Manama / Reuters The 23rd annual World Islamic Banking Conference (WIBC) recognized excellence within the Islamic finance and banking industry at a high profile Gala Dinner at the beautiful ART Rotana Hotel, Amwaj Islands in Bahrain. WIBC Performance Awards were granted to the top Islamic financial institutions based purely on their performance at the global, regional and national levels. ...

  Shanghai / AFP Chinese bank lending grew modestly month-on-month in November, official data showed on Wednesday, after being almost halved in October, the latest indication that the country’s economy may be stabilising. New loans extended by banks rose to 794.6 billion yuan ($115.1 billion) last month, compared with 651.3 billion yuan in October, said the People’s Bank of China ...

  Bloomberg Central Bank of Kenya officials were allegedly at the heart of fraud at the failed Imperial Bank Ltd., described by one analyst as perhaps the industry’s largest scandal in the East African nation. Imperial Bank staff for years gave central bank officials loans and even school fees in exchange for helping to hide unauthorized debt, according to a ...

  Abidjan / AFP A mother from a working-class district of Abidjan watches fearfully while the physiotherapist presses down on the thorax and abdomen of her crying, struggling baby to help him breathe. Under the health worker’s expert hands, the infant gradually expels the secretions clogging up his lungs through his nose and mouth. His mother looks astonished and the ...

  Gulf of Thailand / AFP Piercing the water’s surface with its almond-shaped mouth, a giant Bryde’s whale opens wide for one, two, three seconds, gulping in anchovies as a boatload of awed tourist look on in the Gulf of Thailand. It’s a rare glimpse of marine life in its natural habitat, in a kingdom overrun with mass tourist attractions ...

  SAN FRANCISCO / AP Uber is bringing a small number of self-driving cars to its ride-hailing service in San Francisco — a move likely to excite the city’s tech-savvy population and certain to antagonize California regulators. The Wednesday launch in Uber’s hometown expands a public pilot program the company started in Pittsburgh in September. The testing lets everyday people ...

  Bloomberg France’s top corporate finance chiefs are getting lessons on the specifics of acquiring startups in a push by a state-backed investment fund to triple tech deals in the country within three years. Chief financial officers from France’s biggest companies, from banks to industrial conglomerates, are learning to pin a price tag to a startup, spot when a company ...

  Bloomberg Amazon Web Services, the cloud-hosting arm of Amazon.com Inc., opened new data centers in the UK as it seeks to stay abreast of competitors in offering cloud computing services to government and health-care customers. The new data centers, announced in a statement on Wednesday, follow decisions by IBM and Microsoft Corp. in the past two months to expand ...

  WASHINGTON / AP The US industrial production dropped sharply in November, mainly because power plants reduced output due to unusually warm weather. The Federal Reserve reported Wednesday that output at America’s factories, mines and utilities fell 0.4 percent last month. It was another sign that American industry is struggling even as the overall US economy looks healthy. The Federal ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Stock markets in the Gulf retreated on Wednesday in shrinking trading volumes as investors turned cautious ahead of the US interest rate hike and guidance from the US central bank expected late in the day. Petrochemical shares, which have been dragging Saudi Arabia’s main index lower over the last two sessions, fell further. The main index ...