Reuters Egypt’s blue chip equities index jumped on Thursday after the central bank floated the currency, a step which could eventually resolve its hard currency shortage, while Saudi Arabia gained for a second straight week. The Egyptian EGX30 index soared as much as 8.4 percent in the first hour of trade after the central bank devalued the pound by ...

  FRANKFURT/ AP Global stock markets were mixed on Thursday, bogged down by concerns over the outcome of next week’s US presidential election. The British pound jumped after a court ruled that parliament must vote before the government can trigger a two-year countdown to Britain’s exit from the European Union. KEEPING SCORE: In Europe, Germany’s DAX rose 0.1 percent to ...

  Bloomberg Microsoft Corp. unveiled a corporate team-chat service that works with its cloud-based Office and Skype products, aiming to take on Slack Technologies Inc. and Atlassian Corp.’s HipChat in a growing market. The new product is “designed to facilitate real-time conversations and collaboration while maintaining and building up that institutional knowledge of a team,” said Chief Executive Officer Satya ...

  WASHINGTON / AFP Donald Trump blames Mexico and China for stealing millions of jobs from the United States. He might want to bash the robots instead. Despite the Republican presidential nominee’s charge that “we don’t make anything anymore,” manufacturing is still flourishing in America. Problem is, factories don’t need as many people as they used to because machines now ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business Intel® Security has released its McAfee Labs Health Warning report, which assesses the marketplace for stolen medical records; compares it with the marketplace for stolen financial services data; identifies health care focused cybercrime-as-a-service trends; and profiles cybercrime targeting intellectual property in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The Intel Security research asserts that the development of ...

  Bloomberg Some of the world’s largest technology companies are banking on a future where people will send text messages to airlines, banks, restaurants or stores and receive automated responses. Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp., IBM and Tencent each held events this year centered around promoting their bot-related initiatives to software makers. Twitter Inc. introduced chatbot-like functions with Pizza Hut and ...

  Emirates Business Canon has announced the XC15 — a compact, 4K (UHD) and Full HD video camcorder with stills capability, aimed at content creators such as news gatherers and independent or documentary filmmakers. Following in the footsteps of the popular XC10, the XC15 combines the best elements from its predecessor with new features and functionality, including a microphone adapter ...

  Emirates Business Abeer Medical Group, an international healthcare provider known for establishing prominent hospitals and medical centers in the GCC region, has announced plans to expand its operations to the UAE. For decades, the Group has been changing lives and providing quality healthcare to those in need. From their origins in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the group has ...

  ABU DHABI / WAM Abu Dhabi-based National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC) won a US$141 million (AED 520 million) contract from India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC). The project involves replacement of 10 wellhead platform topsides at ONGC’s Mumbai High North and South fields, MHN and MHS, respectively. Out of these 10, four are on the MHN field ...

  Dubai / WAM The Department of Economic Development (DED) in Dubai is launching a consumer choice programme from December so that customers in Dubai’s retail, hospitality and entertainment sectors can rate their experience and share reviews. The bilingual (Arabic and English) programme called ‘Customer Choice’ is being launched by the Commercial Compliance and Consumer Protection (CCCP) sector under DED. ...