The Sharjah FDI Office (Invest in Sharjah) has announced that total foreign direct investment is expected to exceed a record AED1 billion ($270 million) by the end of the year – an anticipated growth of 15 percent on 2016. A statement said the figures are a testament to Sharjah’s focus on encouraging overseas businesses to establish and expand their assets in the emirate. The forecast sees an […]
By Saad Sayeed | ISLAMABAD ISLAMABAD Pakistan resumed the repatriation of Afghan refugees on Monday, sending nearly 1,200 people back across the heavily guarded northern Torkham border, an official at the United Nation’s refugee body said. Pakistan is home to the world’s second largest refugee population, with a total of 2.5 million Afghans living there. Many have been in Pakistan since the Soviet invasion in 1979. Relations […]
“I’m sorry viewer, the TV show you’re searching for cannot be streamed in your reality. Please stand by for reconnection.” Those are the opening lines of Hulu’s new show Dimension 404, a show that explores “the wonders and horrors of our digital age” in six one-hour episodes. If that makes you think of Black Mirror, you’re not alone. But Dimension 404, which debuts on April 4, is […]
AED 77 billion of Dubai real estate transactions during the first quarter of 2017 Dubai, UAE, April 3, 2017 The Dubai Land Department revealed the results of real estate transactions during the first quarter of 2017. His Excellency Sultan Butti bin Mejren, Director General of Dubai Land Department announced the value of real estate transactions that reached AED 77 billion through 20 thousand real estate transactions. Dubai […]
By Clement Uwiringiyimana | KIGALI KIGALI Inmates protesting living conditions at Gasabo prison in the Rwandan capital of Kigali hurled stones over the prison’s walls on Monday, damaging nearby houses and disrupting traffic, residents and officials said. Rioting began on Friday when the prison, which houses at least 5,000 inmates, caught fire, according to residents living near the prison. Police used tear gas to stop the protest. […]
By Guy Faulconbridge | LONDON LONDON Just days after Prime Minister Theresa May formally served the European Union with divorce papers, a powerful affliction appeared to strike some in Britain: Brexit fever. Amid a row with Spain and the EU over the status of Gibraltar, a former leader of May’s Conservative party, Michael Howard, even said she would be prepared to go to war to defend the […]
One can count on smart and witty astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to throw someone a playful challenge every time. Take, for instance, his message for SpaceX founder Elon Musk during an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit Sunday. When asked about the recent Falcon 9 mission (its historic blastoff into space carrying a SES-9 satellite) and whether he would ever consider going to Mars via the Musk-owned company, […]
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia At least 10 people were killed in explosions in two train carriages at metro stations in St. Petersburg on Monday, Russian authorities said. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is in St. Petersburg for a meeting with Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko, said the cause of the blasts was not clear and efforts were underway to find out. He said he was considering all possibilities including […]
To Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and chief investment strategist of the Boston asset manager GMO, the earth’s changing temperature is an investment imperative as well as a question of ethics. “The climate is moving much faster than people think, and the responses are going to move much faster as well”, he says, arguing that measures to help polluters announced last week by the administration of Donald Trump may […]
PARIS French presidential candidate Francois Fillon, an outsider to win after involvement in financial scandal, said on Monday he would order a parliamentary inquiry into allegations President Francois Hollande interfered in the justice system, if elected. Once the frontrunner, the conservative former prime minister’s poll ratings have slumped since allegations surfaced that he paid his wife and sons hundreds of thousands of euros of public money for […]
Hackers have potentially made off with confidential information about athletes. Image: iStock Russian hackers have compromised the servers of the world governing body for athletics and have likely made off with athletes’ medical data. The attack against the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has been attributed to the APR 28 hacking group – also known as Fancy Bear – and took place in February this year. […]
MANILA Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told school children on Monday he would not hesitate to kill to protect them from the scourge of drugs and encouraged them to enlist in the army to defend the country from its enemies. Speaking during a Boys Scouts’ ceremony at the presidential palace, Duterte did not mince words, saying he would kill dealers “if you touch our children”. Duterte has repeatedly […]
03 April 2017 Doha, Qatar – Continuing its efforts to promote entrepreneurship in the Qatari society and to highlight the status of the projects benefiting from its entrepreneurship services, NAMA Center, one of the Qatar Foundation for Social Work (QFSW) Centers, is participating in the Qatar International Food Festival (QIFF) 2017, organized by the Qatar Tourism Authority, which was inaugurated on March 29 and runs until April […]
The merger between First Gulf Bank (FGB) and National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) formally completed on Sunday, as the board of directors unveiled a new name for the bank. In a statement, the board of directors announced that the merged entity would be named First Abu Dhabi Bank, subject to regulatory approvals and following a General Assembly Meeting to be held “at a later stage” to […]
By Ulf Laessing | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq Sitting in a wheelchair and wearing sunglasses, pensioner Abdelraziq Abdelkarim enjoys the afternoon sun outside his house in Mosul after a day of rain. He does not flinch when a mortar opens fire just around the corner. His home is on the busiest frontline in the northern Iraqi city just 200 m (yards) from Islamic State positions. Outside his […]
The Tasmanian tiger, a carnivorous marsupial that looks like a species of dog, is supposedly extinct. The last known member of this species was captured in 1933 and eventually died in a zoo. Benjamin The Last Captive Tasmanian Tiger The death of Benjamin, the last captive thylacine, in Tasmania’s Hobart Zoo in 1936 has been thought to be the end of the species’s lineage but not everyone […]
DUBAI // Drones fitted with facial recognition cameras and software programmed to recognise an individual’s voice in Arabic are some of the technologies that police may use to fight crime. At the Emirates International Forensic Conference and Exhibition in Dubai yesterday, experts from around the world spoke about finding criminals and scouring crime scenes for evidence with the use of technological and scientific advances. Capt Mohammed Al […]
LONDON Gibraltar’s leader scolded EU Council President Donald Tusk on Monday for giving Spain a right of veto over the future relationship between the British enclave and the European Union after Britain leaves the bloc. The future of Gibraltar, a rocky British outpost on Spain’s southern tip, has become the first major dispute of the exit negotiations since Prime Minister Theresa May filed the formal divorce papers […]
Monday 09:35 BST What you need to know ● Equities starting second quarter on the front foot● S&P 500 futures just 1.5 per cent off record and Euro Stoxx up 0.4 per cent ● Investors keeping a watch on national manufacturing surveys● Dollar little changed against peers and South African rand continues to slide● Brent and WTI crude hold above $50 a barrel, while gold soft——————- Hot […]
Since it first entered service with the Soviet army in 1948, the AK-47 and its derivatives have become the world’s most widely used assault rifles. As Statista’s Niall McCarty writes, in his book “AK47: The Story of The People’s Gun”, author Michael Hodges estimates that there are as many as 200 million Kalashnikov rifles in circulation, one for every 35 people on earth. Its popularity among soldiers, […]
LONDON British police said on Monday they had arrested nine people after a “brutal” attack on a teenage asylum seeker involving a group up to 20 assailants in south London. Detectives, who are treating the incident as a hate crime, said the 17-year-old Kurdish Iranian boy was left with serious head injuries after the attack shortly before midnight on Friday as he waited at a bus stop […]
BEIJING China’s smoggiest cities have pledged to ramp up the battle on pollution after air quality deteriorated in the first few months of this year, the China Daily reported on Monday, as smog blanketed the capital, Beijing, and the surrounding region. Top officials from seven districts in Beijing, Tianjin and cities in Hebei and Shanxi provinces were scolded at the weekend by the environmental watchdog for lax […]
When the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 media partners began publishing the Panama Papers investigation on April 3, 2016, almost no country was untouched by its revelations. Governments in more than 70 countries have launched over 150 investigations, inquiries, audits and probes into the affairs of thousands of people and corporations linked to Panama Papers. Just last month, Malta’s tax office announced it […]
With so many respected newsrooms still adjusting to having the president call them “enemy of the American people,” next week’s announcement of the 2017 Pulitzer Prizes feels like a showdown. What will the winning journalism say about the press’ value to the public? We’re about to find out. Pulitzer selections reflect a closed-door, two-step process at New York’s Columbia University, which administers the prizes. Jurors from around […]
