There is no guarantee that all will go according to plan, of course. Israel struggled for years to develop regulations to manage its newfound wealth. The international energy firms that Israel is now courting have other options in an evolving global market. And the politics of a new era, as President-elect Donald J. Trump encourages assertive Israeli action in Jerusalem and the West Bank, could kindle fresh […]
The Saudi-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) has agreed to loan the Kyrgyz Republic $20 million to finance a rural water supply and sanitation improvement project. The funding will help the Kyrgyz Republic to improve access and quality of water supply in targeted rural communities, improve sanitation services primarily in schools, and health centres in selected villages and strengthen capacity of institutions in the water supply and sanitation […]
By Paul Lienert and David Shepardson | DETROIT/WASHINGTON DETROIT/WASHINGTON Japan’s Takata Corp (7312.T) on Friday agreed to plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing and to pay $1 billion to resolve a U.S. Justice Department investigation into ruptures of its air bag inflators linked to at least 16 deaths worldwide. The deal was announced hours after prosecutors in Detroit charged three former senior Takata executives with falsifying test results […]
A border tax in the US could upend the export-based economic model that has brought prosperity to millions of people in Asia, say analysts, as the region wakes up to reforms proposed by Republicans in Congress. Although most attention is still focused on whether president-elect Donald Trump will slap tariffs on China or target companies that move production offshore, proposals for a US tax regime that penalises […]
The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has signed an exclusive contract with DP World to provide taxi services to lift tourists from and to The Hamdan bin Mohammed Cruise Terminal at Rashid Port in Dubai. The RTA’s Dubai Taxi Corporation will provide taxi and VIP limousine services to greet tourist disembarking the growing number of cruise liners arriving in the emirate. The RTA said it has also […]
By Karen Freifeld | NEW YORK NEW YORK Moody’s Corp (MCO.N) has agreed to pay nearly $864 million to settle with U.S. federal and state authorities over its ratings of risky mortgage securities in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Friday. The credit rating agency reached the deal with the Justice Department, 21 states and the District of Columbia, […]
Moody’s has agreed to pay $864m to settle allegations that it inflated the credit ratings of subprime mortgage bonds that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, the Department of Justice said on Friday. The settlement with the rating agency includes a $437.5m federal civil penalty to the US government — the second-largest payment of this type ever by a rating agency — and ends an investigation carried […]
HAVANA The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce met with Cuban President Raul Castro and in separate meetings with members of Castro’s economic cabinet on Friday, as they prepare for the advent of a more hostile Trump administration next week. The chamber has been urging the Cuban government to sign a number of agreements with major companies such as General Electric, negotiated over the last 18 […]
If Donald Trump was concerned by the clashing views that emerged from his cabinet nominees in the first days of Senate confirmation hearings, he did not show it on Friday. “All of my Cabinet nominee (sic) are looking good and doing a great job,” the president-elect tweeted before sunrise in New York. “I want them to be themselves and express their own thoughts, not mine!” But the […]
Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon chief, didn’t get where he is by being nice to China. When Beijing tried to force his company to abandon a gas exploration project in the waters off Vietnam in 2008, ExxonMobil showed it the finger. BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and several others caved to Chinese pressure. ExxonMobil is still there, drilling on a Vietnamese license in waters also claimed by China. Is […]
The slideshow published by the Belfast Telegraph on Monday, juxtaposing photographs from the life of Martin McGuinness before and after the Northern Ireland peace process, eloquently bookended the story of a man regarded by some as a hero and by others as a symbol of the mindless sectarian violence that killed more than 3,500 people and marred the lives of countless thousands more during 30 years of […]
Law Blog rounds up the morning’s legal news: Comey’s call: The Justice Department’s inspector general launched an investigation into how the head of the FBI and his deputy handled probes into Democratic presidential candidate . [WSJ] Baltimore settlement: With a week left in President Obama’s tenure, the Department of Justice struck an agreement with Baltimore aimed […] (via WSJ)
International investigators have said for the first time that they suspect President Bashar al-Assad and his brother are responsible for the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict, according to a document seen by Reuters. A joint inquiry for the United Nations and global watchdog the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had previously identified only military units and did not name any commanders […]
DUBAI // Academics have welcomed a new agreement between the UAE Space Agency and eight universities as a way of developing much-needed manpower for the country’s space industry. As part of the agreement between University of Sharjah, Zayed University, the American University of Sharjah, Khalifa University, American University of Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates University, New York University Abu Dhabi, and the Masdar Institute of Science […]
After the excitement around Opec agreeing oil supply cuts with Russia and other non-members at the end of last year, attention in 2017 has quickly shifted to the next key question: will they actually deliver all the promised cuts? A group of companies believe that they are positioned to deliver that answer, trumpeting their years of experience tracking global oil flows, using everything from modern satellite technology […]
OPEC is unlikely to deliver fully on its target to cut production despite Saudi Arabia saying it had trimmed more than it had committed to, OPEC delegates say, but compliance of 80 percent would be good and as low as 50 percent acceptable. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is planning to cut its output by 1.2 million barrels per day to 32.50 million bpd from […]
By Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The Obama administration on Thursday announced the repeal of a measure granting automatic residency to virtually every Cuban who arrived in the United States, whether or not they had visas, ending a longstanding exception to U.S. immigration policy. The end of the “wet foot, dry foot” policy, which allowed any Cuban who reached U.S. soil to stay but returned any picked […]
President-elect Donald Trump may be at war with the intelligence community, but on Thursday his pick to head the CIA tried to bridge the rift between the incoming president and his spies, saying he accepts the assessment that Russia meddled in the election to boost the Republican’s candidacy. “It’s pretty clear about what took place here, about Russian involvement in efforts to hack information and to have […]
Oil continued its see-saw start to the new year, registering its biggest advance in six weeks on Thursday after Opec’s biggest producer said that it had slashed output to the lowest level in almost two years. Brent, the global oil market, rose as much as $1.24 to $56.43 a barrel after Saudi Arabia’s energy minister Khalid al-Falih said that the kingdom had cut production to less than […]
Dubai, UAE, 12 January 2017 10x Genomics, Inc., a company focused on expanding genomics applications including single-cell research, has signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Alliance Global FZ LLC to bring the Chromium™ System and solutions for genome, exome and single cell analysis to the Middle East and African (MEA) markets. 10x Genomics recently launched the Chromium Single Cell Controller which is a massively scalable tool for […]
Wikimedia Commons IBM has announced a new partnership with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a study designed to determine whether blockchain technology can be used to keep medical data transfers safe from theft or exploit. The tech giant announced the collaboration between IBM Watson Health and the FDA on January 11. The research initiative is a two-year agreement between the FDA and IBM which […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. Donald Trump is nothing if not transparent, especially when it comes to views of the press and outright evasions about his business holdings. That was self-evident at his Wednesday spectacle (labeled “press conference”) in which he bashed media and also […]
ABU DHABI // “We are all proud,” said Suhaib Al Bastaki, son of Mohammed Ali Zainal Al Bastaki, who was one of the five Emiratis killed in Afghanistan on Tuesday. Al Bastaki was the deputy director general of the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation and had dedicated his life to humanitarian work. “My father travelled the world to help the poor and orphans everywhere. Every week […]
These investigations hardly change public opinion in Israel. Mr. Sharon was widely supported even while his investigation made daily headlines. Mr. Barak and Mr. Olmert’s popularity suffered for entirely different reasons (Mr. Barak’s failure to hold his governing coalition together; Mr. Olmert’s execution of the 2006 war in Lebanon). Mr. Netanyahu, too, remains reasonably popular: Surveys indicate that if elections were held today, he would get another […]
