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BEIRUT, Lebanon — Terrorists attacked sites in France, Tunisia and Kuwait on Friday, leaving a bloody toll on three continents and prompting new concerns about the spreading influence of jihadists. In France, attackers stormed an American-owned industrial chemical plant near Lyon, tried unsuccessfully to blow up the factory, and left behind a decapitated corpse. In Tunisia, at least one gunman disguised as a vacationer opened fire at […]

The Apple logo is seen at the flagship Apple retail store in San Francisco, California April 27, 2015. Reuters/Robert Galbraith Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has removed several civil war games featuring Confederate flags from its App Store, some game developers said. The flags and other symbols of the Confederacy have been at the centre of debate since a 21-year-old gunman, accused of killing nine black worshippers in last […]

WASHINGTON — The State Department issued a dismal assessment of Iran’s record on human rights on Thursday, saying that the Iranian authorities had stifled dissent and engaged in “unlawful killings.” The assessment, part of a broad overview of human rights practices around the world, was published one day before Secretary of State John Kerry is to leave for Vienna to try to conclude a nuclear accord with […]

UAE. The UAE has emerged No. 5 in the KPMG 2015 Change Readiness Index behind Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Norway in terms of its enterprise capability, government capability and people and civil society capability according to a recent study by KPMG International and Oxford Economics. The index ranked 127 countries for their capacity to prepare for and respond to accelerating change brought about by natural disasters, […]

Five former members of President Obama’s inner circle of Iran advisers have written an open letter expressing concern that a pending accord to stem Iran’s nuclear program “may fall short of meeting the administration’s own standard of a ‘good’ agreement” and laying out a series of minimum requirements that Iran must agree to in coming days for them to support a final deal. Several of the senior […]

ABU DHABI // At least nine people were killed on Wednesday when a suicide car-bomber targeted a UAE aid convoy on a busy street in Mogadishu in Somalia. Most of the dead were Somali civilians caught in the blast and others were thought to be soldiers guarding the convoy. No UAE personnel were among the victims. At least six people were injured in the attack. They are […]

As the civil war in Yemen continues, many families say they are living in constant fear. Parents say that their older children have been wetting their beds at night, and that younger ones are so traumatized that they are sent running for cover by the sound of a door slamming. The fighting between Houthi rebels and Saudi-backed government forces has displaced a million people, destroyed cultural heritage […]

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SANA, Yemen — For nearly three months, Saudi Arabia, along with its allies, has been bombing Yemen, its southern neighbor, hoping to force the retreat of Shiite rebels who have seized major cities and to return the country’s president from the Saudi guest mansion where he lives to the presidential palace. So far, it has not worked. The rebels, known as the Houthis, have gained ground, more […]

A logo is pictured at Google’s European Engineering Center in Zurich April16, 2015. Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann BRUSSELS Getty Images [GETTY.UL] has become the latest company to take its grievances with Google (GOOGL.O) to EU antitrust regulators as it accused the world’s most popular Internet search engine of favouring its own images service at the expense of rivals. The complaint comes as the European Commission waits for Google to […]

Op-Ed Contributor By ALAN J. KUPERMAN June 23, 2015 PRESIDENT OBAMA’S main pitch for the pending nuclear deal with Iran is that it would extend the “breakout time” necessary for Iran to produce enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. In a recent interview with NPR, he said that the current breakout time is “about two to three months by our intelligence estimates.” By contrast, he claimed, the pending deal […]

|By K Raveendran| The trigger for Dubai’s property crash of 2009 had come in the form of a Standard & Poor’s report that warned of a serious price correction in the wake of a highly unrealistic boom. Six years later, the rating agency has issued another ominous report on Dubai’s property market, although there are not even the faintest signs of a boom present now. The warning […]

UAE. While Standard & Poor’s expects somewhat of a correction in the UAE’s residential real estate market after three years of sharp price appreciation–it should be nothing on the order that led to the Dubai crisis in 2009. After reaching a peak in 2014, the property market in the United Arab Emirates is set to soften in 2015 and early 2016. The market is facing a turnaround […]

UAE. The latest Crédit Agricole Private Banking research report, ‘Macro Comment – MENA Update’, noted that the UAE and Saudi Arabia continues to witness growth despite lower oil prices. The UAE even recorded high levels of job creation during this period.  “Interestingly in the UAE, once again new orders and new export orders components reflected strong growth, while job creation hit a three-month high. This is reflected […]

BAGHDAD — When Umm Ahmed returned to her Iraqi hometown, Tikrit, in recent days she found a city devastated by fighting with militants from the Islamic State: buildings burned, shops looted, schools shuttered and hospitals inoperable. Still, it was home, and it was good to be back. “Today, I am in the middle of Tikrit,” Umm Ahmed, 39, said last week, preferring to be identified by her […]

Seldom seen on U.S. soil due to a costly taxation imposed on ‘work’ vehicles imported from Europe since 2003, Volkswagen’s iconic Transporter van has nonetheless been in production & updated all along. The latest 6th-generation California model is the modern VW van we all dream of, complete with the iconic pop-top and deluxe camper interior. Will it ever come to the states? It’s a very distant maybe […]

JERUSALEM — A United Nations investigation found “serious violations of international humanitarian law” that “may amount to war crimes” by both Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip during their bloody battle last summer, according to a report released on Monday in Geneva. The report, written by a two-member independent commission of inquiry and submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council, said that “impunity prevails […]

Windows users, rejoice. Over the weekend, Microsoft announced that its latest operating system, Windows 10, will be free for anyone who wants it. Previously, the company said that it would make the new OS available as a free upgrade, but only to certain users who were currently running Windows 7 or 8. That arrangement would have excluded anyone still running Windows XP, Vista, or even Windows 7 […]

ABU DHABI // Hend Al Tair has her hands full this Ramadan. The Emirati, 29, has to share her time between observing the holy month, her studies at Khalifa University and looking after her baby daughter. Ms Al Tair is continuing her PhD research in Abu Dhabi, which keeps her away from her family in Ras Al Khaimah. She also misses the daily gatherings for suhoor and […]

|By K Raveendran| There is much hype about the opening up of the Saudi stock market, but any detached view is least supportive of optimism. The more realistic assessment is based on the fact that the market has already factored in the positivity and moved too far ahead in the expectation of large foreign inflows, making the market expensive for any new entrants. According to the assessment […]

Guards stand near an entrance to Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China, May 18, 2015. Reuters/John Ruwitch/Files BEIJING China will increase support for cross-border e-commerce as the world’s second-largest economy shifts from manufacturing to higher-value services, the government said. China’s e-commerce industry has been booming in recent years, with companies like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and JD.com Inc benefiting from a rising middle class with more […]

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS June 20, 2015 CAIRO — A prominent Al Jazeera journalist was detained Saturday in Germany over an Egyptian arrest warrant, the latest in a series of legal entanglements between Egypt and Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, which is based in Qatar, reported the detention. The journalist, Ahmed Mansour, who works for the broadcaster’s Arabic service, was detained while trying to board a Qatar Airways flight at Berlin’s […]

UAE. On 14 June 2015, the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) published the final version of its first raft of regulations, including the Employment Regulations (the Regulations). In this article, we examine the Regulations and contrast them to the employment provisions in operation in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and the UAE Labour Law (the Labour Law). Background In 2004, the UAE amended its constitution to […]

Humans will be extinct in 100 years because the planet will be uninhabitable, according to Australian microbiologist Frank Fenner, one of the leaders of the effort to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. He blames overcrowding, denuded resources and climate change. Fenner’s prediction is not a sure bet, but he is correct that there is no way emissions reductions will be enough to save us from our trend […]

For an earnest young Christian named Ben Lowe, revelation came on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, in Africa. A relentless warming of the lake was reducing the catch of fish, the people were going hungry — and he had learned of scientific evidence that climate change was to blame. For the Rev. Brian Sauder, who grew up attending a small Anabaptist church in rural Illinois, the moment […]

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