ABU DHABI // French President Francois Hollande arrived in the UAE on Friday evening to take part in the conference on Safeguarding Endangered Cultural Heritage, which began earlier that day at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi. Hollande, along with an accompanying delegation, was welcomed by Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi, Minister of State for Federal National Council Affairs, Madhed Hareb Al Khaili, the UAE Ambassador […]
A worker holds part of a pair of trousers at PT Trisula Garmindo Manufacturing in Bandung, West Java province September 17, 2013. In PT Trisula International’s hangar-sized factory outside the western Indonesian city of Bandung, hundreds of workers stitch together clothes for some of the world’s top brands. Amid the clatter and hum of their machines are hopes for a renaissance that can restore Indonesia’s place among […]
UAE rulers gathered together on Friday to open Dubai’s new $136 million museum, launched as part of the country’s 45th National Day celebrations. Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan were joined by leaders from the other emirates at the Union House, in the same hall where the UAE’s founding fathers gathered 45 years ago. […]
An ice storm, an email suggesting regime change and the mechanics of thinly traded futures markets have emerged as central points of contention in the market manipulation trial of one of the world’s biggest traders in financial derivatives. Donald Wilson and DRW, the trading group he leads from Chicago, are fighting civil charges they distorted the price of an interest rate futures contract. They went on trial […]
Credit: Yale University On the wall of Aaron Dollar’s office is a poster for R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the 1920 Czech play that gave us the word “robot.” The story ends with the nominal robots seizing control of the factory of their origin and then wiping out nearly all of humanity. Dollar, fortunately, has something more cheerful in mind for the future of human-robot relations. He sees […]
Fitch Ratings-Moscow/London-01 December 2016 OPEC’s agreement to cut production by 1.2 million barrels of oil per day, and the potential agreement to cut with non-OPEC countries, should help accelerate market re-balancing and increases the chances of more rapid oil price recovery than previously expected, says Fitch Ratings. But implementation risks remain, including OPEC’s adherence to the agreement and the willingness of other participants, notably Russia, to co-operate […]
ABU DHABI // “Building nations is not complete without safeguarding heritage,” Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed told the Safeguarding Cultural Heritage Conference in the capital on Friday. The deputy chairman of Abu Dhabi Executive Council was addressing the first day of the conference, where attendees heard reports of past atrocities as a prompt to forging meaningful outcomes for the future. The conference concludes Saturday, with the adoption of […]
By Emily Stephenson | NEW YORK NEW YORK U.S. President-elect Donald Trump was set to interview more candidates for top jobs in his administration on Friday and said he expected to have most members of his Cabinet announced next week. Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, is still weighing who to choose as secretary of state. The Republican president-elect said on Thursday he had chosen retired […]
The threat of disruption means CIOs and their c-suite peers are under more pressure than ever before to develop creative solutions to business challenges. Almost three quarters (73 per cent) of companies around the world believe they are exposed to digital disruption today, according to Tech Research Asia. Such is the threat of change that 61 per cent of these firms are taking affirmative action and trying […]
On the heels of Jeff Gundlach‘s “there’s going to be a buyer’s remorse period” warnings yesterday, the other ‘bond king’ has raised similar fears that the Trump rally is overdone (as are the prospects for growth behind it). Putting aside the book-talking as their bond portfolios suffer, Gross echoes Gundlach’s “Trump’s not the wizard of oz” comments, noting that the next president faces serious structural headwinds and […]
By Matthias Inverardi and Harro Ten Wolde | FRANKFURT FRANKFURT Aixtron (AIXGn.DE) will have to take action to balance income and costs, including potential job cuts, if U.S. President Barack Obama blocks its takeover by China’s Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund (FGC). Shares in the German semiconductor equipment maker fell more than 5 percent on Friday following a report by Bloomberg, citing sources, that said Obama was […]
Symantec After four years of investigation, Europol, and other agencies have moved against the prominent Avalanche botnet platform which acted as a hub for malware campaigns worldwide. Europol publicly disclosed the operation on Thursday, made possible through partnerships with the FBI, the US Department of Justice (DoJ), the German Public Prosecutor’s Office Verden Eurojust and technology firms including Shadowserver and Symantec. Law enforcement agencies moved 30 November […]
Investors poured money into US equity funds and pulled it from European ones in a week dominated by hopes for an acceleration in US economic growth and anxiety over Italy’s referendum on constitutional reform this weekend. European equity funds lost $2bn in the week to November 30, according to data from EPFR, while US funds attracted $4.4bn. That takes the total inflow for US equity funds since […]
Coutts, the taxpayer-owned bank, provided offshore services to controversial clients including a member of the Brunei royal family accused of stealing billions from his own country, and a banker charged with assisting the sons of Egypt’s deposed president, Hosni Mubarak, in financial crime. Known as the Queen’s bank after its most famous customer, Coutts is revealed to have managed secretive tax haven structures for the Sultan of […]
In late July, Moussa Aksar, the director of Niger’s L’Évènement newspaper, answered his phone and heard a familiar voice warning him that he was, once again, in danger. “Be careful,” a friendly source told Aksar. “Look out for yourself and be careful what you say on the phone.” Aksar had just published Niger’s first exposé from the Panama Papers, the investigation based on a leak of documents […]
India, China and Russia on Thursday held their first round of consultation on Asia-Pacific Affairs which included regional security architecture, coordination within regional and multilateral fora, anti-terrorism and other regional issues, according to PTI as reported by The Statesman. The consultation was attended by representatives from Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia and Ministry of External Affairs of India, an Indian […]
By Greg Torode and Marius Zaharia | HONG KONG/SINGAPORE HONG KONG/SINGAPORE As the impounding of Singaporean troop carriers in Hong Kong exposes rising tensions between China and Singapore, the Lion City is unlikely to budge on core security interests concerning Beijing – its military relationship with Taiwan, worries over the South China Sea and its hosting of the U.S. military. Singaporean officials, retired military officers and analysts […]
As a microcosm of the wrenches and stresses enterprise services are experiencing, Cognizant‘s week has been pretty fascinating. Last weekend Elliott Management took an activist controlling role in Cognizant, one of the most strategic services firms, with an open public letter to Cognizant’s management essentially chastising them for too much investment in the future and for not squeezing enough money out of the IT services world as […]
By Roslan Khasawneh | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE Oil prices slipped on Friday as some investors opted to cash out after Brent touched 16-month a high on Thursday, with optimism over this week’s OPEC-Russia accord on cutting output giving way to questions on the “sticking point” of implementing the deal. International Brent crude oil futures LCOc1 were trading at $53.36 per barrel at 0446 GMT, down 58 cents, or […]
ABU DHABI // This National Day, a celebration of 45 years of the UAE, is an opportunity to pay tribute to the country’s remarkable progress and its Rulers. Around the country, Emiratis, residents and tourists are expected to flock to public places to celebrate the occasion. Aziz Al Shamsi, 45, an Emirati, said National Day was a day of unity for all who live in the UAE. […]
US technology shares are on track to log their worst week in seven months as investors shifted their focus to equities that will benefit from the soaring price of oil and the policies of the Trump administration. The S&P 500 technology index, a measure of large companies in the sector, has declined by 3.3 per cent since last Friday. The fall would represent the steepest drop since […]
Fully operational since July, Electrochaea’s one-megawatt BioCat facility near Copenhagen converts excess electrical power from wind turbines and waste CO2 from the neighboring water treatment plant into methane for the natural-gas grid. Credit: Ronnie Ranch Hedegaard, courtesy of Electrochaea One of the biggest challenges to wider adoption of wind and solar power is how to store the excess energy they often produce. A technology developed at the […]
Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has broken out the number of FttN premises ready for service, providing a temporary level of increased transparency into the NBN rollout numbers that usually lump fibre to the node (FttN), fibre to the basement (FttB), and fibre to the premise (FttP) technologies into a single total. With the number of ready for service FttN premises overtaking the number of brownfields FttP premises […]
Petrochemicals companies led Gulf stock markets higher on Thursday in response to OPEC’s first agreement on output cuts to prop up oil prices since 2008 – a deal that could allow governments to ease austerity policies slightly. Expectations for the deal had already boosted oil and Gulf bourses on Wednesday, but the agreement included bigger production cuts than many analysts had expected, lifting oil prices higher on […]
