A pro-Brexit argument that always makes me giggle a little is that leaving the European Union will allow the UK to become the new Singapore. That’s right — the land of hope and glory, home to the world’s fifth-largest economy, wants to emulate its steamy little former colony, population 5.4 million. When you look at the per-capita income data, ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Generally positive first-quarter results from Gulf banks helped lift financial stocks on Wednesday, while Saudi Arabia’s third-largest telecoms operator jumped by its daily limit after reporting its first ever quarterly net profit. Shares in Qatar National Bank, the largest lender by assets in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), rose 1 percent after it announced net profit ...

  HONG KONG / AP Stock markets were subdued and the price of oil and gold rose Wednesday as geopolitical risks kept investors on edge ahead of a long weekend. In Europe, France’s CAC 40 gained 0.2 percent to 5,113 and Germany’s DAX added 0.1 percent to 12,150. Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.1 percent to 7,357. US indexes were poised ...

  Bloomberg Middle Eastern carriers seized on the social media storm surrounding the forced removal of a passenger from a United Airlines flight to hit back at one of the arch-critics of their breakneck expansion. Dubai-based Emirates mocked United’s best-known advertising slogan on its Twitter account, urging passengers to “fly the friendly skies with a real airline.” Royal Jordanian Airlines ...

  Bloomberg Qantas Airways Ltd. told travel agents in Zimbabwe to stop selling tickets for its flights after the International Air Transport Association warned it’s getting harder to move funds out of the country, according to a circular sent by the Australian airline to agencies and seen by Bloomberg. The carrier owed a ‘substantial’ amount by Bank Settlement Plan Zimbabwe, ...

  Bloomberg UK retail sales fell the most since 2011 last quarter as consumers started to feel squeeze from faster inflation. Retail sales dropped 0.7 percent from a year earlier on a like-for-like basis, the British Retail Consortium said on Tuesday, noting that the timing of the Easter holiday — which this year falls in April — may be distorting ...

  HARTFORD / AP Rick Maynard found the manila envelope containing letters from the battlefields of World War I while he and his sister were cleaning out the basement after their father’s death. The more than three dozen letters were written, some in pencil, by Paul Maynard, Rick’s great-uncle. “He was on the front lines,” said Rick Maynard, the parks and ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business Dubai Islamic Bank (DFM: DIB), the first Islamic bank in the world and the largest Islamic bank in the UAE by total assets, announced its first quarter results for the period ended March 31, 2017. Group Net Profit increased to AED 1,042 million, up 4% compared with AED 1,001 million for the same period in ...

  DUBAI / Reuters OPEC and the United Arab Emirates’ ministry of energy will next week launch the first phase of a new global oil and gas database project aiming to develop an easy-to-use tool to analyse energy information and allow for more transparency. The Oil and Gas Big Data Project “will consist of a set of high standard analytic ...

  DUBAI / WAM Dubai has opened its doors to the second generation of world-class construction projects with the launch of the Al Wasl Plaza Project, the main hub of Expo 2020 Dubai. Al Wasl Plaza is a dynamic, urban, cultural, environmental, tourism, educational and recreational destination for future generations, which will be completed by the end of 2019. It ...