ROME The G7 group of rich nations committed on Friday to pursuing the creation of a U.N. peacekeeping force to protect world heritage sites from destruction in conflict and combating the trafficking of plundered treasures. Destroying antiquities at heritage sites like the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and the shrines of Timbuktu in Mali has increasingly become a tactic of war for groups like Islamic State, both […]
Dubai, UAE, Singapore, March 31, 2017 Takeda Pharmaceuticals Company Limited (“Takeda”),announced today that Ricardo Marek has been appointed as the President of the Emerging Markets Business Unit (EMBU), based in Singapore, effective April 1, 2017. In his new role he will lead allbusiness operations across five geographic Areas that compriseEM BU – Asia Pacific (excluding Japan), China, Latin America, Middle East & Africa and Russia-CIS. Marekwill also […]
The titans of the commodities industry are daring to believe the worst is over but are braced for an increasingly uncertain outlook as “me-first” protectionist policies threaten to destabilise global trade. Those were two of the key themes to emerge from the sixth Financial Times Commodities Global Summit in Lausanne last week. The head of Cargill, the world’s biggest agricultural commodities merchant, called on the commodities industry […]
Verizon said on Friday it would reorganize its operating structure to focus on three core business areas: media and telematics, network and technology, and customer and product operations. The telecom giant has also hired former Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg to lead its new network and technology team. Vestberg will focus on further developing Verizon’s fiber network infrastructure. He will initially be based in Sweden, and is expected […]
With Adam Rawnsley Looking for a deal. Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has offered to be interviewed by the FBI and House and Senate investigators examining the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, “but has so far found no takers,” according to the Wall Street Journal. In a statement on Thursday evening, Flynn’s lawyer Robert Kelner, […]
Rackspace CEO Taylor Rhodes: “Amazon is a tornado.” Rackspace CEO Taylor Rhodes is disarmingly honest about the ride the company has been on in recent years. This is what happens, he says, “when the world’s largest bookseller comes into your industry.” It wasn’t Amazon’s bookselling ability that caused Rackspace headaches, of course, but its cloud computing division Amazon Web Services (AWS). Rackspace started out as web hosting […]
“This is a discussion that started in a November time-frame, and we started to pursue this. We recognized what we were stepping into,” Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview Wednesday. “It was actually implemented for eastern Mosul, the whole urban environment, and frankly, as we kind of get ready for Raqqa. We are enabling our on-scene commanders […]
31 March 2017 MARC has affirmed its AAAIS rating on TTM Sukuk Berhad’s (TTM SPV) RM600.0 million Sukuk Murabahah with a stable outlook. The outstanding sukuk amounts to RM500 million. TTM SPV is a funding vehicle for the second phase of the Trans Thailand-Malaysia project (TTM Project Phase II), consisting of two gas pipelines between the Malaysia-Thailand Joint Development Area (JDA) and the industrial city of Rayong […]
Any sufficiently advanced parody is indistinguishable from reality. That’s an extreme paraphrase of Poe’s Law, but it applies to so much of our world today. Including the management of Twitter. On Thursday, Twitter announced more changes to the way it works. Soon after, an image started circulating which supposedly explained these changes. And it was so confusing. “Replies now part of Timeline. Timeline and TimelLine are now […]
ISTANBUL Turkish state-run lender Halkbank’s operations and transactions fully comply with national and international regulations, it said in a statement regarding the arrest of its deputy general manager Mehmet Hakan Atilla in the United States. Atilla was charged on Tuesday with participating in a multi-year scheme to violate sanctions against Iran and conspiring with Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who is already on trial in a case […]
By Idrees Ali | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The Pentagon on Thursday said it would soon release a video showing Islamic State militants herding civilians into a building in the Iraqi city of Mosul and then firing from it, the U.S. military’s latest response to an outcry over a separate explosion thought to have killed scores of civilians. The U.S. military has acknowledged that the U.S.-led coalition probably had […]
JPMorgan is in talks to buy a new building in Dublin, but has told London staff it will not “rush into any decisions” on how it will adjust its operations after Brexit. Bloomberg reported that the US bank was in talks to buy a 130,000 sq ft office in the centre of the Irish capital which could accommodate about 1,000 people. The bank declined to comment. The news […]
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, March 30, 2017 The award-winning African Utility Week (www.African-Utility-Week.com ), taking place from 16-18 May in Cape Town, will showcase how the continent is coming up with innovative, home-grown solutions to its energy and water challenges and how these are creating exciting and lucrative opportunities for utilities and industry suppliers alike. Experts from respected partners in the industry such as the World Bank, […]
“We recognized the nature of the fight was going to change and that we had to ensure that authorities were down to the right level and that we empowered the on-scene commander,” General Votel said. He was speaking specifically about discussions that he said began in November about how the fights in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State were reaching critical phases in Mosul and Raqqa. […]
Bank of Queensland (BoQ) has announced its results for the first half of the 2017 financial year, reporting a 6 percent year-on-year drop in statutory net profit after tax to AU$161 million. Interim cash earnings after tax for the six-month period came in at AU$175 million, down 2 percent on the prior corresponding period. For the six months to February 28, 2017, BoQ reported AU$252 million in […]
The commodities trading house Trafigura and a bank are testing blockchain as a way to settle deals in the US oil market, a sign of the potential for digital technology to change how barrels of crude are bought and sold. Blockchain is the electronic ledger originally built to underpin bitcoin markets. Promoters say it will lead to cheaper, more secure ways of settling all kinds of transactions, […]
LONDON Britain’s financial sector is drawing up proposals on how it could still serve EU clients after Brexit, even as firms begin establishing new operations on the continent to keep access to the European market. Regulatory and banking experts working for the City of London and lobby group TheCityUK are basing their ideas on a ‘mutual recognition’ system. Under this, the European Union and Britain would broadly […]
KUALA LUMPUR Malaysia briefly prevented a North Korean ship carrying coal from entering its port in Penang because of a suspected breach of United Nations sanctions, a port worker and Malaysian maritime officials told Reuters on Wednesday The KUM YA, was carrying 6,300 metric tonnes of anthracite coal, according to a worker at Penang Port who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. It was later allowed […]
This originally ran in our weekly newsletter Local Edition. You can join the conversation here. A few months ago, my son, Max, got me thinking about adaptation. “Everything is different!” the 9-year-old blustered from the back seat after his Kindle finished updating. “I can’t find anything now!” “That stinks,” I told him. But it’s also good practice, I said, for a skill that younger people figure out […]
Chinese social media company Tencent has purchased a 5 percent stake in Tesla for $1.78 billion, providing a boost to the company as it prepares for the launch of the Model 3 mass-market electric vehicle. The shares of Tesla increased by 2.7 percent to $277.45 upon the announcement of Tencent’s investment, with the company now close to overthrowing Ford as the second most valuable automobile company in the […]
Photo The bodies of several people killed during fighting between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State militants on the western side of Mosul, Iraq, on Friday. Credit Felipe Dana/Associated Press GENEVA — Airstrikes against Islamic State fighters are killing so many civilians that Iraq and its American-led coalition of allies should reconsider their tactics, the top human rights official at the United Nations said on Tuesday. Zeid […]
The United States Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security has removed Chinese telecommunications technology solutions provider ZTE from its trading blacklist following the company pleading guilty to illegally exporting products to Iran. “Upon recommendation by BIS, the company and ZTE Kangxun Telecommunications Ltd will be removed from the Entity List on 29 March 2017 (United States time),” ZTE said in a statement [PDF] to the […]
By Josh Smith and James Mackenzie | KABUL KABUL Afghanistan plans to double the number of elite special forces from 17,000 troops, officials said, part of a long-term strategy to bolster units stretched and exhausted by persistent attacks from Taliban insurgents and other Islamist militants. Special forces, who represent a small fraction of the 300,000-strong armed forces, have been carrying out nearly 70 percent of the army’s […]
Photo A man carried the bodies of people killed in fighting between Iraq security forces and the Islamic State in Mosul last week. Credit Felipe Dana/Associated Press WASHINGTON — The senior United States commander in Iraq said Tuesday that an American airstrike likely triggered the collapse of a building in Mosul that killed more than 100 civilians this month, but indicated that an investigation would also examine […]
