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 […]
By SHUAIB ALMOSAWA and ROD NORDLAND August 13, 2016 SANA, Yemen — Airstrikes carried out by warplanes from a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia killed at least 19 people, mostly children, on Saturday in a residential area and a school in northern Yemen, witnesses and hospital officials said. One bombardment in the village of Birken in the Razih District, near Yemen’s northern border with Saudi Arabia, struck the home of […]
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 […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Saudi Arabia’s banks are seen more likely now than ever before to tap the international bond markets. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Saudi banks have less foreign currency debt outstanding compared to any other GCC country. Of the 57 securities outstanding from issuers in the kingdom, only one is a dollar bond from a bank, compared with more than 400 foreign-currency notes from […]
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 […]
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 […]
SAUDI ARABIA. — In line with its steadfast commitment to supporting the realization of the Saudi Vision 2030 – and its related strategic goals – The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has inaugurated a year-long Business Analyst Program in the Kingdom. The initiative is especially designed to help nurture young Saudi talents and equip the nation’s youth with the tools, knowledge, and leadership skills needed to excel in the […]
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 […]
SAUDI ARABIA. JLL, the world’s leading real estate investment and advisory firm, today has released its Q2 2016 Riyadh and Jeddah Real Estate Overview reports assessing the latest trends in the office, residential, retail and hotel sectors. With Saudi Vision 2030 pivotal to the diversification and restructuring of the economy in lieu of decreasing oil prices, this report highlights that both Riyadh and Jeddah continue to maintain […]
|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 […]
Solar Impulse 2 has taken off for the final time, but its crossing of the Saudi desert – managing no-fly zones, wind and heat – could make its last flight the most difficult. Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard, who took off from Cairo on Sunday and is expected to land in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, will be navigating a region riven by tensions and conflicts that prevented him […]
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 […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Saudi Arabia will build a maritime complex on its east coast, with shipbuilding capability, to provide sufficient capacity for exporting oil, Bloomberg reported quoting Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih. The country, the world’s largest oil-producing nation, eventually will have a shipping fleet that will match its oil capabilities, Al-Falih said in Riyadh. Saudi Arabian Oil Co., or Aramco, will need more tankers to meet global […]
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. […]
TEHRAN — Gunmen ambushed a car carrying a lawmaker and a local governor on Sunday in Iran’s restive Kurdish region, state news media reported. Both men were wounded, and the driver and a veterinarian traveling with them were killed. The lawmaker, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, a member of a key foreign council in Iran’s Parliament, escaped with minor injuries, according to the Mizan news agency. Mr. Falahatpisheh and the […]
|By Matein Khalid| The merger of Abu Dhabi banks First Gulf Bank and NBAD creates the largest bank in the Middle East, a regional colossus with $170 billion in assets, competitive funding cost in the global interbank/capital markets and a market value greater than Credit Suisse, Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) and Deutsche Bank. This is the biggest game changer event in UAE banking and finance since the […]
|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 […]
