|By Matein Khalid| The Algiers pact was a game changer in the international oil markets. Crude oil prices have risen to three month highs above $50 Brent after OPEC agreed to cut output to the 32.5 – 33 MBD range, with the symbolic Saudi-Iranian deal reinforced by a sharp drop in US inventories and Hurricane Matthew’s havoc in the Caribbean. Unfortunately for OPEC, the US land rig […]
By Se Young Lee | SEOUL SEOUL Samsung Electronics Co slashed its quarterly profit estimate by a third on Wednesday, soaking up a $2.3 billion hit from ditching its flagship smartphone in what could be one of the costliest product safety failures in tech history. Quantifying the financial pain of Tuesday’s move to scrap the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone after a global recall and weeks of mounting […]
|By Alaa Al Ghamdi| The film “Bilal” has recently been released in the Middle East. I’m hoping that it is the first in a long line of new films to come out of the Arab world. Art, specifically cinema, theatre and television, is struggling to find a place in the Arab world, with those that are being released unsure of whether they will get the accolades, the […]
WASHINGTON — The United States formally suspended talks with Russia about the protracted Syria conflict on Monday because of the Russian military’s role in the assault on the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo. The United States also shelved plans with Russia for the joint military targeting of jihadists in Syria, the State Department said in a statement. The American step reflected aggravated tensions with Russia on a […]
Facing the prospect of another sharp fall in oil prices, Opec has finally put forward a measure that they hope will keep a floor on oil prices until the next demand season arrives, said Barclays in a new report. Based on media reporting, Opec plans to appoint a committee to iron out production cuts and baseline levels, and some ministers are circulating a production level of 32.5-33.0 […]
UAE. (ME NewsWire )–Despite the fact that FinTech has been causing significant digital disruption to global finance for almost a decade, the sector is still in need of strong guidance against regulatory hurdles, says a new report from ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants). The report, FinTech – transforming finance, finds that while FinTech’s impact on finance and banking is proving to be as revolutionary to […]
Two years ago, Meitha Al Mazrooei and Rand Abdul Jabbar, two young architects, decided to form a partnership. The decision was born of frustration. Both had spent years studying their profession, Al Mazrooei at the American University of Sharjah (AUS) and Abdul Jabbar at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and Columbia University in New York, but given their views on the way that architecture is understood and […]
The European Union’s law enforcement agency, Europol, issued a warning today regarding the cybercrime threat landscape, particularly threats emanating from the so-called “Darknet.” Produced by Europol, the “2016 Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment” report, outlines the biggest threats online. The annual report concluded that techniques that have normally been associated with cybercrime are now extending into other crime and threat areas, said Rob Wainwright, director of Europol. […]
Sending a password or secret code over airborne radio waves like WiFi or Bluetooth means anyone can eavesdrop, making those transmissions vulnerable to hackers who can attempt to break the encrypted code. Now, University of Washington computer scientists and electrical engineers have devised a way to send secure passwords through the human body — using benign, low-frequency transmissions generated by fingerprint sensors and touchpads on consumer devices. […]
|By Matein Khalid| The Federal Reserve did not disappoint the financial markets after Janet Yellen’s FOMC conference on Wednesday. The US central bank did not raise the overnight borrowing (or Fed Funds rate) to 0.5% on the eve of the November election. This triggered a wild rally in the US stock market with the Dow Jones up 163 points, gold up to $1342 and oil to $46 […]
Recently, Tesla’s Elon Musk suggested that driving your car could someday become illegal. Don’t start shredding your driver’s license just yet, but he’s right — and that day could be here sooner than you think. According to Business Insider, fully autonomous vehicles – those that can drive from point A to point B without driver interaction – will debut as soon as 2019. And these autos will be only a […]
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG September 20, 2016 WASHINGTON — If there is a single link between the wars fought by the United States in the Middle East and Afghanistan, it is the long list of errant airstrikes carried out by American warplanes. Weddings, funerals, hospitals and friendly forces have been mistakenly attacked, with each strike prompting fresh outrage. While most of those killed have been civilians — in Afghanistan alone, […]
|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. […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Platts, independent provider of information and benchmark prices for the commodities and energy markets, announced that it will publish independent, outright price assessments for a range of oil products for the Middle East market on a Free-On-Board Fujairah basis starting October 3, 2016. The new assessments are for gasoline, diesel/gasoil, jet fuel and fuel oil. They will be published alongside existing physical netback […]
For part 1 of this series, click here. Traffic on highway 65 was moderate and became heavy once we merged onto highway 10. Gone was the tranquility of the country side. We stopped to refuel north of Biloxi. The Maritime museum would have been a nice place to visit, but we were late in the day and they were likely closed. Besides, we wanted to make it […]
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, […]
|By Matein Khalid|I had written a column two weeks ago outlining my view that US equities faced a dangerous autumn and the S&P 500 index was set for a fall of 150 points. However, even I did not expect the S&P500 index to fall 52 points on Friday (the Dow dropped 394 points and NASDAQ 133 points), its worst performance since the Brexit shock. It was even […]
Hot and hazy weather is forecast over the country on Sunday, with partial cloud cover at times over some areas. The cloud amounts will increase over eastern areas with a chance of convective formations by the afternoon, according to the National Centre for Meteorology and Seismology. The wind will be light to moderate, and will freshen at times stirring up dust. High temperatures along the coast are […]
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 Terje Solsvik and Yasmeen Abutaleb | OSLO/SAN FRANCISCO OSLO/SAN FRANCISCO Facebook Inc on Friday reinstated a Vietnam War-era photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack, after a public outcry over its removal of the image including harsh criticism from Norway’s prime minister.In a clash between a democratically elected leader and the social media giant over how to patrol the Internet, Norway Prime […]
/By Matein Khalid/The oil market has been a rollercoaster in 2016. A global financial panic triggered by China’s yuan depreciation caused Brent crude to fall below $30 a barrel in late January. I was amazed at the sheer scale of the speculative short positions accumulated by oil traders and hedge funds in both West Texas and Brent futures markets, the highest since the oil crash of 2008. The […]
UAE. Asteco, the Middle East’s largest full service real estate company has released a special Cityscape report on the current status of the UAE real estate market revealing a general slowdown in all emirates, but highlighting marked differences between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Dubai experienced a slow first six months, but for different reasons, with developers slowing the pace of project completions and handovers due to the […]
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. […]
New research from Loughborough University has revealed many four-year-olds are not physically ready to start school. Early Years specialists in the University’s School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences tested 45 Foundation Stage children at two different schools and found a larger number than previously estimated are experiencing problems with balance and coordination that are impacting their ability to learn in class. Researchers used a range of […]
