Dubai, United Arab Emirates -- The United Arab Emirates, home to the regional headquarters of numerous multinational companies, said Monday it would introduce a 15 percent tax rate on corporate profits from January 2025. The move will bring the UAE in line with efforts towards a global minimum corporate rate. "This...

London, United Kingdom -- Britain's leader Keir Starmer makes his first trip to the Gulf as prime minister from Sunday, seeking to attract investment from the region's oil-rich states, Downing Street announced. Starmer will first visit the United Arab Emirates and then travel to Saudi Arabia, before stopping off in Cyprus...

Doha, Qatar - Qatar's prime minister said on Saturday that momentum had returned to talks aimed at securing a truce and hostage exchange deal in Gaza following Donald Trump's election as US president. The Gulf emirate, along with the United States and Egypt, had been involved in months of unsuccessful negotiations...

Rome, Italy -- The benchmark for world food commodity prices rose in November to its highest level since April 2023, increasing by 0.5 percent from October, driven by surging international vegetable oil quotations, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations said Friday. The FAO Food Price Index, which...

Abu Dhabi, UAE -- Startups within Hub71, Abu Dhabi's global tech ecosystem, have secured over AED 7 billion in funding, achieving revenues exceeding AED4 billion, according to Ahmad Ali Alwan, CEO of Hub71. Speaking to the Emirates News Agency (WAM) on the sidelines of Abu Dhabi Business Week, which concluded...

Doha, Qatar - Qatar has resumed its role as a mediator in efforts to secure a truce in the Israel-Hamas war following a brief suspension, a source with knowledge of the talks said Thursday. The Gulf emirate, along with the United States and Egypt, had been involved in months of unsuccessful...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – Artificial intelligence (AI) has contributed to saving 150 million sheets of paper and conserving 1.5 billion liters of water, Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA) President Abdullah bin Sharaf Alghamdi said on Wednesday.In a speech at the Saudi Green Initiative Forum 2024 held on the sidelines...

Tehran, Iran - Iran will consider any request from its Syrian ally for troops to help tackle a sweeping rebel offensive in the north, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Tuesday. "If the Syrian government asks us to send forces to Syria, we will study their request," Araghchi said in an...

London, United Kingdom - The British government said Wednesday that it has agreed to a partnership with Qatar that will see the Gulf state invest 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) in climate technologies. "The partnership is expected to create thousands of highly skilled jobs over its lifetime and will see the...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- French President Emmanuel Macron and over 100 CEOs besides members of OPSWF, asset managers, and private equity fund representatives attended the seventh annual summit for the One Planet Sovereign Wealth Funds (OPSWF) Group in Riyadh on Tuesday. Among the attendees was Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Governor Public Investment...

The poorest countries paid out more than $96 billion to service their debts, the Bank announced in its latest report on international debt, noting that interest costs alone amounted to almost $35 billion. The high cost of servicing foreign debt has pushed many developing countries to borrow more money from...

According to World Bank Group President Ajay Banga, “The new Knowledge Hub being created by the World Bank Group and Saudi Arabia is a key step forward to scale up".

Doha, Qatar - Qatar has agreed to supply three million tonnes of gas a year to China in a deal with London-headquartered energy giant Shell, the emirate's state energy company said on Monday. The liquefied natural gas deliveries would begin in January as part of a "new long-term sale and...

Busan, South Korea - Deeply divided negotiators failed on Sunday to reach a landmark global treaty to curb plastic pollution, missing a self-imposed deadline, and agreed to extend their talks. For a week, delegates from nearly 200 nations meeting in South Korea have wrestled with how to stop millions of tonnes...

Washington D.C. -- US President Joe Biden on Sunday issued an official pardon for his son Hunter, who is facing sentencing for two criminal cases, despite assurances that he would not intervene in his legal troubles."No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter's cases can reach any other...

Extremist-dominated rebel alliance, including ISIS supporters, runs over Syrian city of Aleppo allegedly backed by Turkey. Russia and Iran push to keep Assad in power.

Washington, United States -- Elon Musk has again asked a US court to stop ChatGPT-maker OpenAI from converting into a for-profit enterprise, CNBC reported Saturday. Attorneys representing the billionaire and his AI startup, xAI, filed the injunction Friday, the financial news site reported. The injunction also requests that OpenAI be stopped...

Washington, United States - President-elect Donald Trump on Monday threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on the BRICS group nations if they undercut the US dollar. "We require a commitment... that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty US Dollar...

Hong Kong, China -- Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun on Friday fulfilled a promise he made after spending $6.2 million on an artwork featuring a banana duct-taped to a wall -- by eating the fruit. At one of Hong Kong's priciest hotels, Sun chomped down on a banana in front of dozens...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia will host the COP16 UN conference on land degradation and desertification next week as the top oil exporter pitches itself as an environmental defender despite criticism of its role at climate talks. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called the meeting for the United Nations Convention...

Paris, France -- A handful of nations are trying to clean up social media with measures including robust privacy provisions and bans aimed at minors. Among the countries taking action is Australia, which on Thursday passed a landmark law banning children under 16 from social media, and threatening stiff fines against...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia announced Wednesday it is ready to open the first part of the Riyadh Metro, a major project intended to help shift the car-centric kingdom to public transport. Three lines will open to the public on December 1, "with gradual launches completing the six-line, 176-kilometre...

Seoul, South Korea - Samsung Electronics reshuffled its leadership on Wednesday as it looks to gain an edge in the production of microchips used for artificial intelligence servers. The world's largest memory chip maker issued a rare apology in October, acknowledging it was facing a "crisis" and that questions had arisen...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi Arabia has set a Guinness World Record for the largest food cluster in the world with the Jeddah Food Cluster, which spans over 11 million square meters and has set a new global benchmark.The Saudi Authority for Industrial Cities and Technology Zones (MODON) announced ambitious...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - The Saudi Space Agency (SSA) announced Sunday the launch of the Centre for Space Futures, the first of its kind within the network of Fourth Industrial Revolution Centers affiliated with the World Economic Forum. This initiative is part of the Kingdom’s ongoing efforts to solidify its...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi Arabia's non-oil exports surged by 22.8 percent in September, according to a report by the kingdom's General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT). The September 2024 International Trade Report said national non-oil exports, excluding re-exports, rose by 11.6 percent and the value of re-exported goods increased by...

Deir el-Balah, Palestinian Territories - Traditional clay pottery is seeing a resurgence in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians are forced to find solutions for a shortage of plates and other crockery to eat from in the territory ravaged by more than a year of war. "There is an unprecedented demand for...

A group of 134 developing countries had pushed for at least $500 billion from rich governments to build resilience against climate change and cut emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

Bangkok, Thailand - Plastic pollution litters our seas, our air and even our bodies, but negotiators face an uphill battle next week to agree on the world's first treaty aimed at ending the problem. Countries will have a week in South Korea's Busan from Monday to round off two years of...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Minister of Education Yousef bin Abdullah Al-Benyan alongside U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Michael Ratney, on Wednesday launched the Saudi-U.S. Higher Education Partnerships Forum. Organized by the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia and the Institute of International Education (IIE),...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- The second meeting of the Saudi-Chinese-Iranian Joint Tripartite Committee to follow up on the Beijing Agreement in Riyadh on Tuesday reaffirmed their commitment to implementing the Beijing Agreement in all its provisions. They also reaffirmed their continued endeavor to consolidate neighborly relations between their countries through...

Hassan Shami, Iraq - A decade after Islamic State group extremists rampaged through northern Iraq, Moaz Fadhil and his eight children finally returned to their village after languishing for years in a displacement camp. Their home, Hassan Shami, is just a stone's throw from the tent city where they had been living,...

Cairo, Egypt -- Egypt's economy has been in crisis for years, but as the latest round of International Monetary Fund-backed reforms bites, much of the country's middle class has found itself struggling to afford goods once considered basics. The world lender has long backed measures in Egypt including a liberal currency...

New York, United States -- With a Magritte painting estimated to sell for nearly $100 million, drawings by pop artist Keith Haring and... a rather gnarly banana, New York's auction houses will try this week to shake up a stale market. The sale of Magritte's "Empire of Light" ("L'Empire des lumieres"),...

Paris, France -- News outlets have begun quitting X, formerly Twitter, once a favorite of global media but now accused of enabling the spread of disinformation under its owner, president-elect Donald Trump ally Elon Musk. Citing a "harsh and extreme" climate, Sweden's newspaper of reference, the left-liberal Dagens Nyheter (DN), on...

San Francisco, United States - TikTok on Thursday began letting all marketers on its platform use an artificial intelligence-powered tool for generating marketing clips, becoming the latest platform to let advertisers tap into the technology. The news came with word that Getty Images will make its stockpile of pictures and video...

Beirut, Lebanon -- More than a year of clashes that recently escalated into war have cost Lebanon more than $5 billion in economic losses and damaged nearly 100,000 homes, the World Bank said on Thursday. Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its air campaign in Lebanon, later sending in ground...

The summit's closing statement said that "a just and comprehensive peace in the region... cannot be achieved without ending the Israeli occupation of all occupied Arab territories to the line of June 4, 1967," referring to the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem as well as Gaza and the Golan...

President-elect Donald Trump is tapping loyalists for several key posts after signaling his desire to have his cabinet confirmed without Senate oversight.

London, United Kingdom -- Bitcoin soared to a new record high on Sunday, as traders bet that Donald Trump's return to the White House will be good for the cryptocurrency. The digital currency passed $80,000 for the first time in its history shortly after 12:00 pm (1200 GMT). It has been...

The Gulf emirate, which has hosted Hamas's political leadership since 2012 with US blessing, has been involved in months of protracted diplomacy aimed at ending the 13-month old war that has killed 43,552 people in Gaza.

Tel Aviv, Israel - A plane bringing Israeli football supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel's Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as "anti-Semitic". Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a Europa League...

Paris, France -- Global food prices rose in October to their highest level in 18 months, with a sharp increase in the cost of vegetable oil, the Food and Agriculture Organization said on Friday. The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices of a basket of food...

In a fresh report, the United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) detailed a raft of violations of international law. Many could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even "genocide", it warned, demanding international efforts to prevent "atrocity crimes" and ensure accountability.

Paris, France -- Donald Trump's return to the White House with his protectionist policies poses threats for the global economy, with the prospect of new trade wars, resurgent inflation and slower growth, experts say Global trade threatened? During his first term in office from 2017 to 2021, Trump often resorted to...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- Energy giant Saudi Aramco reported a 15 percent year-on-year drop in third-quarter profit on Tuesday, citing prices which have stayed low despite production cuts and war in the Middle East. The fall in net income to $27.56 billion from $32.58 billion in 2023 is the seventh consecutive...

Washington, United States -- American B-52 bombers have arrived in the Middle East, the US military said Saturday, a day after Washington announced their deployment in a warning to Iran. "B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers from Minot Air Force Base's 5th Bomb Wing arrived in the US Central Command area of responsibility,"...

London, United Kingdom -- A pro-Palestinian group took two sculptures of Israel's first president from a UK university in a protest marking the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, with police on Sunday confirming they were investigating reports of a burglary. "Today, Palestine Action have marked 107 years since the Balfour Declaration, by taking...

Since last year Saudi Arabia has been bargaining hard for a defense pact with the United States as well as assistance with a civilian nuclear program. As part of that deal the Gulf kingdom, home to the holiest shrines in Islam, would recognize Israel for the first time.

Qassem replaces Hasan Nasrallah who was assassinated by Israel on September 27 after more than 30 years at the helm of the Iran-backed group.