|By Arabian Post Staff| New York: Demby Coin, the world’s biggest ICO, has debuted at an investor conference in New York, eliciting keen interest from investors looking for alternative investment opportunities. Demby Coin, which will power the world’s first ever all-inclusive marketplace with the combined effect of the likes of Amazone and Ebay, seeks to bring the much-needed liquidity into the crypto currency ecosystem, by enabling purchases […]
Is the human race winning? It seems that the answer is no. We go slowly along a pathway that plays with the notion of progress. We digress constantly from focussing upon what would fix issues of division, disagreement and despair. The fundamentals are wrong. This is because we became strong believers of what deceives us. We see policies formulated on the basis of hatred, and not practicality. […]
By James M. Dorsey Less than a week in office, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has made blasphemy one of his first issues, empowering militants and initiating international moves, long heralded by Saudi Arabia, that would restrict press freedom by pushing for a global ban. Mr. Khan, in his first address as prime minister to the Pakistani Senate, said he intended to raise the blasphemy issue in […]
By James M. Dorsey Financial injections by Qatar and possibly China may resolve Turkey’s immediate economic crisis, aggravated by a politics-driven trade war with the United States, but are unlikely to resolve the country’s structural problems, fuelled by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s counterintuitive interest rate theories. The latest crisis in Turkey’s boom-bust economy raises questions about a development model in which countries like China and Turkey witness moves towards […]
By James M. Dorsey An offer by a Saudi-backed bank to lend financially strapped Pakistan US$4 billion is likely intended to bolster Saudi influence when former international cricket player Imran Khan is sworn in in the coming week as the South Asian country’s next prime minister. The offer was most immediately related to a statement by Asad Umar, Pakistan’s new finance minister-in-waiting, that Pakistan would decide on whether to seek […]
By James M. Dorsey The failure of Western allies to rally around Canada in its dispute with Saudi Arabia risks luring the kingdom into a false belief that economic sanctions will shield it from, if not reverse mounting criticism of its human rights record and conduct of the war in Yemen. It also risks convincing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that acting with impunity will not impinge on […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|An Arbitral Tribunal of the London Court of International Arbitration confirmed the illegitimacy of the Government of Djibouti’s action of seizing control of the Doraleh Container Terminal from DP World. The LCIA Tribunal has ruled that Doraleh Container Terminal’s Concession Agreement “remains valid and binding notwithstanding Law 202 and the 2018 Decrees”. Law 202 and the referenced decrees were devices enacted by Djibouti to […]
By James M. Dorsey China appears to be shifting gears in its multi-billion dollar Belt and Road initiative. Long projected as driven by economics and the benefit of infrastructure linkages, China appears to be increasingly adding a security component to the initiative against the backdrop of President Xi Jinping positioning of his country as a superpower rather than a developing nation. The emergence of a security component […]
By James M. Dorsey This month’s inauguration of a fibreoptic cable linking Pakistan with China could prove to be a double-edged sword. Constructed by Chinese conglomerate Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd, the cable is likely to enhance both Pakistan’s information communication technology infrastructure as well as the influence of Chinese authoritarianism at a moment that basic freedoms in Pakistan are on the defensive. The $44 million, 820-kilometre underground Pak-China Fibre […]
By James M. Dorsey Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman could well dash expectations that he is gunning for a break with Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism rather than a shaving off of the rough edges of Wahhabi ideology that has been woven into the kingdom’s fabric since its founding more than eighty years ago. Prince Mohammed has fuelled expectations by fostering Islamic scholars who advocate a revision of […]
By James M. Dorsey The Pakistani government’s removal of a virulently anti-Shiite militant from its terrorism list at the very moment that an international money laundering and terrorism finance watchdog was deciding to put the country on a watchlist highlights Pakistan’s struggle to come to grips with militancy. The decision by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) that was reported by Pakistani media but has yet to be announced […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|Dubai-based KEF Infra, part of the KEF Holdings owned by Non-Resident Indian billionaire Faizal E. Kottikollon, has merged with Katerra, a US-based family-owned construction technology business to create a US$3.75 billion conglomerate with US$8.5 billion order book. Prior to the merger, KEF Infra had US$250 million orderbook and $400 million work in the pipeline in India where the company gradually started to change the […]
By James M. Dorsey A look at a decade of failed social, economic and political reform in Jordan goes a far way to explain recent mass anti-government protests demanding the resignation of the government. The protests, prompting concerns about the survival of the Hashemite dynasty, also bear witness to the fallout of the region’s epic power struggles and the pitfalls of government failures to respond to long-standing […]
By James M. Dorsey Nothing in a swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to China is undisputed. Food is often emblematic of disputes over identity, history and political claims that underlie an arc of crisis wracked by ethnic and religious conflict; clamour for political, economic, social, national and minority rights; efforts by states and ethnic groups to garner soft power or assert hegemony, […]
Etisalat Digital announced that it has signed strategic partnerships with four scale-ups as part of the ‘Dubai Future Accelerators Program,’ the world’s largest governbment supported accelerator. The 4th cohort of the ‘Dubai Future Accelerators’, launched in March this year with the participation of Etisalat Digital and other government bodies and in cooperation with the world’s most innovative companies, came to a close on xx May. The program […]
By James M. Dorsey Ousted Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif kicked up a storm when he earlier this month seemingly admitted that Pakistan had supported militants who attacked multiple targets in Mumbai in 2008, killing 166 people. Mr. Sharif’s admission, which he has since tried to walk back, put a finger on Pakistan’s controversial policy of selective support of militant groups at a sensitive time. Pakistan is gearing up for elections that […]
|By Saifur Rahman, Associate Editor| The historic first cargo of two million barrels of crude oil from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), destined for the Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd (ISPRL) has been loaded and is en-route to India, in the presence of Dharmendra Pradhan, Indian Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, and Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of State and ADNOC Group CEO at a ceremony in Abu […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Emirates Group reported a 67 percent jump in net profits to $1.1 (Dh4.1 billion) billion in 2017-18 financial year ending March 31, 2018 compared to the previous year, with revenues reaching $27.9 billion (Dh102.4 billion), crossing the Dh100 billion mark for the first time in the history of the 32 year old airline group that includes Emirates Airline and its ground handling and ticketing arm, […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| After two decades, Sony Corporation has registered historically high consolidated operating income of US$6.6 billion (¥734.9 billion) in fiscal year 2017, a 2.5-fold increase compared to the previous year. The company’s consolidated sales and operating revenue was US$77.04 billion (¥8.54 trillion), registering a 12 per cent rise compared to FY16. Sony also reported net income of US$4.4 billion (¥490.8 billion), which was 6.7 times […]
|By Matein Khalid| I had written an article titled “six reasons to be bullish Saudi equities in 2018, published in the KT on January 28. Yet I was surprised to see Saudi Arabian equities become the world’s second best performing stock market in 2018 after Egypt. The Saudi equity index fund (KSA) I recommended in my column is up 18% at a time when the MSCI emerging markets […]
By James M. Dorsey A Saudi Moroccan soccer spat speaks volumes about the depth of change in the Arab world. The spat over Saudi Arabia’s refusal to support a Moroccan bid for the hosting rights of the 2026 World Cup tells the tale of the rise of individual country nationalism at the expense of Arab solidarity, Saudi determination to safeguard its alliance with the United States at whatever cost, […]
By Matein Khalid A dismal legacy of civil war, sanctions, insurgency, foreign invasion and terrorism has had a catastrophic impact on the Iraqi economy. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told the assembled global elite at Davos 2018 that Iraq needed $100 billion in postwar construction. Yet money alone will not solve Iraq’s problems of systemic corruption, a society divided by sectarian cleavages, poverty, the displacement of 2 million […]
By James M. Dorsey Twin attacks earlier this week on Pakistani security forces in the troubled province of Balochistan cast a light on a sustained and violent campaign against police and paramilitary units as well as Shiite and Christian minorities. The attacks by groups, some of which have had links to Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligence apparatus as well as Saudi Arabia, spotlight the Pakistani state’s inability to […]
/By Daniel Markuson/The Tor browser is a powerful free tool for browsing the internet anonymously that also unlocks a portion of the deep web in the form of .onion addresses. If you own or are looking to create a website, you may want to learn how to create a .onion site to protect yourself and your visitors. What is a .onion domain and how does it work […]
