The Amazon.com, Inc. logo is seen on the side of a delivery truck in Brooklyn, New York October 23, 2014. Reuters/Brendan McDermid SAN FRANCISCO Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) said on Tuesday it will begin delivering wine, beer and spirits to U.S. customers for the first time as part of its speedy delivery service, Prime Now. The online retailer is expanding Prime Now, its one- and two-hour service, to […]
UAE. The continuation of low energy prices is impacting both optimism and risk appetite in the Middle East, according to Deloitte’s latest report “Global CFO Signals: CFO Sentiment Q2 2015 – Staying focused; remaining vigilant”. With oil at US$53 a barrel at the time of the survey, CFO optimism fell to one of its lowest levels in recent years, with only a net 26% across the Middle East […]
Aden // Residents of Aden are slowly getting their lives back on track thanks to thousands of tonnes of UAE aid being distributed across the city. The historic port was left ravaged after it was attacked and occupied by Houthi rebels from northern Yemen. Many from Aden fled to other parts of the country or overseas to escape the fighting. Those that remained have faced a breakdown […]
ABU DHABI // Candidates for the Federal National Council have told of their reasons for stepping forward, as the objection process for the elections began on Monday. Sheikh Musallam Salem bin Ham Al Ameri said the people of his emirate had asked him to nominate himself. “The idea was crossing my mind, but when the people asked me to run I was happy to,” said Sheikh Al […]
KIBBUTZ SUFA, Israel — Looking out across the perimeter fence of this small rural community in southern Israel, along the border with Gaza, Eyal Shalev, 23, sees a battlefield. Last summer, during Israel’s 50-day war with Hamas in Gaza, Mr. Shalev was on the other side, in a tank. His younger brother, Sgt. Shachar Shalev, who was fighting with the Paratroopers Brigade inside Gaza, was critically injured […]
UAE. Generation Y, otherwise known as the Millennials, are a very appealing pack of consumers to advertisers for two reasons: They are happily spending their disposable income now that they have entered full-time work and they have unprecedented influential power. Millennials are very active on their social channels and it is their voice that is becoming the primary source of information on products and services. In the […]
People gathered near the site of a bomb blast on the outskirts of Cairo on Friday. A study found that public turmoil, war and other crises can be associated with declining air pollution in the Middle East. By JOHN SCHWARTZ August 21, 2015 Civil unrest and humanitarian crises can now be detected from space — because of, somewhat surprisingly, cleaner air. A paper published on Friday in the journal […]
TORONTO Emails sent by the founder of infidelity website AshleyMadison.com appear to have been exposed in a second, larger release of data stolen from its parent company, cyber security experts confirmed on Thursday. The data dump by hackers who have attacked the site appears to include email messages linked to Noel Biderman, founder and chief executive officer of its Toronto-based parent company Avid Life Media. In a […]
DUBAI // The last day of Federal National Council registration lived up to expectations as 90 candidates rushed to apply before the deadline. “Just as we thought, the last day of registration in Dubai had the biggest turnout,” said Ahmed bin Humaidan, the head of the Dubai Federal National Council Election Committee. In Dubai, 21 candidates registered yesterday, six of whom were women. “We’re very pleased with […]
The recent action taken by the UAE to eliminate fuel subsidies has rekindled the debate on tax reform in the GCC, with the focus on domestic implementation of a broad-based Value Added Tax (VAT) on goods and services. While countries are facing an increasing amount of pressure on their national budgets, every GCC government understands the urgent need for fiscal-sustainability, added the report “VAT in the GCC […]
UAE. The recent action taken by the UAE to eliminate fuel subsidies with effect from 1 August 2015 ignited the debate on tax reform in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Whilst these countries are facing an increasing amount of pressure on their national budgets, every GCC government understands the urgent need for fiscal-sustainability in the long-term. This urgency, according to Deloitte’s latest report “VAT in the […]
UAE. After a decade of finding bargains in real estate markets against the backdrop of a secular weak US Dollar, as well as a regime of declining interest rates, foreign investors in the last year have faced the prospect of sharply higher housing prices in Dubai, as their nations’ currencies have fallen against the US dollar. In times of a weak dollar market, real estate prices have […]
Chip company Rambus, known mostly for its memory technology and propensity to sue competitors, said it is taking a greater role in the manufacture of its chips. To mark the occasion, the company introduced its R+ DDR4 server memory chipset, RB26. The company said the chipset, for RDIMMs and LRDIMMs, is aimed at the enterprise and data center server markets. Rambus, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., develops DRAM […]
ABU DHABI // Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and a 21-gun salute greeted Indian prime minister Narendra Modi at the Presidential Airport on Sunday. Sheikh Mohammed, also Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, welcomed Mr Modi and invited him to inspect the honour guard. He said the visit, the first by an Indian prime minister in 34 years, came within the context […]
Headsets hang in front of a screen displaying a Spotify logo on it, in Zenica February 20, 2014. Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Files EDGARTOWN, Mass. If hearing Barack Obama break into song hasn’t satisfied your presidential music needs, you can now listen to his playlists on Spotify. The White House on Friday released two music sets “hand-created” by the president of the United States for daytime and evening listening as […]
INTERNATIONAL. The word tragic has often been used to describe the civil war in Syria, but it is a pale description of the raging madness on the ground. The bloodletting and massive destruction that has swept the nation is not a mere tragic event; the magnitude of the destruction and loss of lives is catastrophic by any measure unseen since the horror of World War II. The […]
ABU DHABI // For Ahlam Al Qasim and Fatema Al Khouri the sky isn’t the limit – they have big plans to go farther. The Emiratis have returned from a two-week internship with the Italian Space Agency (ISA) and now hope to forge a career in the industry and play a part in the UAE’s Mars mission. “I’ve been interested in space science ever since I was […]
An employee works near screens in the virus lab at the headquarters of Russian cyber security company Kaspersky Labs in Moscow July 29, 2013. RUSSIA-CYBERCRIME/ Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin/Files SAN FRANCISCO Beginning more than a decade ago, one of the largest security companies in the world, Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, tried to damage rivals in the marketplace by tricking their antivirus software programs into classifying benign files as malicious, according […]
Customers enter the Apple store on 5th Avenue beneath an Apple logo in the Manhattan borough of New York City, July 21, 2015. Reuters/Mike Segar Apple Inc (AAPL.O) will delay its live TV service to at least next year, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the iPhone maker’s plans. The company had planned to introduce the service, which is delivered over the Internet, this year. Discussions with […]
Chinese airlines and European luxury car makers are emerging as the early losers after the People’s Bank of China let the yuan fall the most in two decades. China’s surprising move to cut its daily reference rate by 1.9 percent Tuesday rippled through global markets. Policy makers called the change a one-time adjustment and said its fixing will become more aligned with supply and demand. While it […]
Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President for Products, delivers his keynote address during the Google I/O developers conference in San Francisco, California May 28, 2015. Reuters/Robert Galbraith/Files SAN FRANCISCO A low-key style and an unusually firm handle on diplomacy propelled new Google chief executive Sundar Pichai to the top of the search engine giant, former colleagues said, cementing his successes such as creating the Chrome browser. As part […]
AL AIN // Emirati Saleh A R Salem has become the Asian Continental Chess Champion of the year. The 22-year-old grandmaster was declared the winner after the final round of the competition at the Hilton hotel in Al Ain on Monday. It is the first adult continental championship title that Salem has won after victories in several junior and youth championships. “I am very happy. It was a […]
ABU DHABI // The annual inflation rate for the emirate increased during the first quarter of the year by 1.4 percentage points. According to the economic performance report of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, issued by the Division of Studies in the Department of Economic Development in Abu Dhabi, the annual inflation rates reached 5.0 percentage points in January and 4.6 percentage points in February compared with […]
RAS LAFFAN, Qatar — The temperature hovered around 100 degrees on the jetty here, where a set of pipes were connected to a giant red-hulled ship. But the moisture in the air froze on the pipes and flaked off, creating snowlike flurries on the early summer evening. The incongruous sight is common on the Qatari ship, the Al Rekayyat, which carries a frigid fuel known as liquefied […]
