The release in cinemas last week of Ali Khaled’s Lights of Rome about the UAE football team at the World Cup in 1990 was the latest development in what has been a strong couple of years for documentaries in UAE cinema, as well as the wider Arab world which has a long history of documentary filmmaking. A high point for the industry here was undoubtedly 2015’s He […]
Data breaches are the oil spills of the digital economy. Over 429 million people were affected by reported data breaches in 2015 – and that number is certain to grow even higher in 2016. These large-scale data breaches along with uncertainties about the use of our data, cybercrime, surveillance and other online threats are eroding trust on the Internet. This is why the 2016 edition of […]
Tax compliance gets easier for companies, but new data highlights post-filing challenges across the world JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, December 1, 2016/ Economies around the world continue to make progress in simplifying and reducing the burden of tax compliance on business, according to the latest edition of Paying Taxes 2017, a report by the World Bank Group and PwC (www.PWC.com ). Released today, the report finds that the Total […]
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, November 28, 2016/ — The Ashish J Thakkar Global Entrepreneurship Index of 85 countries ranks Singapore as the best environment for entrepreneurs Of the African nations, Namibia scores highest and comes 42nd overall – ahead of other prominent African markets, such as Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa The research, conducted by Mara Foundation and Opinium Research, examines the state of entrepreneurship around the […]
Ashley Lane rounds up the winter activities in destinations ranging from Monaco and Manila to Brazil and Antarctica. • Read this and more stories in Ultratravel magazine, out with The National on Thursday, November 24 newslide Monaco Though temperatures are lower than normal, heading to Monaco in December means fewer crowds and lower prices. There are also plenty of festivals and activities to keep visitors busy. Those […]
Our round-up of the week’s best comment and analysis from the Financial Times focuses on how Donald Trump’s election produced an abrupt change of mood in the markets and examines which assets will now benefit. The selection is taken from our Markets Insight and Smart Money columns, written by industry contributors and FT commentators. Was there a financial markets equivalent of the “shy” Trump supporter to explain […]
For an American public that relies on data for everything from where to find the best taco to the likely victor in a baseball game, Election Day offered a jarring wake-up: The data was wrong. Donald Trump’s stunning electoral win came despite prognosticators’ overwhelming insistence he would lose. And it has forced many to question not just political polling, but other facets of life that are being […]
|By Alaa Al Ghamdi| The film “Bilal” has recently been released in the Middle East. I’m hoping that it is the first in a long line of new films to come out of the Arab world. Art, specifically cinema, theatre and television, is struggling to find a place in the Arab world, with those that are being released unsure of whether they will get the accolades, the […]
UAE. Based on a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) titled Self-Driving Vehicles, Robo-Taxis, and the Urban Mobility Revolution—and prepared in collaboration with the World Economic Forum—consumers around the world are surprisingly knowledgeable about Self-Driving Vehicles (SDVs) and their potential benefits, and, by and large, they are more than willing to give them a try. In fact, the study shows that 70% of consumers in […]
If “Lucy” wasn’t alone, who else was in her neighborhood? Key fossil discoveries over the last few decades in Africa indicate that multiple early human ancestor species lived at the same time more than 3 million years ago. A new review of fossil evidence from the last few decades examines four identified hominin species that co-existed between 3.8 and 3.3 million years ago during the middle Pliocene. […]
ABU DHABI // Hospitals in Abu Dhabi that provide inadequate treatment or fail to meet quality targets will have their funding cut. The rules will affect all 41 public and private hospitals in the emirate. Funding cuts will be applied directly to public hospitals, and may be applied to private hospitals by reducing their grants or holding their payments from health insurers. “We want to create a […]
INTERNATIONAL. Global inclusion in the internet could bring seven percent of the world’s population – 500 million people – above absolute poverty levels, and add US$6.7 trillion (£4.6 trillion) to global economic output, according to a new study by Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting business. The study, for Facebook, encompassed 120 countries over a 10-year period and examines how barriers to accessing the internet could be removed, and […]
INTERNATIONAL. The low level of insurance penetration seen in many Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, combined with the robust, albeit deteriorating, profitability achieved by the leading primary insurers, has made the region a target for international and domestic reinsurers. A new special report by A.M. Best examines how insurance markets in the MENA region have grown significantly over the past decade. MENA insurance premiums surpassed […]
JERUSALEM — In one scene, a group of Jews wrapped in prayer shawls begin reciting a mystical death curse known as the Pulsa Dinura. A man in a suit who has urged them to invoke the angels of destruction promises that their prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, “will be dead within a month.” In another scene, an actor plays an Israeli amateur photographer who captured the assassination of […]
Middle East Patients waited to receive medical-transfer documents in Gaza City in August. By JODI RUDOREN August 31, 2015 GAZA — The medical report details some worrying conditions: chronic dyspnea — a shortage of breath that could be a sign of heart or lung disease — and bronchial asthma. It says the patient, a 28-year-old woman from Gaza City, relies on “continuous medication” and an inhaler. But the woman […]
INTERNATIONAL. New research from PwC projects that traditional assets under management (AuM) in 12 markets across Africa will rise to around $1,098 billion by 2020, from a 2008 total of $293 billion. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 9.6%. Traditional asset management, in particular the mutual fund industry, is expanding aggressively across Africa. This will largely be driven by a number of factors: […]
UAE. Private wealth in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) showed solid growth in 2014 (8.4 percent), according to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Global Wealth 2015: Winning the Growth Game, being released today. In the UAE, the growth of private wealth was driven mainly by equities. After all, between 2013 and 2014, the amount of wealth held in equities rose by 13.8 percent […]
Actors preparing for “1945,” a play produced by Al-Midan Theater after one inspired by the case of a convicted murderer generated protests. By DIAA HADID June 13, 2015 HAIFA, Israel — The play had been staged many times for Arabic-speaking audiences in Israel without controversy. But a performance with Hebrew subtitles for a wider audience was all it took to touch off a major furor. The play, “Parallel Time,” […]
UAE. Invesco today released its third annual Invesco Global Sovereign Asset Management Study[1], an in-depth report on the complex investment behaviour of sovereign wealth funds, conducted amongst more than 50 individual sovereign investors across the globe representing $7.09 trillion2 of assets, including Middle East based sovereign wealth funds. This year’s study took place against a backdrop of an extreme fall in the price of oil and provides […]
ABU DHABI // Amid the sound of screeching tyres, the roar of engines and the smell of burnt rubber and petrol, cars line up for head-to-head races on the drag strip. Spectators excitedly watch from the stands, while other drivers in their souped-up sports cars and 4x4s line up, waiting for their turn. This is the scene at the Yas Drag Nights, which take place twice a […]
New Delhi: The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government on Monday scrapped the selection of six chiefs of public sector banks, recommended under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime, following a high-level panel finding irregularities in the process followed. The probe into selections for banks such as Bank of Baroda and Canara Bank followed the arrest of tainted Syndicate Bank Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) S K Jain […]
On a scale of 1 to 10, the new Apple iPad Mini 3 rates only a 2 when it comes to the ease with which it can be repaired. The unit, which hit store shelves this week, was rated by the gadget-repair site iFixit, which proclaimed that the iPad Mini 3 is almost indistinguishable in design and internal components from its predecessor, the iPad Air 2. iFixit […]
A lead-alloy pilgrim badge found in the mud near London Bridge in 1982 shows John Schorne grasping the bat-winged Devil Mudlarks and enthusiasts with metal‑detectors sometimes turn up little scraps of lead, fretted and bent at the edges, perhaps with a face recognisable and not much else. These can end up in the scrap bucket, but with luck they add to the growing scholarly knowledge of pilgrims’ […]
By KAREEM FAHIM August 11, 2014 CAIRO — Security officials have refused to allow two senior staff members from the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch to enter Egypt, where the two were due to release the findings of the group’s yearlong investigation into mass killings of protesters carried out by Egyptian government forces last summer. The group’s executive director, Kenneth Roth, and the director of the Middle […]
