MUSCAT \ Reuters Oman will encourage households to generate electricity with solar panels and feed it into the national grid, Qais al-Zakwani, executive director of the Authority for Electricity Regulation, said on Monday. The policy could put Oman in the forefront of Middle East nations promoting widespread use of solar power. Its finances severely damaged by low oil prices, the ...

Seoul / AFP A South Korean constructor that jointly won a $20 billion housing deal with Saudi Arabia said on Monday it was confident the project would go ahead despite the impact of slumping oil prices on the Gulf nation’s coffers. Under the deal, for which a memorandum of understanding was signed in Seoul last week, a three-party consortium will ...

Calif / AP Canadians are no longer flocking to California’s sunny Coachella Valley to buy homes since their currency has weakened, and many are putting properties they own up for sale, real estate experts said. The move coincides with a decline in the Canadian dollar since oil prices have plummeted, the Desert Sun newspaper reported on Sunday (http://desert.sn/1RCkkPj ). After ...

Bloomberg Real estate Web portals Leju Holdings Ltd. and SouFun Holdings Ltd. are standing out among U.S.-traded Chinese stocks, rebounding as government stimulus and a recovering property market improves the outlook for growth. Leju has surged 44 percent over the past month in the best performance on the Bloomberg China-US Equity Index, which gained 4.6 percent during the same period. ...

DPA At a factory on the fifth floor of Woodlands Spectrum, a sprawling industrial estate, 10 machines, each about the size of a large cupboard, hum for hours each day as they churn out fully-formed products in metals, plastic, resin, sandstone or wax. Making anything from machinery gears to figurines, the additive manufacturing facility run by Ultra Clean Asia Pacific ...

Bloomberg Everyone is a food photographer these days. So where does that leave Martin Parr, who has been snapping food portraits for 25 years? His new book “Real Food” features more than 200 slates of everyday meals and snacks from 36 countries. Why focus on food when everybody else is doing it and he is known for capturing ordinary people ...

Reuters Iranian oil flows to Europe have begun to pick up from a slow start after sanctions were lifted in January, but trading sources say a lack of access to storage part-owned by Tehran’s Gulf Arab rivals now looms large on a list of obstacles. European countries accounted for more than a third of Iran’s exports, or 800,000 barrels a ...

Emirates Business Alkhabeer Capital, the asset management and investment firm based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, released today the 2016 edition of its report reviewing GCC governments’ budgets. The report analyses the latest budgets of the region’s governments, the recent reform measures announced and the broader, long-term implications of the political will to improve efficiencies, curb wasteful expenditures and instill fiscal ...

TOKYO / Bloomberg NTT Data Corp., a unit of Japan’s former telephone monopoly, agreed to buy technology services businesses from Dell for $3.055 billion. The acquisition was announced by the unit of Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. in a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Monday. The company didn’t give a date for when it will acquire the Dell ...

Tokyo / Bloomberg Sharp Corp. and Foxconn Technology Group said they are pushing to close the rescue deal for the Japanese manufacturer that has been held up by disagreement for more than a month. Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Foxconn’s flagship company, said on Sunday it will hold a board meeting on March 30 as scheduled, where it may discuss ...