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Rome / AFP Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has compared Europe’s recent economic policies to administering drugs to artificially prolong the life of a terminally ill patient. A regular critic of EU’s budget deficit rules, Renzi said in an open letter published by La Repubblica on Thursday that austerity economics had resulted in Europe being left behind by the United ...

Zika is a rarity in Brazil: a crisis that isn’t widely blamed on Dilma Rousseff ’s government. And a mobilization against mosquitoes may even help the president climb out of a political hole. In the northeastern town of Limoeiro, corruption scandals and a deepening recession have eroded support for Rousseff ’s Workers’ Party. But the town in Pernambuco state is ...

Dubai / Emirates Business The UAE’s Emaar Properties, the developer of the world’s tallest tower, has bought a stake in a South African project development and management consultancy, an Emaar spokesperson has confirmed. The consultancy has delivered an estimated $6.43bn-worth of schemes across the African, Indian Ocean and Middle Eastern regions. “Emaar has acquired a stake in Mirage Leisure & ...

Dubai / Emirates Business During full year 2015, DAMAC recorded revenue of AED 8.54 billion, gross profit of AED5.07 billion. DAMAC recorded net profit for the year at AED 4.51 billion, an increase of 30% compared to 2014. During 2015, its total assets grew 25% to AED 23.45 billion, total equity grew 87% to AED9.83 billion. Gross debt stood at ...

Bloomberg Cold War foes Russia and Pakistan are set to hold their first joint military drills on land, a sign that neighbouring Afghanistan may avoid becoming the site of another proxy war between global powers. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in need of cash, is seeking to shift away from his country’s decades-old relationship with India—which is also buying more weapons ...

Istanbul / AFP Two suspected people smugglers went on trial in Turkey on Thursday charged with causing the death in September of a Syrian toddler the picture of whose lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach shocked the world. The trial of Syrian nationals Muwafaka Alabash and Asem Alfrhad opened at the criminal court in the western Turkish resort ...

Bloomberg USA policy toward Syria was driven by President Barack Obama’s fear of getting entangled in another middle eastern country, outgoing French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in an interview with RTL Radio. USA decision not to punish Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons in 2013 was read by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a sign that he ...

Bloomberg North Korea said it was expelling South Koreans from a jointly run industrial park and severing a military hotline between the two countries, a day after the government in Seoul announced its withdrawal from the site to punish Kim Jong un for his recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. The North Korea army is taking control of the ...

Bloomberg South Korea plans to cut off power and water to a joint factory park in North Korea to punish Kim Jong Un for his recent nuclear test and rocket launch, said a government official with knowledge of the matter, shuttering the last avenue for economic cooperation between the countries. The government in Seoul hopes to have withdrawn its nationals ...

Washington / AFP In a landmark discovery for physics and astronomy, scientists said on Thursday they have glimpsed the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time that Albert Einstein predicted a century ago. When two black holes collided some 1.3 billion years ago, the joining of those two great masses sent forth a wobble that ...