Robert Farley SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Do states acquire weapons because of security needs or out of a desire for prestige? Analysts have asked this question about a wide range of weapons, including advanced fighter jets, nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, battleships, and (perhaps most importantly) nuclear weapons. On the prestige side, nuclear weapons convey modernity, power, and a spot ...

  The Asia-Pacific region’s successful achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development needs to be driven by broad-based productivity gains and rebalancing of economies towards domestic and regional demand. This is the main message of the Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2016, published last week by the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the ...

  Environmental degradation remains at the center of scientific conversation on the South China Sea as more marine scientists sound the alarm about the environmental consequences of China’s island-building activities. A Closer Look at the Problem The problems facing the sea are as vast, deep, and seemingly intractable as the oceans themselves, and the need to address issues of acidification, ...

  Yuki Tatsumi SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS On April 26, the Australian government announced that it has chosen DCNS of France as the partner for joint development in its SEA 1000—Collins-class submarine replacement—program. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in his joint statement with Defense Minister Marise Payne that the French proposal best met Australia’s unique requirements as well as ...

  Prime Minister David Cameron should, if the pollsters and bookmakers are right, win his campaign to keep the U.K. in the European Union. But if things go wrong between now and the June referendum his biggest challenge will be to persuade the poor, for whom he has done little, that Brexit won’t make them better off. The economic case ...

  Bloomberg In a parking lot in midtown Toronto, a portable office advertising homes for Urbancorp sits empty, a stark symbol of what can go wrong for even one of Canada’s largest property developers in the city’s feverish real estate market. The sales center, fronted by weed-covered planters and dotted with litter, was where Urbancorp marketed 41 townhouses. The project, ...

  Bloomberg Norway’s $870 billion sovereign-wealth fund said the value of its first real estate investments, stakes in London’s Regent Street and a cluster of offices, shops and apartments nearby, more than doubled in value since they were purchased in 2011 and 2013. The fund’s 25 percent holding in the Crown Estate partnership, which owns parts of the luxury shopping ...

  Bloomberg The Kingdom od Saudi Arabia seeks to establish itself as a trade hub connecting Europe, Africa and Asia. The causeway that is planned to link Saudi Arabia with Egypt will be a key component of future trade exchanges between the kingdom and Africa. In the Vision 2030 document that was released on April 25, Riyadh said it plans ...

  Bloomberg U.K. mortgage lending surged by the most since October 2007 last month, a further sign of the stampede for investment properties before a tax rise took effect in April. Net advances rose to 7.4 billion pounds ($10.8 billion) in March, from 3.6 billion pounds a month earlier, the Bank of England said in London. That’s far above the ...

  Bloomberg The nation’s housing markets may be finally getting over the foreclosure crisis, but for many Americans the anger hasn’t subsided. Take a look at this recent home sale in Florida. It may be the perfect encapsulation of the fury felt by some of the more than 5 million Americans served with a foreclosure notice after the housing bubble ...