The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is at loggerheads with European creditors regarding plans over ability of Greece to repay debts. While European Union (EU) insists it has already charted out plan for debt relief, the IMF says these plans are not strong enough, and will not bail out Athens from its current economic difficulties. Under the EU programme, Greece ...

  Catherine Putz SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Al-Qaeda is ostensibly the reason the United States got involved militarily in Afghanistan more than a decade ago. But as the war in Afghanistan progressed, al-Qaeda receded as a target and seemingly as an active player. When Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011 in neighboring Pakistan, the group seemed to be at ...

  Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was in China Thursday and Friday for a fly-by visit that lasted just over 36 hours. Nonetheless, it was an important trip – as Turnbull’s first visit to China since assuming office last fall, it was important to set the tone for the Australia-China relationship under his administration. And that tone was relentlessly upbeat, ...

Matthew Sedacca SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Lowering his voice nervously, Yang Kechao confessed that over half of his workers at Huaxinyuan Steel Company are on vacation. The employees did not leave the factory owner with stations half-filled to go bask in the warm weather of Hejin, Shanxi, a North China province where the plant is based. Nor did they head ...

  Laos is a country that is usually described in accordance with one of two narratives. The first portrays a Buddhist Shangri-La — the ‘real,’ ‘hidden,’ and ‘untouched’ Indochina dreamed of in Western backpacker fantasies — while the second depicts a highly impoverished country in desperate need of foreign aid and technical assistance. Both depictions have some merit. Laos is ...

  Relaxnews After spending time with the recently released consumer editions of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive virtual re.ality systems, here are the 10 best VR titles out now: Adr1ft If the film “Gravity” was a video game, it would be “Adr1ft.” The weightless saga for Oculus casts players as an astronaut struggling to survive while exploring a shattered ...

  AFP GoPro has announced it is teaming up with outside developers to make it easy to use the company’s mini cameras with apps or synch them with other devices. The effort to make GoPro products more versatile and, ideally, more tempting to buyers was revealed a day after the California-based company announced that it hired away an Apple veteran ...

  Protecting nature? There are apps for that AFP Apple set out to inspire people to protect nature with a special collection of apps whose proceeds will go toward doing just that. The technology powerhouse behind the iPhone and the iPad worked with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and developers from around the globe to launch Apps for Earth at ...

  Relaxnews The Rolly Keyboard 2, has unveiled, offers the productivity-conscious access to a full-size keyboard with five rows of keys that can connect wirelessly to a phone or tablet. The new accessory is powered by a single, replaceable AAA-size battery and when it’s not in use rolls up (hence the name) into a hexagonal shape. LG is by no ...

AFP Facebook ramped up its challenge to Twitter-owned Periscope with upgrades to the social network’s live video broadcasting feature. After taking to the air with drones to provide Internet to remote spots, Facebook has unveiled new land-based systems to provide connectivity to people in urban settings. “We are really going at this problem from every possible angle,” Facebook co-founder and ...