News

Havana / AFP Eddy Relova used to scrape a living buying and selling goods in the street, but now he sits wearing a thick gold necklace at a posh restaurant in Havana. State controls over Cuba’s economy are gradually easing, unleashing a new class of moneyed consumers in a communist island where wealth is largely taboo. Now, aged 23, Relova ...

ALKESH SHARMA / Emirates Business Thanks to UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) technology, soon UAE-based agriculturists and investors will be able to monitor their sprawling farmlands situated as far as in Sudan, without even stepping out of their homes. Under the concept of remote ownership, this could be made possible through smart drones that would do daily monitoring of faraway meadows ...

Dubai / WAM Saqr Ghobash, Minister of Human Resources and Emiratisation, on Thursday launched a campaign under the slogan ‘Know your rights’ to educate workers about their rights, upon arrival through Dubai airports. “This campaign comes in the framework of the ministry’s keenness to raise awareness among foreign workers that enter the labour market for the first time especially when ...

ALKESH SHARMA / Emirates Business Women active in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), from across the MENA region, are all set to kick-start their start-up dreams in Dubai on Friday. These exceptionally talented women will converge in Dubai to take part in two-day event all-women Smart City Hackathon 2016. Themed ‘Smart Cities for Women’, this hackathon ...

RITIKA SHARMA / Emirates Business Are you tired of hiring a cab, or driving your car across the city for weekend getaways? Have you been longing for a closer but comprehensive view of the Emirates capital or wanting to offer the same to your overseas guest visiting you? In short, if you want to experience Abu Dhabi in a new ...

Paris / Bloomberg Algeria has awarded UK-based Amec Foster Wheeler the front end engineering design (Feed) for three green-field refinery projects, which are estimated to have a total budget of around $6bn. A statement issued on 16 February by the state-controlled energy company Sonatrach said that the design contract for the three refineries has been “provisionally awarded to the tenderer ...

Paris / Bloomberg Equate Petrochemicals, a joint venture between US-based Dow Chemical and the Kuwaiti government, has commissioned a $70m carbon dioxide plant in Kuwait. The carbon dioxide-recovery facility has a capacity of 280 tonnes a day. The gas will be produced by existing Equate petrochemicals plants. It will filter and purify the carbon dioxide, then liquefy it, making it ...

Bloomberg Crude extended gains after industry data showed U.S. inventories declined, while Iran cautiously supported a proposal by Saudi Arabia and Russia to freeze production at near-record levels. Oil rose as much as 4.3 percent in New York. U.S. crude supplies fell by 3.26 million barrels last week, the industry- funded American Petroleum Institute was said to report Wednesday. However, ...

Beijing / AFP Prada’s annual sales were broadly flat for a second consecutive year in 2015 as the slowdown in China continued to weigh on the high fashion and luxury goods brand. Weak sales in Asia Pacific outside of Japan and in the United States failed to offset an improved picture in Europe, where the weak euro bolstered sales to ...

Tokyo / Bloomberg Japan Airlines Co. expects operating profit of at least 200 billion yen ($1.8 billion) in the financial year that begins in April, according to two people familiar with the situation. The profit forecast compares with 204 billion yen in operating profit expected in the fiscal year that ends in March. The country’s second-largest airline will update its ...