CAIRO — An Egyptian judge on Saturday handed down unexpectedly harsh verdicts in the trial of three journalists from the Al Jazeera English news channel, sentencing them to three years in prison on charges that legal experts said were unfounded and politically motivated. The verdict on Saturday was especially stunning because Egyptian officials had repeatedly signaled that they viewed the trial as a nuisance that had brought […]
ABU DHABI // Women who have overcome prejudice to pursue successful careers in the aviation industry have spoken of the challenges they faced. The Etihad Airways event, organised ahead of Emirati Women’s Day on Friday, heard from a panel of women who work for the company. The airline employs 1,269 female Emiratis, who make up 49 per cent of Emiratis in the company and 37 per cent […]
TORONTO Emails sent by the founder of infidelity website AshleyMadison.com appear to have been exposed in a second, larger release of data stolen from its parent company, cyber security experts confirmed on Thursday. The data dump by hackers who have attacked the site appears to include email messages linked to Noel Biderman, founder and chief executive officer of its Toronto-based parent company Avid Life Media. In a […]
|By Matein Khalid| Every global recession since the OPEC oil shocks of 1973-74 was triggered by a contraction in the $17 trillion US economic colossus. The failure of Lehman Brothers, the meltdown in US subprime mortgages, the impotence of the implicit “Fed/Uncle Sam” put, the ice age in the commercial paper and interbank money markets all tipped the US economy into recession in late 2008 and triggered […]
|By Matein Khalid|So Pearson PLC has sold the FT Group (with its flagship Financial Times newspaper) to Japan’s Nikkei Inc for $1.32 billion. Pearson will use the cash proceeds to increase its investment in education publishing businesses in the US and Canada, now 75% of revenues. This deal is a milestone in the history of newspaper publishing and my own life as an investor/financial journalist. I discovered […]
TEHRAN — For Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter now on trial for espionage in Iran, the incident was extraordinary but still looked like another example of the difficulties in covering the country’s politics. On a spring day in March 2014, his wife and a female photographer were stopped in broad daylight in their car on a busy Tehran highway and taken into a van, where, friends […]
Shepherding livestock in the West Bank village of Susiya. Residents have been displaced three times in the last 30 years and are faced with ejection once again. By DIAA HADID July 23, 2015 SUSIYA, West Bank — Yousef Nawajaa strode between the tents bedecked with Palestinian flags, scattered through parched orchards and rocky hills, shouting delightedly to a man nearby: “Hey, did you hear? John Kerry spoke about Susiya!” […]
UAE. The current shortage of middle income housing is one of the greatest challenges facing the real estate industry in the Middle East, said Craig Plumb, Head of Research at JLL MENA. “With a shortage of housing for those families earning salaries around the UAE average, it is important that we address some of the best practice initiatives and developments that have been launched in the Emirates, […]
|By Matein Khalid| As a student of investing and the son of a painter/art historian, I cherish art as a visceral, spiritual value but am also intrigued by its historical linkage to banking and the financial markets. The happiest moments of my life have been spent in the Prado, Tate, Hermitage, Rijksmuseum, Ufizi, MOMA, Met, the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay and so […]
Ashley Madison founder Noel Biderman demonstrates his website on a tablet computer during an interview in Hong Kong August 28, 2013. Reuters/Bobby Yip/Files TORONTO Hackers threatened to leak details including the credit card information, nude photos and sexual fantasies of as many as 37 million customers of a dating website that caters to cheating spouses, the KrebsOnSecurity blog reported. The dating website AshleyMadison.com’s Canadian parent, Avid Life […]
|By Matein Khalid| Last week was a roller coaster and the Nikkei Dow closed at 19,800. Abenomics has had a seismic impact on Japan’s economy, financial markets and banking system. The yen has fallen from 76 on the eve of the election in 2012 to 122 against the US dollar. Corporate profits have exploded. Land price rises, job growth, bonuses, capex and consumer spending have lifted Japan […]
|By Matein Khald| During the 2008 post-Lehman financial meltdown, home prices in Dubai fell by 60-70 per cent and a generation of offplan flippers and leveraged investors/buyers (a mortgage, by definition, is a highly leveraged and speculative financial product. There is a reason the word “mortgage” derives from the French “mort” or death!) were wiped out. However, the Arab Spring, global liquidity and the successful debt restructuring […]
A ball boy holds a ball on Court 18 at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, July 3, 2015. Reuters/Henry Browne Deep in the bowels of the All England Club, an army of employees from one of the world’s technology giants are teaching a computer named Watson to master tennis. Seven-times Wimbledon champion Roger Federer can relax though. A silicon-chipped cyborg is not about to wreak havoc […]
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 […]
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 […]
UAE. Dubai and Abu Dhabi have been ranked as the 23rd and 33rd most expensive cities to live in (respectively) according to Mercer’s 2015 Cost of Living Survey. The two cities have experienced a significant jump compared to 2014, with Dubai soaring 44 places from last year’s position at 67 and Abu Dhabi going up 35 places 68th in 2014. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are the most […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Islamic State fighters are preventing fuel shipments from reaching rebel-held parts of northern Syria, causing severe shortages that are paralyzing ambulances, stopping medical centers from providing care and shutting down bakeries, according to antigovernment activists and aid workers. Adding to the misery, international aid groups said, the forces of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, are targeting medical centers in opposition areas, killing some workers and […]
SANTIAGO, Chile — A haunting, yellowish glow radiates from the tiny section of empty wooden benches and crumbling concrete behind the north goal at Estadio Nacional. All around this space there is noise: 47,000 soccer fans screaming and jumping in delight as Chile’s national team plays Ecuador in the opening game of the Copa América. But no one sits on those wooden benches. They are reserved in […]
UAE. The European football market grew to total $28.9 billion in 2013/14. Revenue growth across all of the ‘big five’ European leagues (Bundesliga, La Liga, Ligue 1, Premier League and Serie A), saw the combined revenues of the ‘big five’ leagues pass the $15 billion mark ($15.3bn), according to the 24th Annual Review of Football Finance from the Sports Business Group at Deloitte. Dan Jones, Partner in […]
Mohammed Soltan is pushed by his father during a court appearance in Cairo on March 9. By KAREEM FAHIM May 30, 2015 CAIRO — Mohamed Soltan, an American citizen who spent nearly two years in an Egyptian prison on charges that he supported an Islamist protest, has been released by the Egyptian authorities and flew back to the United States on Saturday, his family said in a statement. Mr. […]
From left: Maziar Bahari, Reza Taghavi and Amir Hekmati. By THE NEW YORK TIMES May 27, 2015 In the past seven years, other journalists and American travelers have been arrested in Iran for spying. All have denied the accusations. ▪ Roxana Saberi: An Iranian-American journalist arrested in January 2009 on accusations of spying, and sentenced to eight years. She was released after 100 days and wrote a book about her experience. […]
The handmade Egloo candle-powered heater is made of terracotta which stores & radiates heat. The design uses two domes to maximizes the heat of just 4 small candles & comfortably heats a small room—like your office—for up to 5 hours. Recommended article: Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading […]
It was a bit less spectacular and a lot less glamorous than most Hollywood disaster movies. But the recent mega-breach at Sony Pictures Entertainment had more than its share of drama and improvisation. Numerous media outlets this week published behind-the-scenes looks at how the crisis, one of the worst cyberattacks on an American company, was handled internally. Among other unusual steps, studio CEO Michael Lynton communicated with […]
NEW DELHI: The government is working on big-ticket financial package for about 1,30,000-mw thermal and hydro power plants worth over Rs 6,00,000 crore that are hit by severe funds crunch while continuing to face cost and time overruns. Officials said the Department of Financial Services will shortly recommend a series of steps to the Reserve Bank of India. These include lenders providing additional debt to […]
