruity guards are pictured outside the Central Bank of Yemen in the capital Sana’a. Dubai: As civil war engulfs Yemen, the central bank is so committed to staying neutral that it pays salaries of soldiers on both sides. The bank […]
|By Matein Khalid|Dr. Mervyn King broke with tradition by publishing his book “The End of Alchemy: money, banking and the future of the global economy”. After all, retired governors of the Bank of England do not, as a rule, do not write/publish books, let alone write books that lambast the City of London’s culture of greed and hubris. It is no coincidence that Dr. King quotes T.S. […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|The Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency has written to banks instructing them not to under-report Saudi Interbank Offered Rate they’re actually lending at, Bloomberg reported. The decision came after some banks were seen conducting business at higher rates than were quoted, indicating some submissions were below the real market, according to two of the people. SAMA is exerting greater control over Saudi Arabia’s banking sector as […]
AMIRIYAT FALLUJA, Iraq — One of the Iraqi civilians who risked an escape from the sprawling battle for Falluja made it as far as the Euphrates River. He was there for all to see on Sunday morning: His body, tied to the side of a boat, bobbed in the muddy waters next to a rickety bridge that separates Baghdad from the violence of Anbar Province. “Sheikh, sheikh, […]
By RANA F. SWEIS June 6, 2016 AMMAN, Jordan — Three officers of the Jordanian intelligence service and two other employees of the service were killed on Monday in a Palestinian refugee camp near the capital, Amman, in what the government said was a terrorist attack. The government has opened an investigation into the assault, which took place around 7 a.m. at an intelligence office in the Baqaa refugee camp, […]
