News

  Paris / AFP Thousands of people demonstrated Saturday in France, Spain and Poland against a EU-Canada free trade deal and a far more ambitious agreement with the United States. Activists charge that the Canada deal will set a dangerous precedent and open the way for a similar but far more sweeping pact with Washington, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership ...

  Bloomberg Nordea Bank’s Stable Return fund, Europe’s fastest growing asset manager, is betting the British pound is now on its way up. It’s a shift of strategy from earlier this year, when the 20 billion-euro ($22 billion) fund bet against sterling using the yen. It profited from that wager, with the pound losing 28 percent this year against the ...

  Bloomberg Sonnen GmbH, a German solar-energy-storage maker that competes against Tesla Motors Inc.’s Powerwall battery, may pursue an initial share sale as early as 2017 to develop additional services. The company, formed in 2010 in Bavaria, sold its 10,000th battery this year and is taking on new stakeholders ahead of a potential IPO, according to its founder, Christoph Ostermann. ...

  London / AP British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson wrote an article urging that Britain stay in the EU just days before becoming the chief campaigner for Brexit, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. In the previously unseen column, Johnson asserted that remaining in the European Union would be “a boon for the world and for Europe”. He warned that Brexit ...

CAIRO / AP For two weeks now, the shelf once piled with bags of sugar — for better or worse Egypt’s most loved commodity — has stood empty at this grocery store in bustling downtown Cairo. “This is nothing — they’re missing even more things in my village,” said Mahmoud Sulayman, a former army conscript from the Nile Delta now ...

  Reuters Vodafone Egypt and Etisalat Misr have signed licence deals allowing them to operate fourth-generation (4G) mobile services in Egypt, the country’s telecoms regulator said on Sunday. Egypt is selling four 4G licences as part of a long-awaited plan to reform the telecoms sector and to raise money for stretched government finances. The country’s three existing mobile phone operators ...

  Reuters Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) said on Sunday it closed a $1.5 billion loan with regional and international banks that will fund its Line 6 expansion project. Alba will become the world’s largest single aluminium smelter complex, boosting its annual output by 540,000 tonnes to 1.5 million tonnes per year by adding a sixth “potline”, used in producing the metal ...

  Kuwait City / Emirates Business GE marked a new milestone in its operational presence in Kuwait with the opening of the GE Kuwait Technology Center (GEKTC), a flagship facility that will foster localized research, provide hands-on training and build an innovation ecosystem specifically for the power sector. Approved by the Kuwait Direct Investment Promotion Authority (KDIPA) for a Foreign ...

  AWEIL / AP The mother faced an anguished decision: choosing which of her children to save. With hunger gripping this remote region of South Sudan, Elizabeth Athiel could either get urgent medical attention for her 8-month-old daughter, Anger, or make sure her other five children could eat. The little girl was shockingly thin, but the medical clinic was a ...

  DHAHRAN / WAM Saudi Aramco’s offshore projects department recently awarded a long-term agreement (LTA) to National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC) of Abu Dhabi for the execution of its offshore development programme. It is the fifth LTA awarded by Saudi Aramco, with four earlier LTAs awarded in June 2015 to various engineering, procurement, fabrication and offshore installation (EPIC) contractors. The ...