President Obama at a meeting to discuss the Iran nuclear accord at the White House on Thursday. By JENNIFER STEINHAUER September 10, 2015 WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats delivered a major victory to President Obama on Thursday when they blocked a Republican resolution to reject a six-nation nuclear accord with Iran, ensuring that the landmark deal will take effect without a veto showdown between Congress and the White House. A […]
UAE. Asteco, the Middle East’s largest full service real estate company has released its mid-year UAE market report ahead of Cityscape Global, highlighting stability in Dubai with a continued focus towards the affordable segment, in contrast to the high end market which experienced declines of up to 10%. Affordable apartment units at IMPZ, Discovery Gardens and Dubai Silicon Oasis showed 3%, 6% and 2% sales growth over […]
|By Matein Khalid| The Federal Reserve could well raise its overnight borrowing rate at the next FOMC monetary policy conclave on September 17. Though contagion from China’s 40% stock market meltdown has triggered bear markets from Hong Kong to Frankfurt and plunged Asian/emerging markets equities into ta ghastly replay of 1998’s epic meltdown (General Suharto’s overthrow, the Russian rouble default, Malaysia’s capital controls, the run on the […]
BAGHDAD — Having sold his car for $4,600, and then some of his wife’s jewelry, and having loaded his smartphone with photographs of his five children, all that was left for Haider Abdella to do was say goodbye. “From yesterday to today, we are crying,” he said. His mother sat next to him on the couch, sobbing. “He’s never left me before, from when he was a […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Arab kingdoms of the Persian Gulf have some the world’s highest per capita incomes. Their leaders speak passionately about the plight of Syrians, and their state-funded news media cover the Syrian civil war without cease. Yet as millions of Syrian refugees languish elsewhere in the Middle East and many have risked their lives to reach Europe or died along the way, Gulf nations […]
BAGHDAD — In the early morning darkness on Wednesday, masked gunmen in military uniforms rolled up in more than a dozen black sport utility vehicles to a construction site on the edge of Baghdad, subdued the guards and roused 17 Turkish workers and their Iraqi translator from sleep and kidnapped them. Iraqi security officials spent the day scrambling to find the men, who were building a soccer […]
|By Matein Khalid| Hong Kong now trades at 9.6 times earnings and 0.86 book value. Hang Seng valuations were gutted by the protest movements in Central and the Shanghai financial meltdown. The Hang Seng index is down 25% since late May and now trades at six times forward earnings, its post Lehman, post 2014 bottom. Hong Kong trades at its lowest price/book value since the Asian flu […]
Middle East Memo From the West Bank In the 10th year of a four-year term in the absence of national elections, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has lost the public’s confidence. A poll published on Tuesday showed trust in him falling to 16 percent from 22 percent in March. By JODI RUDOREN September 1, 2015 RAMALLAH, West Bank — Mahmoud Abbas, the aging Palestinian president, may be paving the way […]
Middle East Patients waited to receive medical-transfer documents in Gaza City in August. By JODI RUDOREN August 31, 2015 GAZA — The medical report details some worrying conditions: chronic dyspnea — a shortage of breath that could be a sign of heart or lung disease — and bronchial asthma. It says the patient, a 28-year-old woman from Gaza City, relies on “continuous medication” and an inhaler. But the woman […]
CAIRO — An Egyptian judge on Saturday handed down unexpectedly harsh verdicts in the trial of three journalists from the Al Jazeera English news channel, sentencing them to three years in prison on charges that legal experts said were unfounded and politically motivated. The verdict on Saturday was especially stunning because Egyptian officials had repeatedly signaled that they viewed the trial as a nuisance that had brought […]
CAIRO — About 150 people are believed to have drowned off western Libya after a fishing boat and a smaller boat carrying migrants sank in the Mediterranean, Libyan and international relief officials said on Friday. A spokesman for the Libyan Red Crescent, Mohamed al-Misrati, put the confirmed death toll from the two vessels at 105 people and said that 30 to 40 people were still missing. He […]
Middle East Beirut Journal A man sifted through garbage piled in Beirut, Lebanon, on Monday. By ANNE BARNARD August 27, 2015 BEIRUT, Lebanon — Mohammad Rizk sat glumly in his sandwich shop on Wednesday, waiting for customers. The scent of roasting chicken mingled with the fumes of a trash pile just outside. The garbage heap, which seemed to have taken on a life of its own, now dominated the […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The haplessness of the Lebanese government was evident on Tuesday when its attempts to contain a political crisis over festering garbage were thwarted on several fronts. After the Environment Ministry presented the cabinet with a set of bids for new garbage collection contracts, members of Hezbollah, the country’s most powerful political party, called them extravagantly high and “a farce” and walked out of the […]
KIBBUTZ SUFA, Israel — Looking out across the perimeter fence of this small rural community in southern Israel, along the border with Gaza, Eyal Shalev, 23, sees a battlefield. Last summer, during Israel’s 50-day war with Hamas in Gaza, Mr. Shalev was on the other side, in a tank. His younger brother, Sgt. Shachar Shalev, who was fighting with the Paratroopers Brigade inside Gaza, was critically injured […]
GAZA CITY — At this time last year, as the missiles and bombs rained down in Israel’s lopsided seven-week war against Gaza, I wrote about our struggle to survive during the holy month of Ramadan. This year, another Ramadan has passed, Eid al-Fitr is over and the reality on the ground has changed very little. The same dreadful conditions are creating desperation among Gaza’s inhabitants, whose lives […]
|By Matein Khalid| Geopolitics is now another source of risk for the Turkish lira, government debt and Istanbul equities. The Turkish air force is bombing Daish in Syria and the secessionist Kurdish PKK party in northern Iraq. Suicide bombings have killed Turkish citizens in eastern Anatolian cities on the Syrian border. Ankara has given the US a green light to launch military airstrikes from the Incerlik air […]
GAZA CITY — A new training regimen for fighters in Hamas’s armed wing employs slide presentations and a whiteboard rather than Kalashnikov rifles and grenades. The young men wear polo shirts instead of fatigues and black masks. They do not chant anti-Israel slogans, but discuss how the Geneva Conventions governing armed conflict dovetail with Islamic principles. The three-day workshop, conducted last month by the International Committee of […]
Headsets hang in front of a screen displaying a Spotify logo on it, in Zenica February 20, 2014. Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Files EDGARTOWN, Mass. If hearing Barack Obama break into song hasn’t satisfied your presidential music needs, you can now listen to his playlists on Spotify. The White House on Friday released two music sets “hand-created” by the president of the United States for daytime and evening listening as […]
ABU DHABI // For Ahlam Al Qasim and Fatema Al Khouri the sky isn’t the limit – they have big plans to go farther. The Emiratis have returned from a two-week internship with the Italian Space Agency (ISA) and now hope to forge a career in the industry and play a part in the UAE’s Mars mission. “I’ve been interested in space science ever since I was […]
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Friday named a hawkish political rival who opposes a Palestinian state as his next ambassador to the United Nations. The naming of Danny Danon as the new ambassador is the latest in a string of appointments by Mr. Netanyahu that indicate he will not bow to mounting international criticism and efforts to isolate Israel. Mr. Danon is an […]
QADIYA, Iraq — In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted. He bound her hands and gagged […]
Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President for Products, delivers his keynote address during the Google I/O developers conference in San Francisco, California May 28, 2015. Reuters/Robert Galbraith/Files SAN FRANCISCO A low-key style and an unusually firm handle on diplomacy propelled new Google chief executive Sundar Pichai to the top of the search engine giant, former colleagues said, cementing his successes such as creating the Chrome browser. As part […]
SAN FRANCISCO Google Inc (GOOGL.O) announced a surprise overhaul of its operating structure on Monday, creating a holding company called Alphabet to pool its many subsidiaries and separate the core web advertising business from newer ventures like driverless cars. The move appeared to be an attempt by the search engine giant to focus on its more creative and ambitious projects, while investors cheered the potential for more […]
Delta Air Lines Inc has scrapped a number of its flights to Dubai this winter in an apparent nod to how competition with three Gulf carriers is hurting its business. Delta, the second-largest U.S. passenger carrier, will fly nonstop to Dubai from its Atlanta hub between four and five times per week starting Oct. 1, down from daily service this summer. The airline revised its schedule on […]
