DUBAI / Emirates Business Filipinos in the UAE are very optimistic that the quality of life and the investment environment in their home country are on its way to seeing good improvements. A survey conducted by New Perspective Media (NPM), organisers of the annual Philippine Property and Investment Exhibition (PPIE), showed that a whopping 98 per cent of Filipinos ...

  Gregg Petersen / Emirates Business At almost every conference, event or analyst meeting you attend, you’ll hear someone discuss how your business can benefit from the Operating Expense (OPEX) model, greater agility, and faster deployment speeds offered by the public cloud. But let’s be honest: If you go to your internal IT staff and propose the public cloud, you’ll ...

  Bloomberg Even as speculation builds over whether OPEC will clinch an output deal with Russia this month, their negotiations are already paying off. Hedge funds and other investors reversed their bets on falling oil prices at the fastest pace in five months after producers said they would meet in Algiers, data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission show. ...

  Bloomberg While Colombia’s recent agreement to end 52 years of internal war with its largest insurgent group has been heralded across the globe as a rare victory for peace, the nation’s oil industry fears the deal may increase turmoil, not reduce it. Parts of the accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, will amplify the risk ...

  WASHINGTON / AP The United States will provide Israel’s military with $38 billion during the next 10 years, officials said, the largest batch of military assistance the U.S. has ever pledged to another country. Following months of behind-the-scenes negotiations, the State Department said the two countries had reached a 10-year agreement, with a signing ceremony planned for Wednesday. The ...

  Bloomberg China may be investing too much in coal power, with construction of new plants accelerating at the same time that demand growth for electricity is slowing, the International Energy Agency said. The world’s biggest investor in fossil-fuel generation started more than 70 gigawatts of new coal projects last year and had 200 gigawatts under construction at the end ...

  MOSCOW / Reuters Russia threatened to ban Egyptian citrus imports on Tuesday, a move that could escalate a trade dispute over exports of Russian wheat to the world’s largest importer of the grain. Moscow said this week it hopes to hold talks with Egypt, its top buyer, over Cairo’s failure to approve Russian wheat shipments since tightening its regulations ...

  Tripoli / AFP The head of Libya’s UN-backed unity government called for urgent talks on Wednesday after forces loyal to a rival administration seized the main eastern oil ports in defiance of world powers. The fighting between the two sides — the first since the unity government started work in the capital Tripoli in March — was the latest ...

  Jakarta / AFP Indonesia’s top Islamic clerical body said on Wednesday it has issued a fatwa against intentionally starting forest fires in a bid to stop the blazes that cloak Southeast Asia in haze every year. The religious edict by the Indonesian Ulema Council said it was “haram”, or against Islamic law, for Muslims to start fires on purpose ...

  Seoul / AFP Floods in North Korea that have left hundreds dead or missing are the “worst disaster” to hit the country since World War II, state media said on Wednesday. The official KCNA news agency did not give exact numbers of those killed or unaccounted for, but a UN report said 138 people have died and 400 are ...