Brussels / AFP Brussels airport said it would not reopen on Wednesday despite drills to test resuming partial services after the suicide bombings that struck its departure hall and a metro train, as Belgium lowered the death toll to 32. Zaventem airport has been closed since twin bombings wrecked the departure hall on March 22, in coordinated suicide attacks that ...
Read More »Police evacuate migrant camp near Paris subway station
PARIS / AP Police evacuated nearly 1,000 migrants on Wednesday from a makeshift camp near a Paris subway station, and hundreds of people sought to cross from Turkey to Greece despite European efforts to slow down the arrivals. The Paris operation was peaceful and authorities offered the migrants temporary lodging and help applying for asylum, the Interior Ministry said in ...
Read More »Trump, Cruz and Kasich leave Republican loyalty oath in tatters
Bloomberg All three of the remaining Republican presidential candidates said at a CNN Town Hall in Milwaukee that they no longer feel beholden to the “loyalty pledge” they signed in September not to run as a third party candidate and to support the party’s presidential nominee. When asked point blank if he would pledge his support to the nominee, Trump ...
Read More »Libya mars Clinton’s foreign policy record
Republican peculiarities in this political season are so numerous and lurid that insufficient attention is being paid to this: The probable Democratic nominee’s principal credential, her service as secretary of state, is undermined by a debacle of remarkable dishonesty. Hillary Clinton’s supposedly supreme presidential qualification is not her public prominence, which is derivative from her marriage, or her unremarkable tenure ...
Read More »Southern Africa needs agribiz sector boost
Southern Africa is reeling under an unprecedented dry spell. The region’s worst drought in over three decades has unleashed a severe hunger crisis. It is also taking a huge toll on economy. Ethiopia will miss the targeted economic growth due to the agriculture mayhem, caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon. Food imports are stuck in port logjams and the ...
Read More »Afghan refugees in difficult situation
Catherine Putz SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Afghan refugees have returned to the headlines as European countries pursue avenues to send many of those waiting for asylum back to Afghanistan. A larger number reside in Pakistan and Iran, where they are stuck in the limbo of refugee camps. Meanwhile, many of those who have already returned remain in a difficult situation, ...
Read More »Yellen tells markets what they want to hear
Markets had a predictable immediate reaction to comments by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Tuesday that they interpreted as relatively dovish signals about the thinking of the world’s most important central bank. Within minutes of her remarks, risk assets rose, government bond yields fell, the dollar weakened and the VIX declined. Sustaining this trend will require two policy signals, ...
Read More »What Singapore’s new budget means
On March 24, Singapore unveiled an expansionary fiscal budget as part of the city-state’s ongoing drive to increase productivity, cope with economic headwinds, and ready itself for future disruptive technologies such as robotics and information and communications technology (ICT). A sizable part of the budget is also aimed at building a “caring and resilient society.†In other words, there is ...
Read More »Curing cancer is within reach
Michael R. Bloomberg / Joe Biden One of the most frightening words a patient can hear from a doctor is “cancer.†We know it from the experience of our families and friends, and the millions of Americans who hear it directly from their doctors each year. In President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address, he compared the effort ...
Read More »Searching for a better way to measure disparity
Inequality is, without a doubt, the hot topic in econ circles these days. Economics conference seminars on the subject are standing-room-only. Columns and blog posts about inequality are widely read and discussed, and Thomas Piketty’s book was a bestseller. But the question of how best to measure the phenomenon continues to be a contentious topic of debate. The most common ...
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