INTERNATIONAL. Market price action dictates direction – traditional support levels were broken violently. Yesterday’s market was the most energised sell-off since 2008/2009. – The US dollar lead this crisis and will lead back up when the low is in – We have reached most of Steen Jakobsen’s technical targets and below is his primitive “expected” path from here (2015 low getting established) – We will see recession […]
INTERNATIONAL. OPEC next gathers December 4 in Vienna, just over a year since Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi announced at the previous OPEC winter meeting the Saudi decision to let the oil market determine oil prices rather than to continue Saudi Arabia’s role of guarantor of $100+/bbl oil. Despite the intense financial and economic pain this decision has inflicted on Saudi Arabia, its fellow OPEC members, and […]
ABU DHABI // A company’s success lies in its diversity, the chief of Xerox told an audience at the Crown Pince’s Court ahead of Emirati Women’s Day. It is crucial for society to remove obstacles in the workforce that impede women, said Ursula Burns, chairman and CEO of Xerox. “Diversity is a driver of innovation. Gender, race and background give an eye to the world. Organisations succeed […]
CAIRO — Saudi Arabia has arrested the accused mastermind of a 1996 bombing that killed 19 American airmen, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed officials. The suspect, Ahmed al-Mughassil, was identified in an American federal indictment as a senior leader of an Iranian-backed Saudi militant group that sought to kill American military personnel in the Persian Gulf. The bombing destroyed an eight-story building in […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Islamic State militants have razed a fifth-century Roman Catholic monastery and blown up one of the best-preserved first-century temples in Palmyra, the ancient Syrian city that is one of the world’s most important archaeological sites, according to government officials and local activists. And that was just this past week — in one Syrian province. Much like the grinding slaughter of human beings, the ravaging […]
Iran has no plans to trade Jason Rezaian, the imprisoned Washington Post correspondent, for any Iranian citizens held by the United States, a Foreign Ministry official was quoted as saying Tuesday by Iran’s private Tasnim News Agency. The assertion, by Hassan Qashqavi, deputy foreign minister for consular, parliamentary and expatriates’ affairs, was a response to what he described as news media reports about such an exchange. “There […]
Open Source By ROBERT MACKEY Lebanese officials might still be struggling to solve the trash crisis engulfing Beirut, but they seemed to acknowledge on Tuesday that blocking themselves off from protesters enraged by the stench behind a high concrete wall was not helping. The wall, a row of concrete slabs installed on Monday outside the office of Prime Minister Tammam Salam, was dismantled on Tuesday, but not […]
JERUSALEM — Israel began releasing hundreds of African migrants and asylum seekers from a detention center in the southern Negev desert on Tuesday, in line with a recent Supreme Court ruling that reduced the time they could be held there to 12 months from 20 months. Sivan Weizman, a spokeswoman for the Israel Prison Service, said that 1,178 of the 1,750 people being held in the center […]
The Amazon.com, Inc. logo is seen on the side of a delivery truck in Brooklyn, New York October 23, 2014. Reuters/Brendan McDermid SAN FRANCISCO Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) said on Tuesday it will begin delivering wine, beer and spirits to U.S. customers for the first time as part of its speedy delivery service, Prime Now. The online retailer is expanding Prime Now, its one- and two-hour service, to […]
UAE. The continuation of low energy prices is impacting both optimism and risk appetite in the Middle East, according to Deloitte’s latest report “Global CFO Signals: CFO Sentiment Q2 2015 – Staying focused; remaining vigilant”. With oil at US$53 a barrel at the time of the survey, CFO optimism fell to one of its lowest levels in recent years, with only a net 26% across the Middle East […]
UAE. The MENA Region is all set to become a global logistics hub in the next few years, an Al Masah Capital Limited Report on “Transportation & Logistics in MENA” has revealed, which experts believe will be driven by the emergence of the MENA-Asia trade corridor that will redefine global supply chains. Notably in 2013, India and China ranked as top merchandise export and import destinations for MENA […]
UAE. Business confidence in the Middle East continued to fall in the second quarter of 2015, but not as quickly as it had in the first three months of the year, according to the to the Global Economic Conditions Survey (GECS) organised by ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and IMA (the Institute of Management Accountants). The slight optimism was due to a temporary reprieve in […]
ABU DHABI // Women who have overcome prejudice to pursue successful careers in the aviation industry have spoken of the challenges they faced. The Etihad Airways event, organised ahead of Emirati Women’s Day on Friday, heard from a panel of women who work for the company. The airline employs 1,269 female Emiratis, who make up 49 per cent of Emiratis in the company and 37 per cent […]
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 […]
By THE NEW YORK TIMES August 21, 2015 For decades Cairo was considered safe for residents and visitors. Not anymore. Nearly two years of escalating bombings in and around Cairo are gradually changing the feel of the city. Neighbors are becoming more suspicious of strangers asking questions, and commuters are getting used to changing their routes to avoid police cordons after each bombing. The New York Times asked readers on Facebook, […]
News Analysis By DAVID E. SANGER August 21, 2015 To the most strident opponents of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the suspicious behavior at a military base about 12 miles southeast of Tehran has become a rallying call to defeat the accord, especially as it now appears that Iranian officials may be allowed to take their own environmental samples at the site and turn them over to inspectors. It […]
By HELENE COOPER August 21, 2015 WASHINGTON — A deputy to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a United States airstrike in Iraq this week, the White House announced Friday. Ned Price, the National Security Council spokesman, said in a news release that Fadel al-Hayali, whom the Obama administration described as the Sunni militant group’s “Baghdad military emir” as well as the emir […]
By RICK GLADSTONE August 21, 2015 Doctors Without Borders said that Saudi-led airstrikes killed more than 65 civilians early Friday in Yemen’s southwest province of Taiz, including 17 people from one family. If confirmed, it would be one of the largest tolls from airstrikes by Saudi Arabia and its military coalition partners since they began bombing Yemen five months ago in a campaign to crush the Houthi insurgency in […]
People gathered near the site of a bomb blast on the outskirts of Cairo on Friday. A study found that public turmoil, war and other crises can be associated with declining air pollution in the Middle East. By JOHN SCHWARTZ August 21, 2015 Civil unrest and humanitarian crises can now be detected from space — because of, somewhat surprisingly, cleaner air. A paper published on Friday in the journal […]
INTERNATIONAL. In the wake of China’s recent devaluation of the yuan, companies need to be more strategic than ever in their manufacturing-sourcing decision-making, focusing on clear-headed, case-by-case analysis and tight project management. That is according to a new study, including a survey of almost 250 senior-level executives in Western Europe and North America from manufacturing and distribution companies in 20 industries, released today by AlixPartners, the global […]
LEBANON. Byblos Bank issued today, in cooperation with the Olayan School of Business at the American University of Beirut, the results of the Byblos Bank/AUB Consumer Confidence Index for the first half of 2015. The results show that the Byblos Bank/AUB Consumer Confidence Index declined marginally in January and February, grew in March, regressed in April, and slightly improved in May and June 2015. Further, the Index […]
INTERNATIONAL. Global investors have shifted their attention from Greece to China amid continued concern of a Chinese recession, according to the BofA Merrill Lynch Fund Manager Survey for August. Respondents are scaling back their expectations for economic growth. · China recession is now rated the number one “tail risk” by 52 percent of panel. · Fifty-three percent of investors say the global economy will strengthen in coming […]
