Regional News

  DUBAI / Emirates Business Nissan has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Greater Amman Municipality in Jordan as part of a landmark initiative to provide the Kingdom with its first 100 Nissan LEAF and Nissan e-NV200 electric vehicles (EVs). The vehicles, to be supplied by Bustami & Saheb (BSTC), Nissan’s exclusive distributor in the Kingdom, will be ...

  Amman / Tribune News Service Jordan has signed an agreement to build its “first coal-fuelled power plant”, the Energy Ministry said. “This is the first power plant in Jordan that runs on coal,” said Energy Minister Ibrahim Saif, adding that around 70 per cent of electricity globally is produced by coal. The plant will run on coal and petroleum ...

  BEIRUT / Reuters Iran has filed a formal complaint with the International Court of Justice to recover nearly $2 billion in assets frozen in the United States, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that the assets must be turned over to American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. ...

  AMMAN / Tribune News Service In less than two years, a team of archaeologists has amassed records for 90,000 Middle Eastern sites in an online database. The Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project documents archaeological sites and assesses the threats to them in 10 countries, said project Director Robert Bewley from the University of ...

  Jeddah / Tribune News Service Saudi Arabia is a key partner in international development and among the world’s top donors as the provision of external assistance and donations are major aspects of its foreign policy. In a speech delivered at the Human Rights Council by Faisal bin Trad, Saudi ambassador to the UN, in Geneva, said that the Kingdom ...

  CAIRO / Reuters Economists are roughly evenly split on whether Egypt’s central bank will raise interest rates at its monetary policy committee (MPC) meeting on June 16, after a jump in inflation in May. Six out of 11 economists in the Reuters poll expect the bank to hold rates while five expect a hike ranging from 25 basis points ...

  ERBIL / Reuters Iraq’s Kurds are ready to strike an agreement with the central government in Baghdad on a deal to increase oil exports, if it guarantees them a monthly revenue of $1 billion, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said. Iraq’s central government in March stopped oil exports through a Kurdish pipeline to pressure the local ...

  Amman / Tribune News Service An international group has commended Jordan for its responsible and balanced approach to its peaceful nuclear power programme. A report by the International Advisory Group (IAG) has indicated that the Kingdom has “aggressively engaged with the IAEA in the development of its nuclear programme and has sought and obtained extensive peer reviews and this ...

  Reuters Qatar will reduce its condensate exports by a third in January 2017 when a new splitter at its Ras Laffan refinery starts operating, a Qatar Gas official said. “Qatar is exporting around 30 cargoes (of condensate) a month. This will be reduced by 10 cargoes a month starting January,” said the official, who declined to be named saying ...

  Tribune news service A 35 percent increase in customer complaints against banks has been witnessed in Bahrain over the past three years, it has emerged. The Central Bank of Bahrain has received an average of 31 such complaints every month this year, compared with 28 last year, 26 in 2014 and 23 in 2013. Four complaints last month were ...