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  WASHINGTON / AP State Department officials shook up America’s generally obedient diplomatic establishment this week with an internal memo urging US military action against Syria’s government with the goal of pressing President Bashar Assad to accept a cease-fire and gaining the upper hand on him in future talks on a political transition. Reasons abound for why an intervention is ...

  Fallujah, Iraq / AFP Iraqi forces hunted down holdout extremists in Fallujah on Saturday after retaking the city centre and trained their sights on Mosul, the IS last remaining major hub in the country. While not fully under government control yet, Fallujah is the latest in a string of battlefields losses for IS, which has seen its two-year-old “caliphate” shrink ...

  ALKESH SHARMA / Emirates Business Digital transformation is the crucial key to success of businesses in the Middle East. However, the journey towards digitalisation also calls for state-of-the-art and ultra-secure systems, which can prevent cyber-attacks. According to the experts, with corporates hunting for maintainable diversity and innovative resources of growth through cutting-edge digital strategies, enterprises in this region are ...

  RITIKA SHARMA / Emirates Business Generating a total of $653 million per year, the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) industry in the Emirates is expected to witness an annual growth rate of over 7 percent yearly till 2020. The MICE industry, which is considered the backbone of many economies globally, has emerged as one of the key growth ...

  Bloomberg The IMF weighed in once more with its thoughts on Britain’s referendum, warning the U.K. could slide into a recession if it quits the EU. In a 64-page document, the Washington-based fund said that the size of the hit would depend on a multitude of factors, though its overall assessment is that the U.K. “would likely be worse ...

  Bloomberg Prices fell and volume surged in a week of heightened anxiety for U.S. investors, whose dreams of reaching a record high anytime soon all but faded away. A streak of six weeks without a 1 percent drop was broken as the S&P 500 Index dropped 1.2 percent to 2,071.22, the worst retreat since April. Shares slid on four ...

  Bloomberg After a week in Washington, Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince is heading west to meet with technology executives in Silicon Valley and then to New York to pitch his nation’s new economic plan to Wall Street investors. Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman wants to discuss how Saudi Arabia can benefit from innovations spawned in California and then ...

  Dubai / WAM Microsoft opened a new centre of excellence for the oil & gas industry in Dubai. The Middle East and Africa centre has been launched to assist organisations in the sector to drive digital transformation, cut costs and optimise processes in their organisations. The centre, which is the largest such facility for Microsoft globally, will focus on emerging ...

  Geneva / AFP IS extremists are still committing genocide against the Yazidi minority in Iraq and Syria, United Nations rights investigators said on Thursday. “Genocide has occurred and is ongoing,” Paulo Pinheiro, head of the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) for Syria, said in a statement. “ISIS has subjected every Yazidi woman, child or man that it has captured to ...

  Sunaina Rana / Emirates Business As digitalisation penetrates into almost every sector around the globe, companies in the MENA region are leaving no stone unturned to grab their space in the online world. Google Analytic estimates that MENA consumers are now relying more on their brands’ digital messages than before, to guide them through a purchase journey. It points ...