Claire Hajaj with her mother, father and brother in Kuwait, 1979 At 11, I discovered I was a stranger in my own family. It happened at a relative’s “do” in Regent’s Park – a bar mitzvah, or a wedding. I remember soft-pink tablecloths, gilded place-cards and cutlery gleaming like silver fish. A board at the reception-room entrance listed table numbers and names in grand, italicised print. I […]
By Casey Hoerth: The news that Kinder-Morgan would be merged into one big, corporate entity has gotten a mixed reaction among retail investors here on Seeking Alpha. Of course, many are rightfully pleased about the run-up in share price: Since the announcement of the merger both Kinder Morgan Partners (NYSE:KMP) and Kinder Morgan Inc. (NYSE:KMI) have seen shares leap up by some 20%. The benefits of Kinder […]
DP World Jebel Ali, UAE. DP World After posting a decent set of numbers in the first half, a company can be excused if it sounds optimistic about its growth outlook. In DP World’s case – the numbers are more than decent. The Dubai-based ports operator, one of the largest globally, reported a solid 26% jump in six-month earnings as it added new capacity amid a pick […]
West Texas Intermediate traded near the lowest closing price in seven months after speculators cut bullish bets and as supply rises in the U.S., the world’s biggest consumer. Brent was steady in London. Futures were little changed in New York after falling 0.3 percent yesterday. Crude inventories probably shrank by 1.8 million barrels to 360.7 million last week, a Bloomberg survey shows before an Energy Information Administration […]
Christie’s International Real Estate, the property unit of the London headquartered art auction house, is set to launch in Dubai at the company’s next auction in the emirate in October. The expansion could see Christie’s property wing open three to four offices in the region in total, revealed Joachim Wrang-Widén, SVP and regional director for Europe, Middle East, Russia, India and Africa at a press briefing in […]
UAE. With its oil wealth, population growth and strong demand for all manner of industrial and consumer goods, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is an attractive market for many manufacturers. There are, however, potential pitfalls in doing business in the region, particularly when it comes to appointing local agents to distribute products in the region. Many states in the MENA region have enacted commercial […]
The United Nations condemned on Monday “appalling, widespread” crimes by Islamic State forces in Iraq, including mass executions of prisoners that could amount to war crimes. U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay condemned “grave, horrific human rights violations” being committed by Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim group which has seized large areas of Iraq and Syria to the alarm of the Baghdad government and its allies in […]
By P. Sreekumaran THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Being clever is no crime in politics. In fact, a degree of cleverness is a prerequisite for survival in the political jungle. But when you try to be too clever by half, you run the risk of facing huge embarrassment and public ridicule. That is the fate which has befallen Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and his loyalists who stubbornly resisted KPCC […]
It’s slim, sleek, black and silver, and comes with Bluetooth. But unlike the latest mobile phone, you won’t be showing off the Black Pro 6500 to anyone outside your bathroom. This hi-tech gizmo from Oral-B – which has its own app – is the latest in toothbrush technology, and has a £250 price tag to match. It claims to be able to strip 100 per cent more […]
QATAR. International food prices have been declining in recent months, reflecting record harvests and weak global demand. Declining food prices have in turn contributed to lower inflation in the Eurozone, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US). This trend, coupled with a weak Eurozone recovery and mixed economic data in the US, suggests that the risk of global deflation remains high. As such, we expect […]
By Bob Ciura: Tobacco stocks like Altria Group (NYSE:MO) are well-known and extremely well-regarded for their income potential. Altria has been one of the premier dividend stocks to own over the past several decades. It has a remarkable ability to pay a high yield, and also provide regular dividend increases that have significantly increased shareholder wealth over this time. To that end, Altria very recently increased its […]
By WestEnd511: Gap’s (NYSE:GPS) headline Q2 EPS of $0.74 beat consensus $0.69 mainly due to disciplined cost control. Revenue of $3.98b (+3% y/y) was in line with consensus and driven by strength in Old Navy where comps was +4%. Inventory management was encouraging as total inventory was up 6% y/y vs. 3% sales growth, the smallest gap since end of 2012. Inventory growth should be on par […]
U.K. authorities recovered more than 300,000 pounds ($498,000) from the sale of a convicted drug trafficker’s home in Dubai in the first such confiscation involving the United Arab Emirates. The apartment in Dubai Marina was owned by Redwan El-Ghaidouni, 37, who was convicted at Kingston Crown Court in March 2011 on drug charges, the Crown Prosecution service said in a statement on its website. A confiscation order […]
By IMD: By IMD Professor Arturo Bris In the summer of 2008, the US financial sector suffered one of the most damaging events in its history. The volatile stock market, induced by the subprime market, led to the default of Lehman Brothers, and subsequently to a massive global crisis. We are now in a post-crisis period. Yet, looking back to between 1945 and 2008, we see that […]
By S. Sethuraman As fiscal 2015 nears the mid-year, hope revives stronger for at least 5.5 per cent growth, despite a wayward monsoon, and should it materialize, the Modi Government could well trumpet that it had overcome the UPA baggage of “economic mess” and below 5 per cent growth over the last two years. But even growth in the 5-6 per cent range, based on […]
By Adam Hamilton: Gold has slid during this past week on mounting fears of interest-rate hikes. Between the latest FOMC meeting’s minutes and the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, American futures speculators’ rising-rate phobias have been whipped into a fever pitch. They worry gold will be crushed when the Fed eventually starts normalizing rates. But history shatters this fallacy that rising rates are gold’s nemesis. […]
KOLKATA/BANGALORE: The Reserve Bank of India moved to close a loophole on Friday, saying that the rules need to be followed with respect to e-commerce credit card transactions “essentially taking place between two residents in India”. This means that companies such as Uber will need to follow the two-step authentication process that it was able to circumvent by virtue of having an overseas payment gateway. Its rivals […]
Most of the rest of the world is horrified that so much British ice cream is made up of vegetable fat and air Photo: REX FEATURES The Ice Cream War was one of Scotland’s most notorious criminal cases. It involved two rival Glasgow families using ice cream vans to sell drugs and stolen goods in the Eighties. The vicious turf war culminated in arson and murder. Now, a […]
MUMBAI: The Reserve Bank of India proposes to cut banks’ group exposure limit by as much as 15 percentage points to reduce the systemic risk posed by lending too much to any single business house. This means that credit to any particular group will have to be restricted to 25% of a bank’s capital, down from 40% now. It’s not clear whether such a move will have […]
Mumbai: The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas is plannig at replacing the controversial production sharing contracts (PSCs) with a revenue-sharing regime or production-linked contracts. In a bid to attract more private and foreign players into the country’s exploration business, the ministry on Thursday floated a model revenue sharing contract (MRSC) on its website seeking comments from the industry on the same till September 10. The […]
Letter From Europe Britons, including Anglican clergy members worried about the plight of beleaguered Iraqi Christians, accuse Prime Minister David Cameron of incoherence. By ALAN COWELL August 21, 2014 LONDON — For a century and more, Iraq has been the graveyard of Western dreams, often literally, from the defeat of British colonial forces in the First Battle of Kut in 1916 to the bloodshed that flowed from the American-led […]
Here’s one of the usual everyday life frustrations if you live in Saudi Arabia: You want to eat cereal. You open the fridge and realize you’re out of milk. You get dressed, get in your car and drive to the supermarket. Then the moment your reach the supermarket, they close for prayer. The kingdom is the only Muslim country in the world where all businesses must be […]
By P. Sreekumaran THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Was the gas leak at the public sector unit, Kerala Minerals and Metals Ltd(KMML), sometime back, in which 130 school children had to be hospitalized, an accident or was it a well-planned effort to ensure the permanent closure of yet another PSU unit in the State? This is the question uppermost in the minds of not only the KMML workers but […]
DUBAI // A woman who threatened to blow up the Public Prosecution building with a bomb belt will hear if the appeal against her sentence is successful next month. In March, Zulfiya Hamraeva, 33, from Uzbekistan, was sentenced to seven years in jail by Dubai Criminal Court. The Court of Appeal will deliver its final verdict on this sentence on September 3. The woman’s accomplice, Emirati M […]
