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Marib / AFP A UN-brokered ceasefire was taking hold in Yemen on Monday, raising hopes that peace talks due next week may finally resolve the country’s devastating conflict. Forces loyal to President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, the Shiite Houthi rebels who drove his government out of the capital, and the Saudi-led coalition that intervened in Yemen last year all pledged to ...

ABU DHABI / WAM His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and Vice President of the Supreme Petroleum Council, said during his visit on Sunday to the headquarters of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) that the UAE, under the leadership of President His Highness ...

Dubai / WAM Dubai Customs continues to boost its relationships with foreign diplomatic corps aiming for more growth in Dubai’s trade with the world. In this respect Dubai Customs Director Ahmed Mahboob Musabih has welcomed Oleksandr Balanutsa, Ukrainian Consul-General in Dubai, to explore means of strengthening bilateral cooperation to deepen economic and commercial ties that bind the United Arab Emirates ...

Dubai / Emirates Business Emirates Modern Poultry Co. (Al Rawdah), the first poultry farm in the UAE to receive the ‘Halal’ certificate from Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology (ESMA), announced that it is investing AED 120 million as an initial investment in its new farm in Abu Dhabi’s Liwa area. With this investment, Al Rawdah will ensure further commitment ...

Ritika Sharma / Emirates Business UAE boasts of one of the highest mobile penetration rates in Middle East. However a sign of advancement, this has made the country highly vulnerable to cyber-attacks, experts believe. In the wake of aforesaid, UAE-based Axiom telecom, the region’s leading mobile reseller, has joined hands with ESET, the global pioneer of proactive security software to ...

Colombo / AFP Sri Lanka will bring legal reforms to encourage much needed foreign investment, as the cash-strapped island tries to turn its $8 billion Chinese debt into equity, the prime minister said on Sunday. Ranil Wickremesinghe, who returned home on Sunday after a three-day visit to China, said streamlined regulations and a free trade agreement would be in place ...

New Delhi / Bloomberg Prime Minister Narendra Modi is starting to see some success in getting infrastructure projects moving again. About a third of more than 1,000 projects valued at 14 trillion rupees ($210 billion) are delayed as of January, down from 42 percent a year earlier, according to government data released on Thursday. Cost overruns have come down from ...

Madrid / Reuters Spain plans to ask the European Commission for an extra year to meet its public deficit targets, El Pais reported on Sunday, after missing the mark with its 2015 deficit and raising the prospect of further spending cuts to narrow the budget gap. The country last month reported a 2015 deficit of 5 percent of economic output, ...

New York / AFP Confronted with a sluggish global economy, US companies have settled on a controversial tool that rewards shareholders and executives: share buybacks. First permitted by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 1982, the use of share buybacks has spread rapidly over the last five years due in part to pressure from activist investors anxious for a ...

Beirut / AFP The IS group is under growing pressure on several fronts in Syria as rival forces battle to wrest territory from the extremists, who are excluded from a six-week-old ceasefire. The scramble by the regime, anti-government rebels and Kurdish militia to recapture areas from IS has been given added urgency by the prospect of a possible federal system. ...