By James M. Dorsey Bangladesh, in a twist of irony, is looking to Saudi Arabia to fund a $ 1 billion plan to build hundreds of mosques and religious centres to counter militant Islam that for much of the past decade traced its roots to ultra-conservative strands of the faith promoted by a multi-billion dollar Saudi campaign. The Bangladeshi plan constitutes the first effort by a Muslim country to enlist […]
By James M. Dorsey Iranian leaders are struggling, three months after anti-government protests swept the Islamic republic, to ensure that environmental issues that helped sparked a popular uprising in Syria in 2011 leading to a brutal civil war don’t threaten the clergy’s grip on power. Like Syria, Iran has been confronting a drought that has affected much of the country for more than a decade with precipitation dropping to its lowest […]
By James M Dorsey The Middle East has a knack for sucking external powers into its conflicts. China’s ventures into the region have shown how difficult it is to maintain its principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states. China’s abandonment of non-interference is manifested by its (largely ineffective) efforts to mediate conflicts in South Sudan, Syria and Afghanistan as well as between Israel and Palestine and even between Saudi […]
While there are many ways in which medical science is using digital techniques and artificial intelligence (AI) to make life-saving decisions., the science and art of animation holds the potential to help revolutionize healthcare. Once the province of movies and cartoons, more realistic computer-generated imagery in medical science is providing solace to patients undergoing harsh treatments. And at the meeting point of movies and medicine, doctors are […]
Heart Disease – An infographic by GeriatricNursing.org Every year over 1.2 million people suffer from a heart attack due to coronary heart disease. The probability that a person may die from heart attack is 40 out of 100. According to the latest estimations, more than 335,000 of these heart attack patients are estimated to die even before reaching the hospital or the emergency ward. In the […]
|By Manish Rai| The recent protests in Iran rang a warning bell for the ruling theocracy in Tehran. What started in Iran’s second largest and holy city of Mashhad over rising prices, transfigured into widespread, unprecedented protests against the theocratic regime in towns and cities across the country. The earlier protests mainly emerged from capital Tehran and some major cities. But the latest ones touch a vast panoply […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) is planning to significantly expand its use of Carbon Capture, Use and Storage (CCUS) technology to meet a six-fold increase in the utilization of CO2, for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), over the next 10 years. The volume of the greenhouse gas safely locked away underground will be equivalent to the CO2 emitted by more than one million motor […]
|By Matein Khalid| When I first started on a Treasury bond futures trading desk in New York fresh out of Wharton, a senior mentor once advised to keep track of the four heartbeats of gold finance in real time. The price of money (interest rates), the price of currency (the US dollar), the price of oil and the price of gold. The price of money can be […]
By Saifur Rahman Dubai Government expects its Dh376.8 billion (US$102.67 billion) economy to grow at 3.5 per cent in 2018, slightly lower than the UAE economic growth, pegged at 3.9 per cent, according to a news release issued by the Department of Economic Development (DED), the government’s trade licensing body. The country has just implemented a 5 per cent Value-Added Tax (VAT) from January 1, 2018, expects […]
By Manish Rai Last year in June Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed a land, sea, and air blockade on Qatar for its alleged support to terror outfits and being too close to Iran. The Arab neighbours thought that by imposing this blockade they can pressurise Qatar to set aside its own ambitious foreign policy and toe the line of its bigger neighbours. But during […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| : The UAE once again captivated the world this New Year’s Eve with a dazzling spectacle to usher in 2018. Emaar’s ‘Light Up 2018’ Downtown Dubai celebration hosted more than a million visitors from across the world and reached an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide through live television broadcast and social media live streams. The mesmerising laser, light and musical fountain show not only […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Analysts fear that the GCC mobile phone market could see a slump in the wake of the 2018 VAT roll-out, as it happened in many countries, which saw a pre-VAT buildup of inventories, followed by a major slump in sales. Such concerns come at a time when the region’s mobile phone market is already in a state of flux, with IDC’s latest Quarterly Mobile […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|New sectors such as privatisation, digital banking, fintech and blockchain will all become potentially important growth sectors for job creation in 2018, particularly in Dubai, according to Cooper Fitch Salary Guide for the next year. The economic outlook for the UAE for 2018 shows some good signs of growth, in terms of the creation of new opportunities and increased headcount for the year ahead, within the […]
|By Manish Rai | The Taliban recent attacks on the Afghan security forces in the southern province of Kandahar and Farah intended to demoralize Afghan forces beset by casualties and desertions since NATO combat forces pulled out in late 2014. Recently the insurgents have stormed a number of major police and army bases and government facilities across the country it clearly demonstrates that security is deteriorating across the country […]
|By Matein Khalid| US and global equities surged on news of the US House of Representatives pass the tax reform bill, Cisco and Walmart posted blowout earnings and a potential bidding war emerged for Fox’s media assets. The rally on Thursday followed a week of carnage in the US high yield debt markets, flattening of the US Treasury yield curve and losses in the major stock market indices worldwide. […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| In a major endorsement to Saudi economic reforms initiated by Crown Prince Mohammad Salman, a top executive of American financial giant Bank of America Merrill Lynch said Saudi Arabia’s economic transformation will be “unstoppable” and there has already been a positive shift in the Kingdom’s business culture. Hootan Yazhari, managing director of the bank’s Dubai-based research department, said there are key moves being […]
|By K Raveendran| Virgin boss Richard Branson recently went on a voyage to Arabia’s past, which he claims helped him discover an incredibly exciting time in Saudi Arabia’s history. The visit also turned out to be an inspiration for him to announce a major investment in a luxury tourism project aiming to transform a stretch of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast into a hub for high-end holidaymakers. […]
|By Matein Khalid| Jamie Dimon, the unanointed king of Wall Street and chief executive of New York banking colossus J.P. Morgan did not mince his words. He called Bitcoin “a fraud”, a speculative bubble comparable to the Dutch tulip mania of the seventeenth century and declared he would fire any trader at his bank trading in the cryptocurrency “in a second” for “stupidity”. This has only reinforced the […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| With so many companies facing debt write-offs and bankruptcy, a provision in the UAE VAT tax law is likely to become a key focus in the days to come. And this provision relates to relief that will be available for debts written off by VAT registered businesses in certain circumstances. To what extent this will help companies in trouble or whether it will […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| SHUAA Capital, the UAE’s premier integrated financial services firm, announced it has entered into an agreement with Integrated Financial Group (IFG), towards the acquisition of Integrated Capital and Integrated Securities. The signing of the agreement follows the completion of the due-diligence process initiated in March. The strategic acquisition, which remains subject to regulatory approvals, of two of the UAE’s most active and successful financial […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| UAE’s National Bonds Corporation announced the results of its 2016 Savings Index for select GCC countries based on a survey conducted across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. The results showed that the UAE recorded the highest percentage of regular savers – 37 percent – compared to 25 percent in Saudi Arabia and 27 percent in the rest of the surveyed GCC countries […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Gold plunged after trading volume hit 1.8 million ounces in just one minute and gold traders were shaken by the plunge, Bloomberg reported. Gold traders shaken awake by Monday’s rapid price plunge said the move probably won’t mean an end to the sleepy pace that’s characterized the market in recent months. Bullion sank at 9 a.m. in London on Monday after a huge spike […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Cancer tumours manipulate a natural cell process to promote their survival suggesting that controlling this mechanism could stop progression of the disease, according to new research by the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford. Non-sense mediated decay (NMD) is a natural physiological process that provides cells with the ability to detect DNA errors called nonsense mutations. It also enables these cells to eliminate the mutated […]
|From Anand Vardhan in Denpasar, Bali| The Middle East crisis, which has seen the diplomatic isolation of Qatar last week, is expected to impact Indonesia’s tourism and lead to a consequential drop in foreign earnings. Bali, the single largest tourist destination of Indonesia, has been receiving some 400,000 visitors via Qatar, of which 70% are tourists. The anxiety is all the more heightened as a majority of these […]
