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Damascus / AFP Pro-government forces pushed a fierce bid to recapture Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra from extremists on Thursday as Moscow hosted top US diplomat John Kerry for talks on the fraught peace process. The IS group called on civilians still living in Palmyra to leave, as army and pro-government militia battled the extremists on several fronts along the ...

Bloomberg Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to visit Argentina in more than a decade as his counterpart, Mauricio Macri, seeks a rapprochement with the international community following a decade of financial and diplomatic isolation. Obama, arriving from an historic state visit to Cuba, met with Macri and is scheduled to attend a business forum in Buenos Aires before ...

Bloomberg Technology entrepreneur Karim Brahiti sees opportunities springing from the biggest threat Algeria’s economy has faced in decades. “The plunge in oil prices is a necessary evil that will force us to get out of our comfort zone and find alternatives,” said the 36-year-old Brahiti, now investing back home after years spent scouring for contracts in sub-Saharan Africa countries. “The ...

Singapore / Bloomberg Singapore said it will adopt an expansionary fiscal budget to boost growth, reducing pressure on the central bank to provide more support for the economy weeks before its next policy decision. Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat, presenting his first budget to Parliament, pledged support for companies that are facing labour constraints and a faltering global outlook, promised ...

Taipei / Bloomberg Taiwan cut its benchmark rate for a third consecutive quarter as an export slump showed no signs of recovering and has begun weighing on the labor market. The central bank lowered the benchmark discount rate by another 12.5 basis points to 1.5 percent, it said in a statement Thursday in Taipei. Twenty-five of 26 economists surveyed by ...

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed was briefed by Helal Saeed Al Marri, Director General of the Dubai World trade Centre Authority, who explained that the One Central project, which is being built on land area estimated at more than half a million square meters in the vicinity of Dubai World Trade Centre, includes buildings, residential, hospitality and commercial towers, recreational and ...

DUBAI / Emirates Business The Noor Dubai Foundation concluded its therapeutic mobile eye camp to prevent blindness in Worabe-Silte Region – The republic of Ethiopia. This is Noor Dubai’s second mobile eye camp in Worabe and the first mobile eye camp organized in 2016, with the support of Dubai Islamic Humanitarian Foundation. The camp was held from March 10-15 during ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM ADNOC Distribution has launched an initiative to encourage female customers to register for ADNOC Wallet accounts. As part of the drive, eight female promoters have been commissioned for the four service stations participating in the pilot phase of the programme from March 22 to April 21. The promoters will work on morning and evening shifts to ...

Bloomberg As an opposition lawmaker in Canada’s parliament seven years ago, Justin Trudeau criticized former Prime Minister Stephen Harper for making government “totally absent from the defining issues of our time.” In his first budget as prime minister released on Tuesday, Trudeau put the federal government back at the center of the nation’s economy with almost C$120 billion ($92 billion) ...

Geneva / AFP No foreign power should be permitted to interfere in the ongoing Syrian peace talks in Geneva, the lead government negotiator said, denying that high-level US-Russian meetings in Moscow will impact the process. “When we say that the dialogue must be between Syrians, without outside intervention, this also applies to the Russians and Americans,” Bashar Al Jaafari said. ...