Qatar Airways has reportedly spoken of a positive outlook for 2017, as its rivals Emirates and Etihad Airways scale back in response to tough economic conditions and lower air travel demand. A spokesperson for Qatar Airways told Doha News that the airline would be adding new routes next year, and had recently put in a new order for Boeing aircraft. The spokesperson reportedly added that Qatar Airways […]
By Lesley Wroughton and Matt Spetalnick | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will lay out his vision for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a speech on Wednesday, days after the United States cleared the way for a U.N. resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements. The speech, less than a month before President Barack Obama leaves office, is expected to be the administration’s last […]
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Lberty Blitzkrieg blog, Today’s piece should be seen as a bit of a followup to yesterday’s post, India’s Demonetization Debacle Highlights the Dangers of Monetary Monopoly. While yesterday’s piece was more philosophical/strategic in nature, today’s zeroes in on some of the devastating real world impacts of Narendra Modi’s insane and inhumane cash ban. It’s hard to overstate the damage this policy has done to […]
After a two-year experiment with free markets, the pain of low oil prices forced the world’s biggest producers to join forces in 2016 and tackle a global supply glut. Saudi Arabia-led Opec and non-member countries, primarily Russia, agreed after months of discussion and back channel diplomacy to cut production for the first time since the global financial crisis. Prices look set to end the year in the […]
Dubai, UAE, 27 December 2016 HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), has opened the Dubai Future Accelerators workshop organised by the Dubai Government Excellence Program on 27 December 2016 at Jumeirah Emirates Towers. In his keynote speech, Al Tayer emphasised that the UAE is an active key player in shaping the future through accelerators, innovation, and adopting scientific […]
A Kingdom of Oil From the beginning, the social contract between commoners and royals constituted a trade-off: a share of the country’s wealth in exchange for absolute rule by the Saud monarchs. A Life magazine correspondent visiting in 1943 described how, as King Abdulaziz waited on a roadside while a flat tire was fixed on his Packard, he gave a shepherd passing on camelback several gold pieces. […]
By Jeffrey Heller | JERUSALEM JERUSALEM The Jerusalem municipality, undeterred by a U.N. anti-settlement resolution, is due to consider on Wednesday requests for construction permits for hundreds of new homes for Israelis in areas that Israel captured in 1967 and annexed to the city. Israel is still fuming over the resolution approved last Friday by the United Nations Security Council that demands an end to settlement activity […]
In order to meet this demand for fresh content — a demand created by the process that supplies it — Jukin scales idle browsing to industrial proportions. A researcher, on average, watches 200 clips daily. That’s a thousand videos each week, or 50,000 per year, give or take. The company’s research is aided by proprietary software called Riff, which generates feeds based on niche viral keywords. Maybe […]
Submitted by Alice Salles via TheAntiMedia.org, The end of the year is approaching, and data concerning government abuses of power has begun pouring in. According to Facebook’s Global Government Requests Report, government’s requests for Facebook account data rose 27 percent in the first half of 2016. Facebook’s official announcement explained that requests for user data went from 46,710 in the last half of 2015 to 59,229 in […]
TOKYO Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) is gauging demand for its first bond offering since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear calamity, with some market participants expecting a sale as early as February, people familiar with the plans said. Once-sceptical investors are now more comfortable with the utility’s outlook after government moves to reassess decommissioning and compensation costs, bankers and investors who asked not to be identified told Thomson Reuters […]
Iran’s rial hit a record low against the U.S. dollar on Monday in a sign of concern about the country’s ability to attract foreign money after U.S. president-elect Donald Trump takes office. The rial was quoted in the free market at 41,500 to the dollar, weakening from around 41,250 on Sunday and 35,570 in mid-September. Before this month, the record low was about 40,000, hit in late […]
By Osamu Tsukimori | TOKYO TOKYO Oil prices were little changed on Tuesday in light pre-New Year holiday trading with markets adopting a wait-and-see stance less than a week before the first output cut deal agreed between OPEC and non-OPEC members in 15 years is scheduled to kick in. London Brent crude for February delivery LCOc1 was down 1 cents at $55.15 a barrel by 0335 GMT […]
Chinese retail investors may be able to dream of Picasso while hanging share certificates on their walls. A Singapore-based Chinese billionaire investor, who this year acquired stakes in peer-to-peer group Lending Club, Legg Mason, the fund manager and Sotheby’s, has proposed “securitising” the artist’s work to create fractional ownership and tap a wider market in Asia. Chen Tianqiao and his wife Chrissy Luo, co-founders of investment group […]
ACE Hardware, the world’s largest hardware retail cooperative, is to open at First Avenue in Dubai’s Motor City, becoming its main anchor retail tenant. The retailer said in a statement that it will operate on the ground floor across an area of almost 6,500 sq ft. ACE stores sell a wide variety of hardware products to maintain and fix homes and businesses. “The pace of demographic growth […]
The Sunday Times of Malta’s cartoonist Steve Bonello picked this effort as his favourite cartoon of the year. “The Panama Papers had not been published by that date (March 13), but it was what all of Malta was talking about, with the government pedalling hard to shift the focus on its three years of achievements,” Mr Bonello said in explaining his choice. It is indeed a remarkable […]
December 26, 2016 by: Joanna S Kao in New York Last week ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ became the seventh new Broadway show of 2016 to pull in more than $1m at the box office in a single week, at the end of a year in which New York’s theatre takings have so far been roughly flat at $1.34bn. Rising ticket prices and better models for variable pricing have made […]
26 December 2016 Middle East Payment Services (MEPS) – a leading, innovative payment services provider in the Middle East – has formally activated its acceptance of UnionPay cards at points-of sale (POS) across the Kingdom. This step follows the signing of a partnership agreement between MEPS and UnionPay International (UPI), a leading global payment services provider. Under the terms of the agreement, MEPS will not only accept […]
Emirates airline has announced that it will operate the first ever commercial Airbus A380 flight to Morocco and North Africa, when it takes the iconic double decker aircraft to Casablanca on March 26, 2017. The airline’s flagship aircraft will replace the Boeing 777-300ER aircraft currently used on the Dubai-Casablanca route, offering increased seat capacity across all three cabin classes and an enhanced premium product experience. The switch […]
In January of 2016, the Bundesbank announced that three years after commencing the transfer of some of its offshore-held gold from vaults located at the Banque de France in Paris and the NY Fed in New York, it had repatriated a total of 366.3 tonnes, bringing the German central bank’s gold reserves held in Frankfurt to 1,402 tonnes, or 41.5% of Germany’s total gold of 3,381 tonnes, […]
Kuwait, 26 December 2016 Kuwait Financial Centre “Markaz” and Gulf Bank announced in a joint statement the successful completion of “Markaz” 5 years bond issue with a nominal value of 25 Million Kuwaiti Dinar, which was oversubscribed. This extensive demand reflects the investors’ trust in “Markaz”, the quality of the issue, and the high creditworthiness of “Markaz,” in addition to the effectiveness of the joint distribution efforts […]
MILAN/LONDON On the morning of July 29, former Italian Industry Minister Corrado Passera was traveling in a high-speed train toward the medieval city of Siena, racing to meet the directors of the world’s oldest bank to present them with a rescue plan. Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Italy’s third-largest lender, was destined to be wound down within months unless it could raise billions of euros and pull […]
Over the past year, technology and ‘sharing economy’ start-ups have continued their disruption of traditional industries — from Uber and other ride hailers’ shake-up of the taxi market to Airbnb’s myriad alternatives to conventional hotel stays. But which will be the next businesses to be challenged by further digitisation and automation? FT correspondents have looked ahead five to 10 years to identify those industry sectors and companies […]
SEOUL Headed for a fourth straight annual profit decline, Hyundai Motor (005380.KS) is trimming its cost fat; scaling back on business class flights and annual family home trips for overseas employees, executives told Reuters. The South Korean automaker has been hit by its exposure to weak emerging markets, and a product line-up that features more sedans than sport utility vehicles, just as SUVs have become more popular […]
By Jake Spring | NINGDE, China NINGDE, China A dusty village on the outskirts of Ningde, a third-tier city in China’s southeast, seems an unlikely place for the headquarters of a potential global leader in future automotive technology. Yet China’s top-down industrial policy diktats – move up the value chain, clean up polluted urban skies, and shift to plug-in cars – have Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) […]
