There is some good news in bank land. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. just released its quarterly banking profile update (executive summary), and it is filled with signs of improvements in the state of the industry. Just some highlights: Net operating revenue is rising, as is loan growth and revenue. Quarterly net income was the highest since the financial crisis ...

  After more than a week of conflicting accounts of Donald Trump’s views on immigration, a period of confusion marked by words such as “softening,” Trump made his intentions clear last Wednesday. The line is as hard as ever, even if the policy is all over the place. In the afternoon, Trump had a strange, subdued meeting with Mexican President ...

  The Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) will benefit the most from the new bankruptcy law whose final draft was approved by the UAE cabinet on Sunday. It will help them ease their functioning while bolstering them to shore up investment. Earlier, the SMEs — as well as other companies and businesses — who failed to pay back their debts ...

  The Clintons have been subject to fishing expeditions before, but why is a federal court making Hillary Clinton give sworn responses now to questions about her use of a private e-mail server back when she was secretary of state? This all stems from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by a conservative group seeking State Department information about ...

For 30 years, the word “sweatshop” has conjured up a very specific image: low-wage Asian workers making branded clothes in crowded, unsafe factories for consumers overseas. The power of that image has launched human rights campaigns, altered how major companies source their products and informed (often incorrectly) how politicians in rich countries shape their trade policies. Now that image is ...

It’s a near-certainty that your organization’s computer system has been or will be broken into. And even if you’re security-conscious and vigilant, you may be to blame. The overwhelming majority of hacks — including the huge Sony attack of 2014, the recent intrusions into the U.S. Democratic National Committee’s network and, probably, the $81 million Bangladesh Bank heist that pointed ...

Hangzhou / AFP G20 leaders met on Monday under pressure to reboot the world economy, but a stumbling push for a Syria ceasefire and Asia’s heated territorial disputes intruded on the summit in Hangzhou. There had been hopes of a breakthrough in stemming the Syria conflict after the US said it was close to a deal with Russia. But frantic ...

  Berlin / AFP German Chancellor Angela Merkel came under fresh fire over her open-door refugee policy on Monday after her party suffered a humiliating defeat against an upstart anti-migrant populist party in her home state. The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party clinched almost 21 percent in its first bid for seats in the regional parliament of Mecklenburg-Western ...

  Moscow / AFP Russia on Monday launched large-scale military drills on Ukraine’s eastern border and around the Crimean peninsula, in the latest exercises set to rattle Kiev and the West. The defence ministry said 12,500 servicemen are taking part in the drills across its southern military region, which encompasses Russia’s volatile North Caucasus and the annexed Crimea region. The ...

  Dubai / Reuters Saudi Arabia’s stock market posted its biggest daily gain in four months on Monday as oil prices surged, while shares of Dubai’s property developers rose before a major exhibition for the industry this week. Riyadh’s stock index rose 1.7 percent to 6,204 points, and trading volume grew by more than half, as Brent crude futures jumped ...