Minister Without Portfolio Konrad Mizzi. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier During the year just ended the Labour government continued to dig itself deeper into a culture of institutionalised corruption with persons occupying high government positions and those close to them partaking of the fruits of a corrupt system. A perfect example was the scandal revealed last year by leaked secret files where then health and energy minister Konrad Mizzi […]
I remember an epiphany of sorts I had one morning in Miami in 1991. I was in town as the national college football writer for the Chicago Tribune. A few years earlier, I was asked to participate in the Associated Press’ college football poll. Back then, there wasn’t a committee selecting four teams for a playoff. The national champion was determined by the AP media poll and […]
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 […]
By Sinead Carew and Lewis Krauskopf | NEW YORK NEW YORK U.S. bank stocks will stay in favor with investors as long as earnings reports in the coming week show an improving profit outlook while investors wait to see if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump lives up to his campaign promises. Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and Bank of America (BAC.N) kicked off […]
Wells Fargo has laid down plans to close at least 400 branches over the next two years as part of a push to cut costs as the US bank tries to recover from the scandal over sham accounts. The San Francisco-based lender, which operates more than 6,000 branches across the country, is accelerating closures as it aims to reduce about $2bn in expenses by the end of […]
Last Updated On 11 January,2017 03:16 pm Naeem Bukhari stated that there is contradiction between statements of Sharif family members. ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) – Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) lawyer Naeem Bokhari has concluded his arguments regarding the ownership of London flats and offshore companies by Sharif family highlighted in the Panama Papers. A five-member larger bench headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khosa resumed the case hearing. Other judges […]
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 […]
Qatar is regaining its appetite for deals. In the past two months alone, the world’s richest country per capita invested in Turkey’s biggest poultry producer, Russian oil giant Rosneft PJSC, and U.K. gas company National Grid Plc. The investments have been made through the Qatar Investment Authority, created in 2005 to handle the country’s windfall from liquefied natural gas sales, of which it is the world’s biggest exporter. […]
“We open a new hotel every 36 hours,” Sébastien Bazin remarks, after outlining the impressive portfolio of French hospitality chain AccorHotels, with 4,100 hotels spread across 95 countries and employing 240,000 people. The significant sum includes properties gained through the recent acquisition of FRHI, a hotel management company formerly owned by Qatar Investment Authority, billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s private investment arm Kingdom Holding and Oxford […]
By Jonathan Landay and Arshad Mohammed | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for national security adviser, held five phone calls with Russia’s ambassador to Washington on the day the United States retaliated for Moscow’s interference in the U.S. presidential election, three sources familiar with the matter said. The calls occurred between the time the Russian embassy was told about U.S. sanctions and the announcement […]
Revolutions are only relevant until the next revolution comes along. Over the past decade, the smartphone revolution has fundamentally upended daily life. Walk through any public space and you will find people of all backgrounds transfixed by pocket-sized, rectangular obelisks. These little wonder slabs magically connect us to the rest of humanity and are personal windows into the digital ghost dimension that flows beneath civilization’s surface. […]
A research team headed by Professor Maurizio Porfiri has developed the first successful 3D computer modeling of the motions of zebrafish, which are increasingly the species of choice for biomedical research. Credit: New York University Every year, approximately 20 million animals are used in scientific research. Increasingly these animals are zebrafish, which are quickly eclipsing rodents and primates as a favored species in biomedical research because of […]
Rainfall records are being broken in the San Francisco Bay Area: six inches since the start of the year, the most since 1982. Local drivers react by randomly deploying wipers, brakes and lights; it is no surprise that autonomous cars are being developed here. Other Silicon Valley records look equally hazardous. The technology-dominated Nasdaq Composite index has set further highs this week and stands more than 10 […]
By Kylie MacLellan | LONDON LONDON The British government must publish a detailed plan for Brexit by mid-February setting out its position on future membership of the European Union’s single market and customs union, a committee of lawmakers said in a report published on Saturday. Parliament’s Exiting the EU committee, made up of lawmakers from several parties including Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives and opposition Labour, also […]
By Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. House Republicans on Friday won passage of a measure starting the process of dismantling Obamacare, despite concerns about not having a ready replacement and the potential financial cost of repealing Democratic President Barack Obama’s landmark health insurance law. The House of Representatives voted 227-198 to instruct committees to draft legislation by a target date of Jan. 27 […]
An increase in Facebook pushed the Nasdaq to a record high on Friday, and the S&P 500 also rose after major U.S. banks kicked off the fourth-quarter earnings season with strong results. Wall Street has surged since President-elect Trump’s unexpected election victory on optimism he will cut corporate taxes, spend on infrastructure and deregulate banks. With stocks trading at price-to-earnings valuations well above historical averages, many investors […]
A trading surge powered by Donald Trump’s victory has helped two of the three biggest US banks boost quarterly profits, fuelling hopes Wall Street can extend its post-election resurgence. JPMorgan Chase’s trading business, the largest in the world by revenues, produced its best ever fourth-quarter. Net income jumped 96 per cent from a year earlier to $3.43bn. At Bank of America’s global markets business, net income soared […]
Deir al-Zour, an oil-rich province that borders Iraq, is largely under Islamic State control and has been the focus of American-led airstrikes and other military action. Continue reading the main story Since early 2015, the jihadists have besieged the provincial capital, also called Deir al-Zour, where about 200,000 people live. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, controls roughly half of the city, while the […]
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 13, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Tao) BEIJING, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) — Senior Chinese leaders Li Keqiang, Zhang Dejiang and Wang Qishan met with General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong in Beijing on Friday, vowing to […]
13 January 2017 Manama, Bahrain: Batelco, Bahrain’s leading digital services provider officially launched EasyPay, the first of its kind mobile payment service, in partnership with Ithmaar Bank, a Bahrain-based Islamic retail bank, and Arab Financial Services (AFS), one of the region’s leading electronic payments outsourcing service providers, at Seef Mall, Manama, on Thursday 12th of January 2017. The new service was announced by the three leading organisations […]
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 […]
Nintendo’s brand-new console Switch will go on sale March 3, more than a decade after the debut of the blockbuster Wii gaming device, at a price of $300 with a new feature: an online gaming network. While the connectivity is new for Nintendo, the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 console have had the feature for years. Still, the higher-than-anticipated price cast a cloud over the announcement: Wal-Mart […]
Throughout the presidential campaign and since Donald Trump’s election, former diplomats, retired generals, and foreign-policy analysts have attempted to decipher, explain, and predict his foreign-policy strategy. Will he pursue the big-stick model of Teddy Roosevelt? Embrace a neo-Nixonian “madman” strategy? Is Trump actually a champion of foreign-policy realism, or perhaps no realist at all? But all those questions make the same mistake — they assume the incoming […]
