Poland / Bloomberg Polish banks jumped on a newspaper report that President Andrzej Duda will tone down his proposal to help the country’s Swiss-franc-denominated mortgage takers and won’t force lenders to convert $36 billion in home loans into zloty. Fixing the issue of foreign-currency loans, mainly in Swiss francs, has hung over Polish lenders for more than a year, ...

  Washington / AFP Ever since the IMF participated in the first Greek bailout six years ago, the stinging suspicion has been that the Fund is under Europe’s thumb. Now the International Monetary Fund is again under pressure to come to the aid of Athens, providing likely fodder for critics. Europe forged an 86 billion euro ($96 billion) aid package ...

  San Francisco / AFP Instagram said that is adding a new weapon for fighting harassment at the popular mobile app for sharing pictures and videos. The Facebook-owned social network began letting some celebrities and others with accounts that attract torrents of feedback filter those comments by keywords or even turn off the option to comment on particular posts. “Our ...

  New York / AFP Electric carmaker Tesla said it won agreement from SolarCity to acquire the solar power company for $2.6 billion, confirming a deal that has been criticized on Wall Street. Tesla announced the bid in late June, but it drew jeers on Wall Street, in part because of skepticism over the motives of Tesla chief executive Elon ...

  Bloomberg European stocks fell on weak British and eurozone manufacturing data and worries about the health of Italian banks. Equities elsewhere were mixed, with the Dow in the US retreating slightly as oil prices fell but the tech-rich Nasdaq finishing higher. The Japanese Nikkei pushed higher for a second straight session. London slid 0.5 percent after a survey showed ...

  Luxembourg / AFP Luxembourg has lodged an appeal against the sentences handed down to three LuxLeaks whistleblowers who exposed the small duchy’s huge tax breaks for giant multinationals, the justice department said Tuesday. “The state prosecutor lodged a general appeal at the end of last week,” spokesman Henri Eippers said. Former PricewaterhouseCoopers employees Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet were ...

  Abu Dhabi / WAM The UAE has maintained its position as a top investment destination for citizens of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) with 1,899 new licenses granted to GCC citizens to practice economic activities during 2015, leading to a total of 19,803 licenses by the end of 2015. Commercial licenses made the top of the economic activities’ list, with a ...

  Abu Dhabi / Emirates Business Abu Dhabi Airports released figures for passenger traffic at Abu Dhabi International Airport (AUH), for the first half of 2016. Total traffic for January to June reached 11,848,359 passengers, representing a 6.6% increase from the 11,111,577 in the first six months of 2015. The number of people passing through Terminal 1 saw the largest ...

  Abu Dhabi / WAM Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) received three prestigious awards from Asian Banking and Finance, a highly respected financial publication based in Singapore. ADCB Commercial Banking has been awarded the “SME Bank of The Year” and “UAE Domestic Technology & Operations Bank of the Year” awards for the distinctive proposition it offers commercial clients in the form ...

Abu Dhabi / Emirates Business A state-of-the-art Etihad Airways Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner touched down in Shanghai today from Abu Dhabi on its first flight into China. The new Dreamliner features the airline’s next-generation business and economy class cabins, and will operate with 299 seats, 28 in Business class and 271 in economy, representing a 14 per cent capacity increase on ...