The firm aims to redefine the art of ‘Corporate Storytelling’ in the Middle East Dubai, May 28th, 2014: White Water PR, a Dubai based Public Relations agency, has launched its new website in the region to redefine the art of ‘corporate storytelling’. The website, ‘whitewaterpr.com’ is more pictorial in nature and the initial thoughts were inspired by the globally renowned ‘Snowfall’ format which was made popular by […]
Barack Obama has outlined his vision for the country’s foreign policy for the rest of his presidency, saying that the country will still lead, but will show more restraint before embarking on more military missions abroad. In a speech on Wednesday, the US president insisted that his country’s reliance on diplomacy over military intervention was working to resolve global crises such as Ukraine and Iran, and he […]
ABU DHABI // More than 1,000 cases of employers accused of breaking labour laws by ill-treating their workers were referred to prosecutors in the past year, a new report reveals. The prosecutions came amid a massive enforcement campaign by the Ministry of Labour, whose staff conducted 138,801 general inspections, 11,807 visits to workers’ accommodation and 80,571 visits to construction sites to ensure labourers were not working during […]
Although the world’s largest democracy has been hobbled by inflation, a declining currency and difficult business environment, the pro-business Bharatiya Janata Party that just won an epic election in India has engendered optimism that the country can turn around its sagging economic scenario. It’s time to increase your exposure to India’s stock market. The timing is good with equities in India perking up of late, something that […]
WASHINGTON — Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. faced a legal and bureaucratic dilemma this year: Obama administration officials could not agree about what he should tell the Supreme Court about a lawsuit in which American victims of terrorist attacks in Israel are suing Arab Bank, the largest financial institution in Jordan. The plaintiffs have accused Arab Bank of providing services to terrorists responsible for the attacks. […]
ABU DHABI // Hundreds of tenants have been defrauded by bogus landlords and property agents who rent one home to several families and then disappear before the scam is uncovered. Police in Abu Dhabi have investigated 211 cases of property fraud in the past 15 months, 66 of them in the first three months of this year. One victim, Salwa, an Arab resident, paid a year’s rent […]
DUBAI // Engineering student Chibuke Enekwechi has plans to develop a drone that could be used to monitor pupils sitting exams instead of relying on teachers to do the job. The final-year student from the American University in Dubai said on Tuesday that he hoped to come up with a winning design that could help him bag Dh1 million and possibly a further US$1m (Dh3.6m) in the […]
At least 40 people, including two civilians, have been killed in the eastern Ukraine city of Donetsk following a day of heavy fighting, in which the government forces used combat jets and helicopter gunships to reclaim the regional airport. “The airport is under our full control. The enemy suffered heavy losses. We have none,” Ukraine Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in a statement on Tuesday. He said […]
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Forget the endless obsession with assigning blame for the attack in 2012 on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The United States has another large problem on its hands right now in Libya. Khalifa Hifter, a former Libyan general who is now an American citizen, is mounting what could be a de facto coup, with far-reaching consequences for Libya and the United States. […]
‘No country demand anything like the same assurances as the USA immigration authorities’ Photo: GETTY Having recently returned from the US, I feel obliged to offer a few thoughts about American transport. Because – certainly at Los Angeles and New York – something has gone very badly wrong. A lot of people complain about Heathrow and Gatwick but the truth is that we British have quietly set about […]
Nigeria’s military has located nearly 300 school girls abducted by Boko Haram six weeks ago but fears using force to try to free them could get them killed, the country’s chief of defence said. Air Marshall Alex Barde told demonstrators supporting the much-criticised military on Monday that Nigerian troops could save the girls. But he added: “We can’t go and kill our girls in the name of trying to get them […]
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Cameron. Photo: AFP Tory MPs may have agreed not to panic in the light of Ukip’s big win, but that doesn’t mean David Cameron isn’t going to come under a huge amount of pressure from them in the coming days and weeks to do something, anything, to show he’s got the message. One of their demands is bound to be that the […]
A full-size replica of the Great Sphinx of Giza is seen in Shijiazhuang, north China’s Hebei province on May 13, 2014. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Chinese tourists may have been thrilled about getting their very own Sphinx. Egypt, however, was less than pleased. The country said it planned to file a complaint to Unesco over an imitation Sphinx built in China earlier this year because it “harms the […]
Far-right and anti-European Union parties have made sweeping gains in the European Parliament elections held over the 28 member states. Voters in 21 of the EU’s states went to the polls on Sunday, choosing members for the bloc’s 751-seat legislature. The other seven countries in the bloc had already voted in a sprawling exercise of democracy that began on Thursday in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. […]
DAMASCUS, Syria — For Younes al-Nasr, a lifelong train lover, the Hejaz railway station here in the heart of the Syrian capital is a repository of shelved ambitions. Every day, Mr. Nasr, 68, a Transportation Ministry employee, pads around his offices in the Ottoman-era building, where light filters through red, yellow and blue stained glass. He imagines the past — the few short years a century ago […]
DUBAI // Safety on the country’s roads is a major concern for two thirds of the UAE, according to a YouGov survey on road safety. The survey, commissioned by The National, revealed that 73 per cent of residents in Dubai were worried about road safety, 71 per cent in Sharjah and 65 per cent in Abu Dhabi. Those most concerned were Asians, with 83 per cent, and […]
ABU DHABI // Technical faults and human error are the two major causes of bus accidents, according to the drivers of labourers’ buses. They said that mobile-phone use while driving, drivers not getting enough sleep and older buses with outdated braking equipment also play a role. Most of the buses are fitted with air braking systems, which often fail, the drivers said. “All workers’ buses should be […]
The referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country will take place on September 18, 2014 Photo: Getty Images Alex Salmond has based his campaign to break up the Union on the idea that the creation of an independent Scotland will be as cost-free and friction-free as possible. But as the referendum approaches, that idea grows less tenable by the day. This week, for example, the Treasury […]
J.P.Morgan expects USD/INR to test 57 per dollar in the next three months as Narendra Modi’s sweeping electoral victory “is a more transformational outcome for India macro than most could have imagined” and will thus attract foreign inflows. The bank adds it expects Modi to fight inflation through administrative measures, and the focus on the RBI should reduce. As a result, J.P.Morgan recommends receiving 5-year OIS expecting […]
Indian-born economist Arvind Panagariya, who is widely expected to take a top advisory role in prime minister-elect Narendra Modi’s government, wants its first budget to boost capital spending even at the risk of a higher fiscal deficit. Panagariya, 61, whose market-friendly, pro-growth economics has helped shape Modi’s outlook, told Reuters in an interview that higher spending is critical to India’s economic revival. Modi swept to power on […]
CAIRO — Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the former army officer soon to be Egypt’s president, promises to remedy Egypt’s crippling fuel shortage by installing energy-efficient bulbs in every home socket, even if he has to send a government employee to screw in each one. “I’m not leaving a chance for people to act on their own,” Mr. Sisi said in his first and most extensive television interview. “My […]
ON THE EAST BANK OF THE JORDAN RIVER — After visiting a site on Saturday where Jesus is believed to have been baptized, Pope Francis spoke about Jesus’s humility, “the fact that he bends down to wounded humanity in order to heal us.” So when some burly men prepared to carry a doctor in a wheelchair up four steps to the stage for a blessing, perhaps it […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Waving to television cameras and assembled dignitaries, President Michel Suleiman departed the presidential palace on Saturday, the last day of his six-year term, leaving behind a political vacuum caused by the failure of the country’s political powers to agree on a successor. The vacancy in the president’s office is the most recent crisis in Lebanon’s fragile political system, which relies on agreements among the […]
Sour gripes: Gwyneth Paltrow’s lament has won little support from Angelina Jolie, above Photo: Getty Images Cat fight! Angelina Jolie has gone head to head with Gwyneth Paltrow; which would be pretty much every man’s brunette-on-blonde fantasy, were it not for the fact that one is so skeletal and the other so skinny that there’s a genuine risk their A-list bones might splinter into a million tiny […]
