Abu Dhabi / WAM Abu Dhabi’s Department of Transport (DoT) announced that the smart card service, ‘Hafilat’ is now available on board regional buses. The service, launched by the department’s Integrated Transport Centre, will facilitate the payment of trip fares efficiently – through the automatic calculation of fares based on distance traveled – saving passengers time, effort and money. The ...

Dubai / Emirates Business Emirates has set a new record with over 1 million Wi-Fi connections made on board its flights in March alone. During the month, 1,037,016 Emirates customers connected to the internet during their flight. The connections were mainly made over mobile devices with over 94% of users connecting with a smartphone –twice as many connections were made ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC), said on Tuesday that it has successfully completed the Reactor Containment Building (RCB), dome for Unit 4, the final unit of the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant, marking another milestone in the development of the plant, located in the Al Dhafrah region of Abu Dhabi. ENEC also said that the Unit’s ...

Bloomberg Stocks surged on Tuesday following conciliatory remarks from Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at releasing some pressure from a trade dispute between the world’s biggest economies. Treasuries fell with the dollar. All major US equity indexes were up more than 1.4 percent after Xi said Cold War and zero-sum mentalities were “out of place,” and backed free trade and ...

Bloomberg The krona is the worst-performing major currency this year. That may be about to change. Sweden’s krona should recover from this month’s eight-year low of 10.35 per euro as factors that have weighed, such as weaker-than-forecast inflation, are either already priced in or will improve, according to SEB AB. The bank sees it appreciating to 9.80 per euro by ...

Bloomberg The head of China’s largest natural gas importer believes the country’s energy ties with the US are set to deepen, despite trade conflict between the world’s two largest economies that has roiled financial markets. “There is more room for cooperation than confrontation between China and the US,” China National Petroleum Corp. Chairman Wang Yilin said in an interview with ...

Bloomberg Saudi Arabia wants to get oil prices near $80 a barrel to pay for the government’s policy agenda and support the valuation of state energy giant Aramco before an initial public offering. In conversations with OPEC delegates and oil market participants, Saudi officials had been careful to avoid pinpointing an exact price target. Yet people who have spoken to ...

Bloomberg China’s massive build programme to recreate trade routes stretching from Asia to Africa and Europe is gaining momentum. Since President Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road project was announced about five years ago, it gave impetus to billions of dollars of Chinese investment — some of which were already in the pipeline for several years — to build railways, ...

Bloomberg Ant Financial is in talks to raise at least $10 billion in a funding round that could value the Chinese internet giant controlled by Alibaba-founder Jack Ma at $150 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Singaporean state investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte wants to be the lead investor in the financing for China’s largest internet financial services ...

Bloomberg Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated pledges to open sectors from banking to auto manufacturing in a speech that also warned against returning to a “Cold War mentality” amid trade disputes with US counterpart Donald Trump. Xi pledged a “new phase of opening up” in his keynote address on Tuesday to the Boao Forum for Asia, China’s answer to Davos. ...