WASHINGTON — To those who lost loved ones in the suicide bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, in April 1983, it is often called “the forgotten bombing” — overshadowed by an even deadlier attack on a Marine barracks at the Beirut airport six months later. Now, a new book shines a spotlight on the embassy bombing, which killed 63 people, 17 of them American, including […]
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The strike had entered its second day when construction workers at Labor Camp 42 got word that their bosses from the BK Gulf corporation had come to negotiate. Mohammed Amir Waheed Sirkar, an electrician from Bangladesh, scrambled down the stairs to meet them. But when he got to the courtyard, he saw the truth: It wasn’t the bosses who had come. […]
TRIPOLI, Libya — Armed units loyal to a former general in eastern Libya told civilians to leave parts of Benghazi on Saturday as the troops prepared for a new assault on Islamist militias a day after heavy fighting there. The death toll from the clashes on Friday rose to about three dozen, news agencies reported, with more than 100 wounded. There was no fighting on Saturday, but […]
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations is under pressure to ratchet up aid to nongovernmental organizations that can operate in the vast sections of Syria under opposition control, as most of the humanitarian relief sponsored by the organization ends up in the western slice of the country held by President Bashar al-Assad. More than 85 percent of food aid and more than 70 percent of medicines went […]
JERUSALEM — President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority met Thursday in London with Israel’s justice minister, Tzipi Livni, the first known face-to-face talks between the two sides since the American-brokered peace negotiations collapsed last month. Ms. Livni, one of Israel’s two chief peace negotiators, and Mr. Abbas had each met separately in London with Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss the breakdown of the talks […]
SOMA, Turkey — As grieving families prepared to bury more of the dead from Turkey’s worst mine disaster, the country’s energy minister said on Friday that up to 18 people were still missing and the death toll could exceed 300. The assessment was lower than other accounts suggesting that scores of miners were still unaccounted for. An explosion at a coal mine on Tuesday near this town […]
Bombings and shootings around Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, killed at least 29 people and wounded dozens on Thursday, officials said. Gunmen killed five off-duty army officers after stopping their car on a road just north of Baghdad, the police said. Earlier, a car bomb in Karrada, a busy commercial area with several government offices, killed four civilians and three police officers and wounded 21, a police officer said. […]
Iran’s oil exports declined in April for the second consecutive month, the International Energy Agency reported Thursday, moving much closer to levels permitted under a temporary accord on the Iranian nuclear dispute that is set to expire in July. Monthly data compiled by the energy agency, a 29-member group of oil importers, showed that Iran’s exports were 1.11 million barrels a day in April, down from 1.29 […]
Stock markets in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar will see relatively large one-off inflows of money at the end of May as funds tracking the MSCI indexes adjust their positions in line with updated benchmarks. MSCI will move stocks from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to its emerging market index from its frontier market benchmark at the end of May, meaning they will be tracked by […]
Saudi Arabia reported five more deaths on Wednesday from a mysterious respiratory virus that first appeared there two years ago and has since spread to at least 16 other countries, including the United States. The Saudi Health Ministry said the latest fatalities from infections caused by the virus, known as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, brought the total in that country to 157. Saudi Arabia accounts […]
Fighting between soldiers and militants in southern Yemen killed at least 42 people on Wednesday and sent residents fleeing. Homes were destroyed and streets littered with bodies in the town of Azzan in Shabwa Province, witnesses and officials said. The fighting came amid an army offensive against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen’s local branch of the terrorist group. The militants tried to retake the town […]
King Abdullah appointed a son, Prince Turki bin Abdullah, as governor of Riyadh Province on Wednesday, strengthening his branch of the ruling dynasty as it approaches a difficult decision on how to transfer power to the next generation. Another son, Prince Mishaal bin Abdullah, was made governor of Mecca Province months ago. The line of succession does not pass directly from father to son but has moved […]
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — The United States Defense Department is considering a request from the Army to transfer Private Chelsea Manning, convicted of leaking national security data to WikiLeaks, to a civilian prison so that she can get treatment for her gender disorder, a Pentagon official said Wednesday. Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had approved a request from […]
PARIS — An international tribunal that has spent five years and more than $325 million investigating a political assassination in Lebanon without making a single arrest finally got on Tuesday its first look at an accused in the dock. But it was none of the five men charged with complicity in the 2005 murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister. Rather, it was the unlikely […]
IZMIR, Turkey — Rescuers battled on Wednesday to reach miners trapped underground after more than 200 were killed in one of the worst mining disasters in Turkey in decades. Despite the extensive rescue operation, a senior official said hopes of finding survivors were “dimming.” More than 200 were thought to be still underground after an explosion in a power distribution unit on Tuesday set off a fire […]
Middle East borrowers are increasingly weighing Australian-dollar bonds as they seek to tap one of the world’s biggest sources of pension funds, according to HSBC Holdings Plc. Three regional lenders including National Bank of Abu Dhabi sold A$1.05 billion ($984 million) of debt this year, known as Kangaroo bonds, compared with two sales in 2013 for A$475 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “We expect to […]
Samsung Electronics Co Chairman Lee Kun Hee, who leads Asia’s biggest technology company and helps generate about a quarter of South Korea’s economic output, remains in stable condition after emergency surgery following a heart attack. Lee, 72, is at Samsung Medical Center in Seoul after being resuscitated following an acute myocardial infarction, Rhee So Eui, a spokeswoman for Samsung Group, said in an e-mailed statement. Lee, who […]
If you are looking for an explanation as to why crude oil prices in Asia aren’t lower, then the blame rests squarely with Chinese stockpiling. China’s record imports of 6.78 million barrels per day (bpd) in April give the impression that oil demand is roaring ahead, but the reality is that almost half a million bpd is being put into storage tanks. The authorities don’t officially disclose […]
|By TAP Staff|The ability of mortgaged buyers of Dubai properties to step on to the housing ladder is set to be curbed in the near to medium term, real estate consultancy Cluttons has predicted.This in turn will impact on the volume of transactions being recorded, the agency said in its report titled Dubai Spring 2014 Residential Market Outlook. “ We are already seeing the first signs of […]
Gold fell to its weakest in a week early on Monday as the euro hovered near a one-month low on fears of policy action from the European Central Bank, but the metal recovered some losses on safe-haven demand over escalating violence in Ukraine. Spot gold eased 0.2 percent to $1,286.40 an ounce by 0313 GMT, after dropping to a one-week low of $1,279.60 earlier in the session. […]
With Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. filing to go public, the biggest winner won’t be founder Jack Ma or his fellow executives or even venture capital backers like Silver Lake Management LLC. It’ll be Japan’s Masayoshi Son. Fourteen years ago, Son’s SoftBank Corp. started with a $20 million bet on a then-unknown Web portal connecting Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. That site evolved into China’s biggest Internet shopping […]
Dubai’s bourse has outpaced other Gulf markets by a wide margin in terms of companies’ first-quarter profit growth, data show, supporting its position as the top performer in the region. The emirate’s benchmark soared 108 percent last year and is up 57 percent this year, making it one of the world’s top-performing stock markets over the past 17 months. Although some analysts believe the market is overbought, […]
Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange plans to sell shares in an initial public offering as the Arab world’s largest bourse seeks to gradually open up to foreigners and boost institutional investment. Tadawul, as the gauge is known, will hire advisers soon for the share sale, Chief Executive Officer Adel Al Ghamdi said at a conference in Riyadh today. That would make it the second market in the Gulf […]
|By TAP Staff|The UAE central bank is considering the establishment of a Shariah Governing Unit to oversee Islamic finance on the recommendations of the Islamic Banking Committee. The progress on this front was reviewed by the UAE Banks Federation at the CEO Advisory Council meeting, which focused on a number of critical issues facing the banking sector in the UAE. During the meeting, Federation’s specialised committees reported […]
