March, 2016

• 26 March

  Drake & Scull Rail bags Doha Metro Phase 1 contract

  

  Emirates Business Drake & Scull International PJSC (DSI) — a regional market leader in the integrated design, engineering and construction disciplines of General Contracting, Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP), Water and Power, Rail, and Oil and Gas, and Water and Wastewater Treatment — has announced that the Fujita Corporation has awarded Drake & Scull Rail (DSR) a QR 340 Million ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  Russia, US set August deadline to push Syria peace talks

  

  Bloomberg The US and Russia set an August deadline for a deal to end Syria’s five-year war as they agreed to try to push forward negotiations between the government and opposition that remain deadlocked over the fate of Russian ally President Bashar Al Assad. “We will accelerate the effort to try and move the political process forward,” US Secretary of ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  UN chief Ban Ki-moon in Baghdad for talks

  Baghdad / AFP United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Baghdad on Saturday for talks with senior officials on ways of assisting war-ravaged Iraq, the world body said. Ban, who had last visited the Iraqi capital in March 2015, was travelling with World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim and Islamic Development Bank head Ahmad Al Madani. They went straight ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  Death toll in Iraq football pitch carnage at 32

  Iskandariyah / AFP The village of Al Asriya, south of Baghdad, prepared on Saturday to bury its sons, killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up after a football tournament. The attacker, who himself looks like a teenager on a photo distributed by the IS group that claimed the attack, cut through the crowd when trophies were being presented. “There ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  Syria army edges forward in extremist-held Palmyra

  

  Palmyra / AFP Syrian troops backed by Russian ground and air forces on Saturday pushed deeper into the IS group stronghold of Palmyra, as Washington considered boosting its anti-extremist fight in neighbouring Iraq. IS, behind a string of attacks in the West including this week’s Brussels bombings, is under growing pressure from Syrian and Iraqi military offensives to retake two ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  Greece starts evacuating border camp as new arrivals slow

  

  Athens / afp Greece has begun evacuating migrants from the main Idomeni camp on the Macedonia border, while the flow of refugees arriving on Aegean islands has slowed to a trickle, officials said on Saturday. Eight buses transported around 400 refugees from Idomeni to nearby refugee camps Friday, local police sources said. A dozen more buses were waiting for migrants ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  N. Korea video depicts imagined submarine attack on Washington

  

  Seoul / AFP North Korea released a new propaganda video on Saturday menacingly titled “Last Chance”, showing a submarine-launched nuclear missile laying waste to Washington and concluding with the US flag in flames. The four-minute video romps through the history of US-Korean relations and ends with a digitally manipulated sequence showing a missile surging through clouds, swerving back to the ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  Banks’ scope on credit risk narrows significantly as Basel tightens rules

  

  Bloomberg Banks’ latitude in assessing their biggest source of risk is set to be curtailed as global regulators try to prevent the financial industry from gaming capital requirements. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has proposed to remove the option for lenders to use their own models to determine how much capital they need to fund exposures to financial firms, ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  Over 30 countries waiting in the wings for membership of AIIB

  

  Boao / Reuters More than 30 countries are waiting to join the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), adding to its 57 founding members, its president said. The AIIB, first proposed by President Xi Jinping less than two years ago, has become one of China’s biggest foreign policy successes. Despite the opposition of Washington, almost many major US allies – ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  Turkey bank under stress to lower cost of borrowing

  

  ANKARA / Reuters Turkey’s central bank should have cut interest rates more at this week’s policy meeting, an aide to President Tayyip Erdogan said, in a sign the central bank is likely to remain under pressure to lower the cost of borrowing. The bank kept its benchmark rate steady for the 13th straight month this week, but cut the upper ...

  Read More »