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FAST SHRINKING EXPORTS, LESS IMPACT ON IMPORTS

INDIA IS NOT MAKING ENOUGH FOR ITSELF

By Nantoo Banerjee

Notwithstanding the GDP growth projection of 7.5 per cent for the current fiscal, India’s $350-billion export manufacturing is fast shrinking. The export downtrend continued for 11 months in a row toll October. There is no immediate sign of improvement. Making in India does not seem to make much sense at least for Indian exporters at this moment. With export orders shrunk and prices falling in the global market, India’s export manufacturers are in a quandary. The loss of exports during this financial year could be close to $80-90billion. The export earnings could at best reach $270 billion. This could mean a massive loss of production and jobs in the export sector. The country would be lucky if it ends 2015-16 with a 20 per cent loss of export earnings compared to the last year.

Unfortunately, around 4

RUSSIA-FRANCE ALLIANCE AGAINST ISIS IS A POSITIVE MOVE

TURKEY’S LINKS WITH TERROR FUNDS EXPOSED

By Arun Srivastava

French President François Hollande entering into an alliance with the Russian President Vladimir Putin with the objective to build a global military coalition to defeat Islamic State following the Paris attacks has unnerved the USA.  This is yet another major setback for the USA. The two leaders agreeing to share intelligence information and cooperate on selecting targets in the fight against ISIS has turned the Obama administration scared of losing its authority and policy of hegemony.

The French president has won public approval and international backing for his handling of the crisis so far. His poll ratings are up by eight points to 33%. Foreign leaders have lined up to express solidarity. For the USA coming together of the leaders does not augur well. So far France has been close to the USA. Fr

Oil in danger of repeating 90s rout

OPEC has seemingly dropped any attempt at trying to fulfill its founding mission and manage the global oil market. For Saudi Arabia’s Ali al-Naimi, the most powerful and longest-serving of the group’s oil ministers, it may have seemed like history was repeating itself. There are several striking parallels between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ current situation and the period from 1997 to 1999, when the group lost […]

Iran hopes boost Dubai confidence

|By Arabian Post Staff|Analysts are consistently arguing in favour of a pickup in Dubai’s economic prospects in the wake of a possible boost in trade with Iran following the lifting of sanctions. Low oil price, which cast a shadow over the Gulf’s oil economies, has also affected Dubai, with its real estate sector, a key determinant of the emirate’s economic performance, showing signs of a clear slowdown. […]

Gold rebounds off 6-year low

Gold prices rebounded off five-year lows on Monday as some investors rushed to grab a bargain while others closed out bets on weaker prices to lock in gains on the recent slide. The most actively traded gold-futures contract, for February delivery, was recently up $6.10, or 0.6%, at $1,062.20 a troy ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices slid to $1,056.20 an […]

Apple Might Drop Standard Headphone Jack on iPhone 7

The release of Apple’s iPhone 7 might still be nearly a year away, but rumors are already circulating that the company might ditch the standard headphone jack in favor of a thinner, proprietary Lightning connector. Switching from a standard 3.5-millimeter headphone jack to a Lightning connector would enable Apple to make the iPhone 7 even thinner than the iPhone 6, which came out in September. The iPhone […]

Gold price falls despite Asian demand rise

|By Lawrence Williams| Let’s face it, the gold price seems to bear little correlation to global physical metal demand.  In the face of reducing supply (low gold prices keep scrap sales depressed, new mined gold supply is plateauing and beginning to fall and sales out of the big gold ETFs this year are a fraction of those seen back in 2013) and increasing demand – China, India […]

@6-year lows, it’s double whammy for gold

|By Arabian Post Staff| It is a double whammy for gold this Thursday. The metal was trading near its lowest in nearly six years while Reuters reported from Mumbai that third-quarter gold buying in India, the world’s biggest consumer, is likely to fall to the lowest level in eight years. Gold is hurt by poor investment demand as the dollar held at multi-month highs after U.S. economic […]

Dubai residential market seen bottoming out next year

|By Arabian Post Staff| House prices in Dubai will bottom out towards the end of next year, real estate consultancy Cluttons said in its Dubai 2015/16 Winter Residential Property Market Outlook. House prices are expected to fall another 3-5 percent over the next 12 months. The report said values for both apartments (-0.8%) and villas (-0.5%) dipped marginally during the third quarter of this year, marking the […]

Review: Samsung's Gear VR Shows the Promise of VR

Samsung [made] history of a sort by launching the first major consumer-oriented virtual-reality headset. (It comes with an asterisk; prototypes and other not-quite-mass-market versions have been available for a while.) And its Gear VR headset is pretty impressive as first-generation devices go. The biggest surprise after using the new Gear VR for a few days: There’s a lot of stuff to watch and play in the virtual […]

Dubai exchange in money laundering net

|Arabian Post Special| The US Administration has commended the UAE Central Bank and the Government for taking prompt action against a Dubai-based money exchange for supporting a money laundering racket run by a syndicate led by Pakistani national Altaf Khanani. The Anti-Money Laundering Unit of Dubai Police worked closely with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to unearth the racket. The US Department of Treasury’s Office of […]

Over 100 killed in Paris terror attack

Gunmen and bombers attacked restaurants, a concert hall and a sports stadium at locations across Paris on Friday, killing at least 120 people in what a shaken President Francois Hollande called an unprecedented terrorist attack. A Paris city hall official said gunmen systematically slaughtered nearly 100 people attending a rock concert at the Bataclan music hall. Anti-terrorist commandos eventually launched an assault on the building, killed the […]

Chrome Exploit Puts Android Smartphones at Risk

A security researcher who uncovered a high-risk exploit in Chrome for Android has received more recognition this week after demonstrating how the vulnerability works at a security conference in Tokyo. Late last year, Guang Gong, a researcher at 360 Total Security, uncovered a vulnerability that could be used by hackers to gain system server privileges on Android devices. Yesterday during the PacSec conference in Japan, Gong demonstrated […]

Google Reportedly Wants To Design Its Own Smartphone Chips

Unlike Apple, which exerts start-to-finish control over the chips and software that go into its iPhones, Google must deal with a far more diverse hardware/software environment for Android smartphones. But the tech giant might be looking to increase its influence over the systems-on-chip (SoCs) that go into Android devices. An article published yesterday in The Information noted that Google has recently talked with different chip-makers to give […]

Android Security Alert: This Malware Is Nearly Impossible To Remove

San Francisco-based mobile security company Lookout said it has uncovered a new threat to the Android operating system in the form of malware that disguises itself as a variety of well-known apps — but that actually exposes devices to root attacks and is virtually impossible to remove. The new malware has been found in software available from third-party app stores. The malware program insinuates itself in legitimate […]

Toyota Putting $1 Billion into Artificial Intelligence Research

Two months after announcing a $50 million investment in artificial intelligence (AI) research, Toyota is more than doubling down on its bet. At a press conference in Toyko today, the car maker unveiled plans to spend $1 billion over the next five years to establish a new company — the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) — focused on AI and robotics. The institute will be located in Silicon […]

Space revolution hatching in a New Zealand paddock

AUCKLAND, New Zealand The next revolution in space, making humdrum what was long the special preserve of tax-funded giants like NASA, will be launching next year from a paddock in New Zealand’s remote South Island. The rocket launch range is not just New Zealand’s first of any kind, but also the world’s first private launch range, and the rocket, designed by Rocket Lab, one of a growing […]

ClearSky Data Lands $27M To Boost Storage Network

Boston-based enterprise storage provider ClearSky Data said it has raised $27 million in a Series B investment round led by Polaris Partners, along with Akamai Technologies. The money will be used by ClearSky to refine its managed service delivery model for enterprise storage, which the company said combines the performance and availability of primary storage with the economics and scalability of the cloud. ClearSky made a splash […]

Saudi finances and the oil crash

|By Matein Khalid| Saudi Arabia has fascinated me since I first met Hani AZ Yamani as a teenage student all those years ago at Wharton. Hani’s father was Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, legendary Saudi Oil Minister (1962-86) under Kings Faisal, Khalid and Fahd. Sheikh Yamani managed the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks, survived a terrorist assault in Vienna by Carlos the Jackal, midwifed the birth of Saudi […]

Audit, HR likely to see most salary hikes

|By TAP Staff| Starting salaries for professional occupations are expected to see modest rises over the next 12 months, according to the Robert Half 2016 Salary Guide. Across professional occupations including finance and accounting, financial services, information technology, legal, and human resources and administration, salaries are expected to see an average rise of 1.7%. The roles that are the most difficult to fill are predicted to see […]

UNB misses analyst estimates

|By TAP Staff| Union National Bank reported third-quarter profit that missed analyst estimates as impairment charges rose and fee and trading income declined. Net income fell 12 percent to 480.6 million dirhams ($131 million), the Abu Dhabi-based bank said in a statement to the stock exchange on Sunday. Impairment charges jumped 57 percent to 199.8 million dirhams. Fee and commission income dropped 16 percent and the lender […]

Poser for Dubai as aviation hub

Singapore Air’s decision to restart direct flights to New York is an ominous sign for the future of aviation hubs like Dubai. Singapore, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Dubai became hubs from the 1970s to the 2000s for a simple reason: Commercial aircraft of the era struggled to travel more than about 10,000 kilometers without stopping to refuel. That put swathes of the Americas off-limits to direct […]

Gold comes back to life

Gold is starting to shed its reputation as a dead asset, and bulls can thank signs that the U.S. economy is starting to sputter for the boost. The metal climbed above its 200-day moving average on Wednesday for the first time in about five months. A gauge of inflation dropped by the most since January and retail sales missed forecasts, increasing traders’ bets that the Federal Reserve […]

Dubai developer to build $4.8b resort in Bosnia

|By TAP Staff| Dubai-based developer Buroj Property Development said  it plans to invest $4.8  billion to build a luxury tourist resort near Sarajevo, in what could be the biggest foreign investment of its kind in the Balkan country, Reuters reported. Bosnia, where Muslim Bosniaks are the largest of its three ethnic groups, has seen an influx of tourists from the Middle East in recent years and a […]