News

  Dubai / Emirates Business Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation (MBRF) – part of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives – is set to take part in the 68th edition of the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 19-23. Represented by Qindeel Printing, Publishing and Distribution, the Foundation is keen to attend the Fair – the largest of its ...

  Bloomberg Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the U.K. shouldn’t prolong the process of withdrawing from the European Union, suggesting the government will formally trigger an exit by May of next year. Though Britain voted for Brexit in June, formal talks with the 27 other EU members can’t begin until Prime Minister Theresa May activates Article 50 of the bloc’s ...

  Washington / AFP With spats over Apple and Deutsche Bank and squabbles about Airbus and Boeing, approaching elections on both sides of the Atlantic are exacerbating strains in US-European economic relations. The recent controversy over taxing the iPhone maker surely epitomizes the situation best. European authorities’ decision in late August to force the American giant Apple to pay $14.5 ...

  Kiev / AFP The scandal was complex but its outcome potentially simple — Ukraine tried to fiddle with its murky gas sector and upset its EU partners enough to freeze huge sums of financial help. The fight for control over a profitable company that transports Russia’s blue fuel to Europe also exposes the clan warfare and backstabbing that surrounds ...

  Los Angeles / AFP From real estate, to high-tech firms to entertainment giants, Chinese investments in the United States, notably California, are moving at a dizzying pace and are on course to smash records again this year. Chinese companies shelled out a record $15 billion last year in the US and that figure could more than double in 2016, ...

  Bloomberg Volkswagen AG’s former chief executive officer, Martin Winterkorn, approved a plan to disclose only partial information on the carmaker’s software rigging to U.S. authorities seven weeks before the scandal broke last year, Bild newspaper reported, citing newly uncovered documents. On July 28, 2015, Winterkorn signed off on talking points prepared ahead of an informal meeting with regulators in ...

  Wayang Windu / AFP Columns of steam shoot from the ground at an Indonesian power plant sitting in the shadow of an active volcano, as energy is tapped from the red-hot underbelly of the archipelago. Pipes zig-zag up rugged mountainsides covered in tea plantations, carrying steam from the Earth’s core to power enormous, electricity-generating turbines at the Wayang Windu ...

  Havana / AFP Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said it was time for a new direction in relations with Cuba, during a landmark visit to the Americas’ lone communist-ruled state. During the first visit by a Chinese premier since the two countries established diplomatic relations 56 years ago Li pledged to “inject a new dynamic in (bilateral) relations,” Cuban state ...

  Beijing / AFP The world’s largest radio telescope began operating in southwestern China on Sunday, a project Beijing says will help humanity search for alien life. The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), nestled between hills in the mountainous region of Guizhou, began working around noon, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Built at a cost of 1.2 billion ...

  DUBAI / Emirates Business The leadership of small and medium enterprises (SME) across organizations in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are keen to integrate digital and mobile technologies into the workplace, but over half of the same organisations do not have a strategy in place to achieve this, new research suggests. Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, conducted ...