The overview Wednesday 2.20am GMT Asian equities continue to rally on Wednesday after Wall Street notched up another set of record highs overnight, while the US dollar is trading flat. Standout stories The Dow Jones Industrial Average deserves a mention for closing above 19,000 points for the first time, while its peer US stock indices again closed at record highs. Monday was the first time since 1999 […]
When Amna Al Hashemi was contemplating which dishes to add to the menu of her new restaurant, Mitts and Trays in Dubai’s City Walk Phase 2, she sat down, closed her eyes and tried to think of the dishes that evoked her happiest memories. If these dishes stirred up good memories for her, she surmised, then they’d do the same for her customers. Madras chicken curry was […]
What makes Arena succeed? “First, he’s smart,” Logan said. “Second, he understands the theater of sport, like Casey Stengel. Third, he knows it’s a game that young people play. He coaches during the week and doesn’t think he’s running the game on Saturday or Sunday.” Photo Arena, far left, the team’s coach, and Landon Donovan, center right, celebrated after the Los Angeles Galaxy won the 2011 M.L.S. […]
SYDNEY Asian stocks crept to one-week highs on Wednesday as investors tried to share in the exuberance of Wall Street, where the three main indices seized record peaks for a second straight session. Australia’s main index led the early action with a rise of 0.5 percent to a one-month top, helped by strength in bulk commodity prices. Japan’s Nikkei .N225 was closed for a holiday after enjoying […]
ABU DHABI // The UAE is focused on tourism as one of the main pillars of the post-oil economy, Sultan Al Mansouri, Minister of Economy, has said. Under the directives of the country’s leadership, the Emirates has developed an economic system based on diversity, innovation and sustainability that achieved an 8.7 per cent GDP growth worth Dh134 billion during 2015, said the minister in an interview with […]
Global lenders’ need to cut the mounting cost of running their swaps portfolios has turned what was once a cottage industry into a cornerstone of the global derivatives industry. BGC Partners, the US interdealer broker, became the latest to underline this trend after revealing the value of interest rate swaptions it had torn up for banks this year more than trebled to $3.5tn. A swaption gives a […]
This kind of manipulation of the law is unfolding at a keen moment of weakness for the press, which has already been buffeted by falling revenue and mounting public disaffection. Only 40 percent of the public — the lowest rate since at least the 1990s — trusts the media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly,” according to a Gallup survey conducted in September 2015. This […]
Donald Trump on Monday posted a video describing plans for his first 100 days as US president. “On energy, I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy,” he said. The US president-elect plans to open more federal lands and waters to oil and gas leasing, streamline permits for new energy projects and rescind executive actions of President Barack Obama. Deregulation forms the core of his […]
Photo A de-mining operation in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, in February. Credit Javed Tanveer/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Despite a global treaty that bans land mines, casualties from those weapons and other unexploded munitions lurking in current and past war zones rose sharply last year to the highest point in a decade, a monitoring group said Tuesday in its annual report. The group, the International Campaign to Ban […]
OPEC will debate an oil output cut of 4.0-4.5 percent for all of its members except Libya and Nigeria next week but the deal’s success hinges on an agreement from Iraq and Iran, which are far from certain to give their full backing. Three OPEC sources told Reuters a gathering of experts from the oil producer group in Vienna had decided on Tuesday to recommend that a […]
ABU DHABI // The new Dh2.1 billion motorway connecting Abu Dhabi and Dubai will be open by the end of next month, providing an alternative to the congested E11. A 62-kilometre stretch of road between the end of the E311, near Al Ghadeer Village, running to the Abu Dhabi-Sweihan Road is 98 per cent complete, the Abu Dhabi General Services Company (Musanada) announced on Tuesday. It will […]
newslide Exhausted Kanye West hospitalised Rapper Kanye West was reportedly hospitalised in Los Angeles on Monday and is said to be suffering from exhaustion. The news broke just hours after he abruptly cancelled the remainder of his tour following a week of no-shows, curtailed concerts and political rants. A source told People magazine West was “exhausted and currently dealing with sleep deprivation” but was “fine”. Concert promoters […]
22 November 2016 Dubai – ICT spending in the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) is forecast to total $243 billion in 2017, according to the latest insights presented today by International Data Corporation (IDC). Hosting its annual ‘IDC Predictions’ event at Dubai’s Burj Al Arab hotel, the global technology research and consulting services firm said it expects the region’s ICT market to grow 3.6% year on […]
Underground goes overground Last Wednesday, we ran an interview with author Colson Whitehead about his brilliant novel The Underground Railroad – and that night he was up for America’s National Book Award for Fiction. When we spoke to him, he said he was excited to be nominated but noted that the NBA does not quite have the clout of the Booker Prize. Nonetheless, he won, so it […]
Sitting on a bench outside a butcher’s shop in Bagnoli, a gritty Naples suburb, Emanuele Fusco can only speak scathingly of Matteo Renzi and his referendum to change Italy’s constitution that will be put to a vote on December 4. The 25-year-old barman says the prime minister’s government has been no different to those previously that failed to regenerate the area after the demise of the steel […]
The film had been pilloried by conservative Christians for a dream sequence in which Christ has sex with Mary Magdalene. In depicting Christ’s life as a doubt-ridden struggle between his human and divine natures, Scorsese had intended to make a film that was at once an act of doubt and an act of faith. In the novel he was reading, the priest was shown profaning an image […]
Tuesday 08:00 GMT. European stocks are following a positive Asian session as global investor sentiment is buoyed by simultaneous record highs for Wall Street’s main equity gauges. A steadier dollar and further gains for oil prices are supporting the chipper mood. After the FTSE Asia Pacific index rose 0.8 per cent, the pan-European Stoxx 600 is advancing 0.7 per cent. Germany’s Dax is up 0.6 to challenge […]
Dubai’s Shuaa Capital announced on Monday the completion of a deal allowing Abu Dhabi Financial Group (ADFG) to buy a 48.36 percent stake in the investment bank. Alternative investment firm ADFG agreed in June to acquire the stake from Dubai Banking Group, a subsidiary of Dubai Group. Shuaa received approval from both the central bank and the stock market regulator last week and the deal has now […]
Photo A view of Aleppo from rebel-held territory. Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy to Syria, said he feared that the eastern part of the city could be razed before Donald J. Trump is inaugurated. Credit Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters BEIRUT, Lebanon — The United Nations special envoy to Syria offered unsolicited advice on Monday to President-elect Donald J. Trump: Pay attention to what happens between now […]
By Saikat Chatterjee | HONG KONG HONG KONG Asian stocks struck one-week highs with investors undeterred by a powerful earthquake in Japan on Tuesday, but after Wall Street closed at a record peak they were also wary of chasing prices higher until President-elect Donald Trump picks his economic team. Crude oil extended gains in Asian trading with U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) up 1 percent in early […]
The UK’s Autumn Statement arrives laden with investors waiting to see whether the British government will make good on recent heavy-handed hints about fiscal expansion. Past Treasury updates have tended to be a damp squib in global financial markets — political posturing and fiddling with tobacco taxes rarely able to catch the interest of international money. This year however the chancellor, Philip Hammond, has an opportunity to […]
In Virginia, the picture is murkier. In August, after state lawmakers banned the Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, from implementing the Clean Power Plan, Gov. McAuliffe offered a workaround: He convened a cabinet-level commission to examine what he could do under state law to cut carbon emissions from Virginia’s power sector. The group is holding “listening sessions” and in May of next year will make recommendations. […]
Photo A cemetery on the outskirts of Gaziantep, Turkey. Grave No. 38487 holds the body of a 4-year-old girl who died of wounds she received when a shell containing sulfur mustard agent hit her home in Marea, Syria. Credit Bryan Denton for The New York Times WASHINGTON — The Islamic State has used chemical weapons, including chlorine and sulfur mustard agents, at least 52 times on the […]
The dollar’s post-US election surge has investors contemplating not whether they have overdone the rally but just how far the greenback can rise and how quickly it will get there. A series of currency landmarks, which not long ago investors thought too distant to worry about, have already been trampled by the dollar’s relentless march. The euro fell below $1.06, the yen weakened towards ¥111 against the […]
