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Wellington / Bloomberg Air New Zealand more than doubled first-half profit and said it expects full-year earnings to surge at least 70 percent as lower fuel prices and growing passenger numbers boost revenue. Net income jumped 154 percent to NZ$338 million ($225 million) in the six months to December 31, the Auckland-based airline said Thursday. Pretax earnings climbed to NZ$457 ...

ABU DHABI / WAM His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, who is also the Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council (ADEC), has stressed that upon the directives of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE entered into a new phase of ...

DUBAI / WAM Women’s rights in the UAE were interwoven into the very foundation of the UAE, Shamma bint SohailFaris AlMazrui, Minister of State for Youth Affairs, at the Global Women’s Forum Dubai on Wednesday. Speaking at the Forum, Al Mazrui, who recently became the youngest Minister in the UAE Cabinet, said: “As we developed schools, universities and the other ...

Hong Kong / Agencies Rising political turmoil in Hong Kong could hurt economic growth in the freewheeling southern Chinese business hub, the city’s finance chief, John Tsang said as he unveiled measures on Wednesday to counter the impact of global weakness. Tsang warned that political unrest would “unavoidably” damage the economy after riots rocked the city earlier this month, predicting ...

Kuala Lumpur / DPA Malaysian online shoppers are turning to local sites as the weaker ringgit has made shopping on foreign sites much more expensive. Local online retailer Lazada Malaysia said the drop in the ringgit’s value has not really affected sales on its site. In fact, Lazada Group as a whole recorded US$40 million in overall sales during its ...

Bloomberg As the dot-com bubble burst, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the last firewall between the U.S. economy and a recession is consumer confidence. Given the market’s plunge this year, will it hold now? So far, so good. The risk facing the U.S. is that falling stock prices cause people to start worrying about their finances, and they spend ...

Bloomberg Donald Trump’s dominating victory in the Nevada caucuses pushes him further out ahead of his nearest competitors for the Republican presidential nomination, giving his unorthodox candidacy a major boost heading into Super Tuesday contests next week. The real estate mogul and political newcomer now has won in the Northeast, the South and the West by riding a wave of ...

Vienna / AFP Austria warned on Wednesday that the EU’s future was at stake as it pressed Balkan states, in the absence of an effective common response by the bloc, to reduce the influx of migrants despite fears of a humanitarian crisis. Further undermining the European Union’s hopes to get a grip on the situation, Hungary meanwhile announced a referendum ...

Bloomberg Russian and Syrian warplanes pounded IS positions near Aleppo on Wednesday, a group monitoring the conflict said, trying to regain access to a strategic road whose fall to the militant group set back the allies’ advances before a scheduled truce. IS has tightened its grip on the Syrian military’s only access route to Aleppo, the country’s largest city, according ...

BLoomberg The pound sank below $1.39 for the first time since March 2009, while a gauge of anxiety in currency markets showed traders are preparing for even more extreme moves. Options traders are paying the most to protect against price swings in six months’ time compared with historical volatility since Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed during the 2008 credit crisis. ...