DUBAI // After living in the UAE for three years, Peter, an Irish lawyer in Dubai, had gained 17 kilograms. Even though he exercised five days a week, he was unable to lose weight. What the expatriate did not know was he was caught in a vicious cycle between obesity and sleep apnoea, a disorder in which a person experiences shallow breaths or pauses in breathing during […]
Dow 20,000 is here at last. No regular reader — or indeed, any sentient and sensible human being — should base any investment decision on the Dow. Its methodological flaws are irremediable. And in any case, round numbers should not matter. One brief illustration of the Dow’s primitive methodology will suffice. Just five of its stocks — Goldman Sachs, IBM, Boeing, UnitedHealth and JPMorgan Chase — account […]
The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Wednesday rose above 20,000 points for the first time marking a milestone for Wall Street’s venerable equity barometer as the Trump trade that stalled at the onset of 2017 resumes. The gauge of blue-chip companies climbed 0.5 per cent to 20,014 in opening trading, as US equities extended their record-setting rally that began after the presidential election in November. Investors have […]
Bloomberg has gone where MSCI feared to tread, becoming only the second major index provider to include China’s onshore markets in widely-followed benchmark indices in a move that could prompt rivals to follow suit. China is home to the world’s second-largest stock market and the third-largest bond markets, but its tight control of onshore activity has made its inclusion in flagship indices contentious, with many investors arguing […]
French presidential frontrunner François Fillon has come under pressure to justify why he employed his Welsh wife as a parliamentary aide and specify what work she did for him. Mr Fillon, who won the centre-right presidential nomination in November on a vow to restore high moral standards in French politics, is facing claims from a weekly French satirical newspaper that his wife Penelope Fillon earned a total […]
Wednesday 05:05 GMT Overview Major stock markets across Asia were mostly positive, buoyed by a record high for the S&P 500 in the US and by stronger prices for base metals supporting materials stocks. Hot topic The Australian dollar was the big loser among Asian currencies, down 0.5 per cent at $0.7541 against its US counterpart after inflation data for the December quarter fell short of economists’ […]
By Mitra Taj and Teresa Cespedes | LIMA LIMA A top Latin America executive of Brazil’s Odebrecht SA [ODBES.UL] pushed back against calls to bar the company from countries where it has admitted to bribery across the region, warning “radical” reactions would jeopardise its ability to pay penalties. Odebrecht is “struggling to survive” in the wake of a growing graft scandal in Latin America and wants to […]
Investors are signalling a stronger US economy and the risk of rising inflation under the Trump administration, as robust price gains for precious and industrial metals have this month spurred a rise in miners’ shares. MSCI’s ACWI Metals & Mining index, a broad barometer that tracks companies around the world, has rallied nearly 15 per cent in 2017, the strongest year-to-date showing in more than a decade, […]
By Richard Balmforth | PARIS PARIS The frontrunner in France’s presidential election race, conservative Francois Fillon, acknowledged on Tuesday that his wife had worked for him when he was a legislator, but denied a media report that she had been paid for fictitious employment. Fillon, 62, a former prime minister who is tipped to win the presidency in May, acted quickly to dampen possible scandal after a […]
Trading on Wall Street was dominated by earnings announcements from blue-chip companies on Tuesday, while big carmakers rose off the back of a meeting with President Donald Trump. Results from the likes of DuPont, Verizon and Lockheed Martin pushed the broad market slightly higher. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.6 per cent to 19,912, while the S&P 500 gained 0.7 per cent to 2,280. The […]
A family of malware uploaded to at least 10 million Android devices last year has reared its ugly head again by hiding inside Google Play apps. Dubbed as the HummingWhale, the malware is believed to be related to HummingBad, which is another family of malware that invaded non-Google apps in July 2016. During HummingBad’s time, there were 50,000 fraudulent apps installed, 20 million malicious advertisements displayed, and […]
Alibaba Group has reported a 54 percent year-on-year revenue growth to US$7.67 billion for the quarter, ended December 31, fuelled by record sales from China’s Singles Day online shopping festival. The Chinese e-commerce operator said revenue from its core commerce business, which included its Taobao and Tmall online platforms, climbed 45 percent to US$6.71 billion (46.58 billion yuan). It pointed to record sales from the November 11 […]
Tim Weninger spent five months monitoring new posts on Reddit — 93,019 posts in all — and randomly, regardless of content, assigned either an up-vote, down-vote or no vote (as a control) to each post. Credit: Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame When Tim Weninger conducted two large-scale experiments on Reddit – otherwise known as “the front page of the internet” – back in 2014, the goal was […]
Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest healthcare company, blamed a stronger dollar as it forecast that 2017 profits and sales would fall below Wall Street expectations, sending the group’s shares down by more than 2 per cent. Dominic Caruso, chief financial officer, said it appeared that many Wall Street analysts had not updated their models to account “for the negative impacts of currency movement” as J&J became […]
By Luke Baker and Matt Spetalnick | JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s team spoke often about moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But since taking office, the contentious issue has become more nuanced and may already be moving to the backburner. In a statement issued before a first post-inauguration phone call between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu […]
Three of the world’s largest textbook publishers have subpoenaed Amazon to reveal the names and financial accounts of online vendors who allegedly sell counterfeit books at “too good to be true” prices. Pearson Education, Cengage Learning and McGraw Hill Education are suing 100 unnamed Amazon marketplace sellers for copyright infringement. In a complaint filed in New York federal court earlier this month, the publishers accused the sellers […]
Generali, Italy’s largest insurer, has bought voting rights amounting to 3.01 per cent in Intesa Sanpaolo in a defensive move designed to block a mooted takeover bid by the country’s largest bank. The move came after shares in the insurer rose nearly 4 per cent on Monday following a report in Turin-based newspaper La Stampa suggesting Intesa was considering a takeover bid in tandem with Germany’s Allianz. […]
Shah Rukh Khan’s latest film, Raees, arrives in cinemas tomorrow, more than six months after its original July 2016 release date. Its journey to the screen was troubled, involving postponements, legal challenges and even an outright ban, following the Uri bombings in Kashmir, due to the presence of Pakistani actress Mahira Khan in the cast. At last, audiences can see what all the fuss was about. Khan, […]
US President Donald Trump has just days after taking office signed an executive order signalling that America will back-out of the Pacific trade pact that was a key tenet of Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia. Mr Trump had vowed on the campaign trail to dismantle the Trans-Pacific Partnership that the billionaire businessman-cum-politician has argued is bad for US workers and companies. The move is the administration’s first […]
At the 2009 Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, I recall a strong feeling of shame as I waited for then-Prime minister Stephen Harper and former President Barack Obama to emerge from a meeting. I was the designated pool reporter with The Canadian Press, killing time with my Associated Press counterpart. I sheepishly admitted that reporters were forbidden from asking the prime minister an unscheduled […]
The Syrian government and rebels opened talks in Kazakhstan on Monday as part of a Turkish and Russian-backed effort to end the Arab state’s near six-year civil war. It is the first time the warring parties have held negotiations in a year, and if successful could mark a turning point in a conflict that has killed an estimated 400,000 people, while also underlining the increasing roles of […]
Samsung’s 8-point battery safety check. Samsung has unveiled the results of its inquiry into why its flagship Galaxy Note 7 smartphones began exploding shortly after launch, and the company has put in place measures to stop this happening again. All of this is welcomed, but it needs to be put into perspective – lithium ion batteries used in smartphones, tablets, laptops, and countless other devices have an […]
A billionaire Chinese hedge fund manager has been jailed for five-and-a-half years for market manipulation in one of the country’s highest-profile financial crimes prosecutions since a market rout in 2015. Xu Xiang, an investment guru who used to be compared with Carl Icahn, led a loose-knit group of hedge fund managers from the port city of Ningbo known as the “Limit-up Kamikaze Squad” because of their penchant for […]
Cover Story He did it: the Dubai comeback of Kabir Mulchandani Kabir Mulchandani has successfully completed his comeback in the Dubai property industry, handing over more than 200 stunning apartments and preparing for the launch of the five-star Viceroy Dubai Palm Jumeirah resort. Six years after he beat fraud allegations, the Indian developer has proven why you should never give up Source link
