Oil fell briefly below $30 a barrel on Tuesday, extending a relentless selloff that has wiped almost 20 percent off prices this year amid deepening concerns about fragile Chinese demand and the absence of output restraint. The day’s near 4 percent drop marks a seventh day of losses for oil. Traders have all but given up attempting to predict where the new-year rout will end, with momentum-driven […]
|By Arabian Staff| Additional information forthcoming from state-owned Saudi oil giant Aramco suggests that the proposed IPO may be restricted to refining and other similar activities rather than the parent company as a whole. Aramco clarified in a statement the other day that while the company was studying options including a full initial public offering, one of the options under consideration is “listing of a bundle” of […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The UAE’s non-oil private sector ended the year on a low note, with business conditions improving at the slowest rate in 40 months, the headline Emirates NBD UAE Purchasing Managers’ Index for December showed. A key factor weighing on the sector as a whole was relatively muted growth of new work – the pace of expansion was the weakest since August 2011. Output, […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The UAE insurance industry has recently started to show signs of impact due to lower oil price and the challenging economic environment. The shifting regulatory landscape, increased competitiveness and light regulatory enforcement were some of the key topics of discussion at the recent Business Breakfast organized by EY, attended by key insurers and market players in the UAE insurance industry. “The UAE insurance […]
Lower power. Longer range. That’s the story behind Wi-Fi HaLow, a new technology the Wi-Fi Alliance has just introduced to help tap into the momentum around low power Wi-Fi solutions that cater specifically to the Internet of Things (IoT). The Wi-Fi HaLow designation, which aims at products leveraging IEEE 802.11ah technology, works at and below the one gigahertz frequency band without sacrificing range. In fact, HaLow promises […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Etihad Airways launched fresh legal action in a bid to overturn a German court’s decision to revoke the approval for 29 of its codeshare flights with airberlin. Last week, the Administrative Court of Braunschweig decided that the German Ministry of Transport was entitled to reject the 29 Etihad Airways – airberlin codeshares, which had been approved only until 15 January 2016. As the […]
Ride-sharing app company Lyft today announced that it has raised $1 billion in new funding, including a $500 million investment from General Motors. The additional funds bring to $2 billion the total amount of capital the firm has attracted since it was founded in 2012. Under the new arrangement, Lyft and GM [Image credit: General Motors] will work together to build a network of on-demand, self-driving cars […]
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asks a question during the II CEO Summit of the Americas on the sidelines of the VII Summit of the Americas in Panama City April 10, 2015. Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Files NEW YORK Mark Zuckerberg wants to build an artificially intelligent assistant in 2016 to help run his home and assist him at work, the Facebook Inc founder and chief executive said on Sunday. […]
Russia’s Telecoms Minister Nikolai Nikiforov attends an interview with Reuters at his office in Moscow December 9, 2013. Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin/Files MOSCOW A social network account of Russia’s communications minister was temporarily blocked on Sunday in a cyberattack carried out by hackers presenting themselves as a Turkish activist group and parading images of a warplane and Turkish flags. Russia’s ties with Turkey suffered a severe blow when a […]
A blaze that engulfed a Dubai skyscraper on New Year’s Eve – the emirate’s third high-rise fire in three years – has raised fresh questions about the safety of materials used on the exteriors of tall buildings across the wealthy region. Hundreds of gleaming towers rose up in Gulf Arab states, especially the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, during the past decade’s economic boom. Ultra-modern, flamboyant designs […]
Emaar Properties PJSC slid the most in more than two weeks, leading a decline in Dubai stocks, on concern a fire that ripped through its hotel on New Year’s Eve will curb earnings. Abu Dhabi shares also fell. Emaar dropped as much as 4.4 percent, before paring its slide to 3.5 percent at 10:31 a.m. local time. The developer of the world’s tallest tower was the biggest contributor […]
|By K Raveendran| Given Dubai’s fame as one of the most happening cities of the world, the international media attention to the New Year-eve fire at the Address Hotel was quite natural. At the same time, it did not escape the attention of the discerning that some sections of the media lost no opportunity to use the unfortunate incident to show things in a rather poor light. […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| The World Gold Council is exploring the creation of a Shariah Standard on Gold, which will provide guidance from the Shariah perspective on the usage of gold in financial and investment transactions for Islamic financial institutions and participants. The Standard also aims to increase transparency and harmonisation regarding the use of gold in various market practices. A draft of the Standard has been […]
|By Hanan Alsuraihi| “Hezbollah and the Iranian regional strategy” is considered one of the hottest themes debated today in the Arabic and Islamic world. It focuses on the role of Hezbollah in the Iranian scheme of things. The Iranian strategy is cloaked in secrecy and disguised in an Islamic dress. It is a project that draws on the intelligence, political skill, publicity and media so as not […]
As of next week, AT&T customers who want new cellphones will have to update their devices by paying the full retail prices upfront or through monthly installment plans. That’s because the carrier is doing away with its previous program that offered new phones to customers who signed two-year contracts for AT&T service. First reported by Engadget yesterday, the change was confirmed today by an AT&T spokesperson who […]
As of next week, AT&T customers who want new cellphones will have to update their devices by paying the full retail prices upfront or through monthly installment plans. That’s because the carrier is doing away with its previous program that offered new phones to customers who signed two-year contracts for AT&T service. First reported by Engadget yesterday, the change was confirmed today by an AT&T spokesperson who […]
A fire engulfed The Address Hotel in downtown Dubai in the United Arab Emirates hours before a large New Year fireworks display was set to start nearby from the Burj Khalifa tower, the world’s largest building, witnesses said. Witnesses said large tongues of flames shooting skywards enveloped the luxury hotel, which lies across a plaza from the Burj Khalifa, where hundreds of people were gathering to view […]
The seemingly troubled life of an open source technology leader came to a sudden, premature end in San Francisco this week. Software engineer Ian Murdock, the founder of Debian Linux and later a senior staffer at Docker, died Monday at age 42 — under circumstances that aren’t yet clear. Born in West Germany, Murdock (pictured) moved to the United States and attended Purdue University. In January 2006, […]
LONDON The BBC’s [TBBC.UL] online services, including its news website and iPlayer catch-up TV platform, were taken down on Thursday by a large web attack, the British broadcaster reported. The BBC’s sites, which rank only behind Google and Facebook in visitor numbers in Britain, according to Internet analytics firm comScore, were hit from 0700 GMT, with many users receiving an error message rather than content. The broadcaster […]
MUMBAI/NEW DELHI India has become a battleground over the right to unrestricted Internet access, with local tech start-ups joining the front line against Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg and his plan to roll out free Internet to the country’s masses. The Indian government has ordered Facebook’s Free Basics plan to be put on hold while it decides what to do. The program, launched in […]
|By Hannah Elliott| Want to see the future? Drive a BMW 7-Series sedan. It’s the car Bimmer uses as a medium for unleashing its newest and best technological offerings on the rest of the world. IDrive made its debut here, as did ABS and the active body control systems that monitor the movement of the car in relation to the road. Now those are de rigueur on all BMW […]
The Cisco Systems logo is seen as part of a display at a technology conference in Chicago, Illinois, May 4, 2015. Reuters/Jim Young NEW YORK Cisco Systems Inc did not infringe a patent holding company’s wifi technology, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Monday, reversing a near $64-million judgment against the networking equipment maker in the long-running patent dispute. After eight years of litigation that also included […]
Construction sites and buildings are pictured amid heavy smog, on the third day after China’s capital Beijing issued its second ever ”red alert” for air pollution, in Beijing, China, in this December 21, 2015 photo. Reuters/Jason Lee BEIJING Air pollution in China could be big business. Two of the world’s largest technology firms, IBM and Microsoft, are vying to tap the nascent, fast-growing market for forecasting air […]
Gulfnews.com A convoy of ambulances carrying more than 125 fighters from the besieged rebel-held Syrian town of Zabadani arrive at the Masnaa border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, December 28, 2015. Beirut: A rare UN-backed deal between Syria’s warring sides saw hundreds of fighters and civilians evacuate three towns on Monday, as bomb blasts in the regime-held city of Homs killed at least 14 people. President Bashar […]
