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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. ...

Hiroshima / AFP G7 foreign ministers on Sunday began two days of talks in Hiroshima, with John Kerry’s visit to the atom-bombed city—the first-ever by a US secretary of state—overshadowing the broader agenda. Kerry’s landmark trip is seen as possibly paving the way for Barack Obama to become the first serving US president to journey to the thriving metropolis next ...

DUBAI / WAM His Highness Sheikh Hamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Chief of Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi’s Court, inaugurated Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Building for Personalized Cancer in Houston, US. This came during a ceremony held in the building attended by Yousef Al Otaiba, UAE Ambassador to the United States, Mohammed Haji Al Khouri, Director General of ...

Al Ain / WAM Abu Dhabi General Services Company, Musanada, completed and handed over to Al Ain City Municipality all the infrastructure works related to Neima Residential Project. The move is part of the efforts to achieve the vision of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, with the close follow up of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, has installed 50 percent of the solar home systems as part of an innovative project to provide power in rural Morocco. The installation of 9,000 out of 17,670 systems across 940 villages comes only a year after the partnership agreement was signed between Masdar and Morocco’s Office National de l’Electricite ...

Bloomberg The U.K. economy may have grown at the slowest pace in more than three years in the first quarter, according to new estimates that could put a further cloud over the outlook. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research estimated on Friday that gross domestic product rose 0.3 percent, half the pace recorded in the last three months ...

Quito / Reuters Latin America’s main oil exporters called on both OPEC and non-OPEC nations to take action to stabilize oil markets, in a timid statement that did not explicitly back an output freeze or offer more aggressive proposals to shore up slumping prices. Delegations from Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Venezuela met in Quito in the run-up to a meeting ...

Kabul / AFP US Secretary of State John Kerry landed in Kabul on Saturday on an unannounced visit to show support for the Afghan unity government and its attempts to revive peace talks with the Taliban. His visit comes as the extremist group is experiencing a resurgence following the withdrawal of US-led combat troops in 2014, announcing recently it was ...