Saudi

UAE.  Mobile phones are the most commonly used device among consumers in the UAE and more than half of all consumers (59%) prefer using their smartphones over any other device to make payments, the new Mastercard Impact of Innovation Study reveals. The study surveyed 23,000 consumers in 23 different countries across the Middle East, Africa and Europe about their attitudes to digital technology. It found that while […]

|By Arabian Post Staff| OPEC members aren’t likely to reach a supply deal in Algiers next week, but an agreement to boost prices could be drawing closer after Saudi Arabia signaled for the first time in two years that it’s willing to cut production, Bloomberg reported. Saudi Arabia and Iran, whose rivalry thwarted a deal with other major producers in April, didn’t reach agreement after two days of […]

By PETER BAKER and RANA F. SWEIS September 20, 2016 AMMAN, Jordan — At the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, Ali Abu al-Sukkar’s telephone would not stop ringing Tuesday. It was Election Day, the first time the Islamist organization had taken part after nearly a decade of boycotts, and Mr. Sukkar found himself in demand. The deputy secretary general of the Islamic Action Front, the brotherhood’s political wing, Mr. Sukkar listed the […]

|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. […]

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|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 […]

|By Arabian Post Staff| Switching from conventional ‘Western’ financial practices to Islamic banking gives distinct advantages to banks, with the change improving the liquidity and value of stocks, a study of the merger between a Bahrian Islamic bank and a conventional bank revealed. Researchers at the Universities of Birmingham and Brighton studied a merger that took place in Bahrain, between an Islamic bank and a conventional bank […]

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|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 […]

|By Arabian Post Staff| With the Algiers meeting of OPEC drawing closer, the approach of the price boost initiatives is itself apparently evolving into something totally different from the initial idea of some sort of an output freeze. The new buzz word seems be ceiling rather than the freeze. Of course, the overriding consideration is voluntarism. According to reports, the OPEC producers, particularly the camp led by […]

|By Steve Austin| At first sight it appears that low oil prices are good for society. A low oil price helps us save dollars at the pump, acts as an economic catalyst making exchanges cheaper and thereby stimulating the economy. However, there are downsides as well, often out-of-sight-out-of-mind and we will address these today. Change in economic model For the first time we have entered an era […]

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/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 […]

/By Matien Khalid/I have been bullish on emerging market debt as an asset class since last autumn. Even though the Chinese yuan devaluation was toxic, this asset class is up 12% in 2016, thanks to almost $5 billion in cash inflows. The tax amnesty in Indonesia, the political changes in Brazil after President Dilma’s impeachment, the election of a center-right pro-business government and $16 billion sovereign debt […]

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 […]

SANA, Yemen — Doctors without Borders announced Thursday that it would evacuate its staff from six hospitals in northern Yemen because it could not get assurances that its hospitals would not be bombed again. The group blamed the Saudi-led military coalition for the decision, calling its bombing “indiscriminate” and its assurances of protection for health workers “unreliable,” citing the aerial bombardment of Abs Hospital in Hajjah Province […]

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INTERNATIONAL. Global bank rating trends were negative again in 1H16 for the fourth consecutive negative six-month period, says Fitch Ratings. The global distribution of Outlooks deteriorated in 1H16 as Negative Outlooks (22%) far outweighed Positives (5%), a level not seen since 2009. Emerging market (EM) banks experienced the majority of negative ratings trends, heavily influenced by rating actions in Brazil, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. In EMs, […]

CAIRO — An airstrike on a residential area near the Yemeni capital, Sana, on Tuesday killed 17 civilians, most of them women and children, as international criticism continued to build over a deadly bombing the day before of a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders. Residents of a village in Nehem District, northeast of the capital, said that warplanes from the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition fighting on […]

KUWAIT.  On Aug 12, S&P Global Ratings affirmed its ‘AA/A-1+’ long- and short-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on Kuwait. The outlook is stable. The affirmation indicates that our ratings on Kuwait continue to be supported by the sovereign’s high levels of accumulated fiscal, external, and household wealth, despite the low oil price environment. The ratings are constrained by the concentrated nature of the economy […]

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INTERNATIONAL. The future for many young people across the Middle East and North Africa looks bleak. The World Bank records that 54% of the working age population in the Middle East and North Africa is unemployed with little prospect of any positive immediate change. An average of 28.7% of 15 to 24-year-olds in the Middle East and 30.6% of those in North Africa are unemployed according to […]

ABU DHABI // Pupils from the GCC are less likely than their expatriate peers to consider science as necessary to future employment, a new study has found. And the more educated GCC parents are, local pupils are more likely to believe they do not need science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) skills to get their desired job later in life. Family connections are often considered more important […]

ABU DHABI // Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, received the Yemeni prime minister Dr Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr at the Sea Palace on Monday. Sheikh Mohammed and Dr bin Daghr discussed the latest developments in Yemen in light of progress achieved by government forces on a number of fronts and political developments, especially the peace […]

SANA, Yemen — A pharmacist, Sadam al-Othari, had a firsthand look at the results of the collapse in peace talks in Yemen between the Saudi-led military coalition and Yemeni militias over the weekend when a bomb exploded outside his drugstore, killing a customer and his young son and wounding Mr. Othari. The customer and his son were among 18 Yemeni civilians killed when coalition warplanes bombed Al […]

When Shahram Amiri emerged from the shadows into the spotlight six years ago, he was a young Iranian scientist who suddenly appeared on YouTube from a safe house, telling a bizarre story of having been kidnapped by the Central Intelligence Agency. Then, in another video that quickly followed, his story changed: He had come to the United States voluntarily to study, but desperately missed his son back […]

WASHINGTON — The Syrian military was foundering last year, with thousands of rebel fighters pushing into areas of the country long considered to be government strongholds. The rebel offensive was aided by powerful tank-destroying missiles supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia. Intelligence assessments circulated in Washington that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, was losing his grip on power. But then the Russians arrived, bludgeoning […]

CAIRO — More than three months of peace talks to end the war in Yemen came to a halt Saturday, leaving in doubt the future of a shaky cease-fire and threatening to deepen what has a become one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The United Nations’ special envoy on Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, announced the suspension on Saturday in Kuwait, where the talks were being […]

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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.  – 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 […]

LIBYA. A multi-million redevelopment of Tripoli International Airport is getting ready for take-off following the Libyan Local Investment & Development Fund’s (LLIDF) appointment of PwC as its strategic advisor. The LLIDF is supporting the redevelopment of Libya through its new Investment Programme which includes the redevelopment of Tripoli International Airport into a world-class international airport. Based within a secure hub on the former airport site, the ambition […]

|By Arabian Post Staff| Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers claimed a historic milestone in the efforts to resolve the largest and most complex financial dispute in the history of the Middle East. AHAB today said it has signed a settlement support agreement with the five Steering Committee members who have been negotiating the terms of settlement since May 2014. This agreement formally commits AHAB and the Steering […]

People play the mobile phone game Pokemon GO in a park in Central Jakarta, Indonesia July 21, 2016. Reuters/Iqro Rinaldi JAKARTA Avid players of smash-hit mobile phone game Pokemon GO in Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, are not letting religious decrees or security warnings get in the way of their mission to catch their next cartoon creature. Nintendo’s augmented reality app, in which players […]

VISHNU RAJA
RYO YAMADA
HITORI GOTOH
IKUYO KITA