DUBAI — Three Saudi brothers have been arrested in connection with the suicide bombing of a Shiite mosque in Kuwait last month, the Saudi and Kuwaiti authorities said Tuesday. The attack on June 26 during Friday Prayer killed 26 people, plus the bomber, and was Kuwait’s deadliest militant attack. Two of the suspects, Majed and Mohammed al-Zahrani, transported the explosives across the border into Kuwait in an […]
|By TAP Staff| Over 30 local and regional airports have joined a growing coalition that is calling on the U.S. government to open consultations with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to address $42 billion in subsidies and other unfair benefits that the Gulf nations have provided to their state-owned airlines, violating Open Skies policy and threatening hundreds of thousands of American jobs. Airports from across the […]
Oil price flux unlikely to hit long-term sector growth BEIRUT, 13 hours, 17 minutes ago The cyclicality of the oil and gas industry is unlikely to impact the long term trajectory of the sector, a report said, noting that the current fluctuations may speed up some of the trends that were already unfolding. The new report entitled “Oil and Gas Reality Check 2015” released by Deloitte, a […]
By ANNE BARNARD July 5, 2015 BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian government troops and Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon pushed into the Syrian border town of Zabadani on Sunday amid heavy airstrikes, continuing an offensive aimed at strengthening their control of routes between Lebanon and Syria. Pushing insurgents out of the mountain town would continue advances aimed at cutting insurgent supply lines to Lebanon, and would also be a symbolic victory. […]
A fan of video game Minecraft waves a foam pick-axe in front of a screen display at the Minecon convention in London July 4, 2015. Reuters/Matthew Tostevin LONDON For hours, the dedicated queued on Saturday to carry off a prized autograph or to pose for a selfie with some of the biggest celebrities of a new generation. Not for them the rock stars or sporting heroes, but […]
ME property market among world’s fastest growing NEW DELHI, 2 days ago Middle East real estate market revenues have augmented at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.7 per cent between 2009 and 2014, making it one of the fastest growing sectors across the world, a report said. Foreign real estate developers have infused billions of dollars into places such as Oman, Qatar, Dubai (UAE), Saudi […]
INTERNATIONAL. Greece’s seeming hour-by-hour descent into chaos at the end of the second quarter has fashioned an intensely uncertain framework casting markets at the mercy of headline risk. It is with that ever-changing caveat that Saxo Bank publishes its Q3 Outlook ahead of the Greek referendum on EU membership which, as things stand, will take place July 5. The outlook for Q3, therefore hangs in the balance, […]
A Swiss man attempting to circumnavigate the globe with an aircraft powered only by the sun’s energy landed in Hawaii on Friday, after a record-breaking five-day nonstop solo flight across the Pacific Ocean from Japan. The Solar Impulse 2 is the first aircraft to fly day and night without any fuel. Pilot Andre Borschberg’s 120-hour voyage shattered the 76-hour record for nonstop flight by late American adventurer […]
Palestinians carrying the body of Muhammad Hani al-Kasba in the Qalandia refugee camp in the West Bank, on Friday. By ISABEL KERSHNER July 3, 2015 JERUSALEM — Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian teenager in the occupied West Bank on Friday as he and others hurled stones and rocks at their army vehicle, the Israeli military said, while Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank arrested more […]
UAE. According to EY’s report ‘How will the GCC close the skills gap?’, employers struggle to retain nationals due to high salary expectations; however, these employers rank young people’s lack of work experience (53%), communications skills (36%), and required skills and qualifications (22%) as further challenges to retention in the private sector. Three quarters of GCC employers feel the education system doesn’t know what skills employers need. […]
In another sign of the ongoing changes in online search, Yahoo is testing a search partnership with Google. The search giant confirmed in a statement that “Yahoo is currently testing search results and ads from a number of partners, including Google as one of their options.” A Yahoo spokesperson told us, “As we work to create the absolute best experiences for Yahoo users, from time to time, […]
A funeral on Thursday in Ashmoun, in the Nile Delta, for First Lt. Mohamed Ashraf, one of the soldiers killed Wednesday in a militant attack in the Sinai Peninsula. By KAREEM FAHIM and MERNA THOMAS July 2, 2015 CAIRO — Egypt’s military killed 23 militants in the northern Sinai Peninsula early Thursday, a senior security official said, as the government sought to reassert control and eradicate what it called the area’s […]
|TAP Special| Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Alwaleed Philanthropies, announced his intention to donate all of his wealth to philanthropy over the coming years to help build a “better world of tolerance, acceptance, equality and opportunity for all.” This $32 billion philanthropic pledge will help build bridges to foster cultural understanding, develop communities, empower women, enable youth, provide […]
UAE. 85 percent of financial institutions from around the world reported that their boards of directors currently devote more time to oversight of risk than they did two years ago, while 79 percent felt that increasing regulatory requirements and expectations were their greatest challenge, according to the ninth edition of Deloitte’s Global risk management survey. In addition, the most common board responsibilities are approving the enterprise-level statement […]
Open Source By ROBERT MACKEY Apparently undeterred by the backlash over its last venture into cartoon diplomacy, Israel’s government released an animated video on Tuesday that equates the threat from Islamic State militants to that of a nuclear-armed Iran. The 28-second animation, uploaded to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official accounts on social networks, attempts to erase the distinction between the Sunni Muslim extremists of the Islamic State […]
|TAP Special|Emirates has released a point-by-point rebuttal of subsidy allegations, asserting that the US legacy carriers got the facts wrong, got the law wrong, and set their sights on an outcome that will be wrong for American consumers, communities and the national economy. This is the airline’s response to allegations of subsidy and unfair competition leveled by the “big three” US legacy carriers – Delta, United and […]
Under a new 10-year agreement that starts in 2016, AOL will be taking over a large part of Microsoft‘s display ad sales for numerous sites and services, including MSN, Xbox, Outlook.com and Skype. As part of the partnership, announced Monday, AOL will adopt Microsoft’s Bing as its exclusive provider of search and search advertising services across all of its properties. In a separate deal, first reported Monday […]
ABU DHABI // Dr Anwar Gargash has responded to the spate of terrorist attacks across the Arab World in the past week. The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs tweeted about the threat of extremism and its effect on the region. He said the Arab Spring “revolution has failed” and called for a clear vision to fight extremism. His tweet read: “Many Arab states scarred by Spring’s […]
UAE. A new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting firm and the world’s leading advisor on business strategy, delves into the challenges faced by Exploration & Production (E&P) companies here in the GCC region. The fact is, these are trying times for E&P companies globally. Following more than a decade of strong financial returns, the industry has experienced several difficult years caused […]
ABU DHABI // A child aged 11 and a woman have contracted Mers from a relative who had the virus diagnosed last month. The two expatriates, who live in the Eastern Region of Abu Dhabi, were found to have been infected later. The World Health Organisation reported that the woman, 46, was suffering from other disorders. The WHO said they were relatives of one of two patients […]
Sophisticated attacks by an Islamic State branch in Saudi Arabia show the jihadist group is better established there than previously suspected, and that fueled by anger over Arab civil wars, Riyadh’s militancy problem is not going away. A sustained militant campaign could undermine stability in the world’s top oil exporter and birthplace of Islam, one of the few major Arab states that has so far mostly avoided […]
UAE. MENA’s digital market value is expected to reach US$35 billion in 2015, and overall digitization initiatives could add $820 billion to regional GDP, creating 4.4 million jobs by 2020. However, this rapid digitization and the resources of the region make MENA an attractive target for a wide array of cyber-threats, according to a study by Strategy&. The Strategy& study looks into national cyber-security efforts by the […]
In a memo to employees on Thursday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spelled out his mission for the company: “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” Microsoft will also aim to “reinvent” productivity and business processes, build an intelligent cloud platform and create a more personal computing experience for its users, he said. Nadella’s vision statement comes just a week after the […]
Few events will be as significant for the world in the next 15 years as China opening its capital borders, a shift that economists and regulators across the world are now starting to grapple with. With China’s leadership aiming to scale back the role of investment in the domestic economy, the nation’s surfeit of savings — deposits currently stand at $21 trillion — will increasingly need to […]
