Expo 2020 Dubai kicks off with lavish opening ceremony

DUBAI—The first world fair to be held in the Middle East, Expo 2020 Dubai, opened on Thursday with a lavish ceremony of fireworks, music and messaging about the power of global collaboration for a more sustainable future.

Stars headlining the opening ceremony, which was projected in public spaces around the UAE, included Italian tenor singer Andrea Bocelli, British singer Ellie Goulding, Chinese pianist Lang Lang and Saudi singer Mohammed Abdu.

Dubai, the region's tourism, trade and business hub, is hoping to boost its economy by attracting 25 million business and tourist visits to the world fair, which has been built from scratch on 4.3 square kilometers of desert.

Many countries and companies are also looking to the expo - the first major global event open to visitors since the coronavirus pandemic - to boost trade and investment. 

The full expo site will open its doors to exhibitors from almost 200 countries on Friday after being delayed for a year by the pandemic. Chosen eight years ago to follow the 2015 Expo in Milan, Italy, the event cost around $6.8 billion.

Dubai says it wants the Expo, an exhibition of culture, technology and architecture under the banner "Connecting Minds and Creating the Future", to be a demonstration of ingenuity, and a place where global challenges such as climate change, conflict and economic growth can be addressed together.

The event will probably contend with a global reluctance to travel and many events will be streamed live online. But Expo still officially expects to attract more visits than Milan received and more than twice the population of the UAE.

"We are quite confident...that by being responsible in how we manage the situation with COVIV but also in how we put forward an exciting program for visitors, we will hopefully be able to thread the needle by opening up but remaining at the same time conservative and keep public safety first and foremost," Reem Al Hashimy, Expo 2020 Dubai's Director General told Reuters.

The Gulf state has relaxed most coronavirus restrictions but Expo requires face masks to be worn and for visitors over 18 to be vaccinated against, or test negative for, COVID-19.

Before the pandemic, the consultancy EY forecast that the Expo would over the course of its six months contribute 1.5% of the UAE's gross domestic product. (Writing by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

-reuters

Kuwait, Bahrain announce first coronavirus cases

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Kuwait and Bahrain confirmed on Monday their first novel coronavirus cases, health ministries in the two Gulf states announced, adding all had come from Iran.

Kuwait reported three infections and Bahrain one.

"Tests conducted on those coming from the Iranian holy city of Mashhad showed there were three confirmed cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19)," the Kuwaiti health ministry said in a statement posted on Twitter.

It said the cases were of a 53-year-old Kuwaiti man, a 61-year-old Saudi citizen and a 21-year-old stateless Arab.

"All three cases are under constant observation by the health authority," the ministry added.


Bahrain's health ministry also reported the country's first COVID-19 case on Monday after a "citizen arriving from Iran was suspected of having contracted the virus based on emerging symptoms."

The patient was transferred to a medical center for "immediate testing," which proved positive for the infection, the ministry added.

Iran's confirmed death toll rose to 12 on Monday, with the outbreak prompting travel bans from nearby countries.

Last week, Kuwait banned entry of all ships from the Islamic republic and suspended flights to and from the country.

Kuwait had also banned non-citizens coming from Iran from entering the Gulf state and operated chartered flights to bring back hundreds of Kuwaiti Shiite pilgrims from the Islamic republic.

Around a third of Kuwait's 1.4 million citizens are Shiite Muslims, who travel regularly to Iran to visit religious shrines. Kuwait also hosts roughly 50,000 Iranian workers.

Over half of Bahrain's population of under one million are Shiites, who also travel frequently to Iran.

Iraq said it closed the only border crossing with Kuwait at Safwan, south of Basra, late Sunday.

Neighboring United Arab Emirates has already announced 13 cases of the novel coronavirus, all of them foreigners. The latest were a 70-year-old Iranian man, whose condition is unstable, and his 64-year-old wife.

Three Chinese nationals were treated for COVID-19 and have been discharged from UAE hospitals.

UAE airlines have suspended most flights to China—where the virus first emerged in December—except to the capital Beijing, but have not yet taken any measures to restrict travel to and from Iran. Around half a million Iranians live and work in the UAE.

Three Gulf states—Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar—remain free of the virus, but all have suspended flights to China.

Qatar Airways said on Monday it will quarantine people arriving from Iran and South Korea, the biggest hotspot outside of China, for 14 days.

China's death toll from COVID-19 rose to nearly 2,600 on Monday. The virus has spread to more than 25 countries and is causing mounting alarm due to new outbreaks in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook says 56 million active users in Arab world

DUBAI — Facebook announced Tuesday that it has 56 million active users in the Middle East and North Africa, where activists used the social media network to organize Arab Spring uprisings.

Half of these users returned to the website on a daily basis, Facebook regional chief Jonathan Labin told a news conference in Dubai, noting a significant increase in the number of people connecting from mobile devices.

“Every month, 56 million people are active on Facebook across the MENA region, with 50 percent of those returning on a daily basis,” Facebook said in a statement.

In total, “33 million people in MENA use a phone or tablet to access the service every month, while the number of daily active users on mobile has reached 15 million.

“People in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council countries) are particularly well-connected with a mobile connectivity rate of 196 percent — an average of two SIM cards per person,” the US company added.

According to Labin, this increase in Facebook users offers great opportunities for advertisers.

“We are seeing an increase in the number of advertisers who are turning to Facebook to get their message to the people who matter most,” he said.

Facebook’s mobile advertising revenues have leaped from zero percent in the first half of 2012 to 41 percent of total advertising revenues in the second quarter of 2013.

In May 2012, Facebook announced the opening in Dubai of its sales office for the Middle East and North Africa, naming Dubai’s Emirates Airlines and Doha-based Al-Jazeera television among its advertising clients.

Activists in several Arab world countries have used Facebook and other Internet social networking sites as a speedy, anonymous and efficient engine to organise protests and campaigns that swept the region since 2011.

source: interaksyon.com

Bat linked to mysterious MERS virus

WASHINGTON - A bat has been linked to the mysterious and at times fatal MERS coronavirus plaguing the Middle East, according to a new study.

Researchers said they detected a 100 percent genetic match in an insect-eating bat close to the home of the first known victim of the disease in Saudi Arabia.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome has killed 47 people worldwide, 39 of them in Saudi Arabia.

"There have been several reports of finding MERS-like viruses in animals. None were a genetic match," said Ian Lipkin, a co-author of the study and head of Columbia University's Center for Infection and Immunity.

"In this case we have a virus in an animal that is identical in sequence to the virus found in the first human case," he said in a statement. "Importantly, it's coming from the vicinity of that first case."

The findings of the study, which also involved researchers from the EcoHealth Alliance and Saudi Arabia's health ministry, were published online late Wednesday in the "Emerging Infectious Diseases" journal of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

MERS is considered a cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003.

Like SARS, it is thought to have jumped from animals to humans, and shares the former's flu-like symptoms -- but differs by causing kidney failure.

Between October 2012 and April 2013, researchers collected more than a thousand samples from seven bat species in regions of Saudi Arabia where MERS cases were identified.

After a series of analyses, a fecal sample taken from an Egyptian Tom Bat collected within several kilometers of the home of the first known MERS victim "contained sequences of a virus identical to those recovered" from that person.

But "there is no evidence of direct exposure to bats in the majority of human cases of MERS," said Ziad Memish, Saudi Arabia's deputy health minister and the study's lead author.

"Given that human-to-human transmission is inefficient, we speculate that an as-yet-to-be determined intermediate host plays a critical role in human disease."

source: interaksyon.com

Barclays sees Middle East driving investment bank

DUBAI — The Middle East will be an important growth area in coming years for investment banks, including Barclays, as local wealth funds put their oil dollars to work buying European assets, a senior executive at the British bank said.

"If you look globally, the upside is in emerging markets and the Middle East is a key component of that," Makram Azar, global vice-chairman for investment banking at Barclays, told Reuters.

"We are committed to the Middle East. I do not see why our strategy would change," Azar said in an interview.

Last week's appointment of retail banker Antony Jenkins as Barclays group chief executive could see a shift from riskier investment banking, analysts said, as the lender tries to recover from an interest rate-rigging scandal that brought down former CEO Bob Diamond.

Barclays is also the subject of a British regulatory inquiry into payments to Qatar's sovereign wealth fund linked to its participation in an 11 billion pound ($17 billion) refinancing of the bank at the height of the financial crisis in 2008.

Azar would not comment on whether that inquiry might affect its business in the region.

While investment banking has been at the heart of recent troubles at Barclays, the unit delivered 54 percent of underlying first-half group profit.

Busy advising

Middle Eastern deal activity has been picking up after a subdued period. Cash-rich Gulf Arab sheikhs and governments are buying European assets, lured in part by attractive valuations due to weak markets.

"There is a pick-up in M&A activity in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, led to a large extent by Qatar and Abu Dhabi," Azar said.

"The environment in Europe is still challenging but there are names that were beaten up and are now trading at attractive levels. This presents an opportunity for Gulf investors."

Barclays leads M&A advisory rankings in MENA, according to Dealogic, with $4.7 billion of deals this year, followed by Goldman Sachs at $3.7 billion and Credit Suisse on $3.5 billion.

Gulf investment into Europe almost froze in 2010 and 2011 because of confusion over the euro zone debt crisis and losses suffered on previous overseas deals completed at the height of the 2008 crisis – most notably sovereign funds from Abu Dhabi and Kuwait investing in US banks.

Middle East funds are beginning to return and are making waves, led by cash-rich Qatar, which said last month it was buying a 20 percent stake in London Heathrow airport owner BAA.

Also, Qatar's sovereign wealth fund became an unexpected kingmaker in the Glencore-Xstrata deal after spending more than 3 billion pounds raising its stake to 12.3 percent.

Other regional players are also involved, with Abu Dhabi fund Mubadala acquiring a 5.6 percent stake in Brazilian conglomerate EBX for $2 billion and Almarai, Saudi Arabia's largest dairy company, buying Argentine farm operator Fondomonte S.A. for $83 million.

Gulf Arab investors are also targeting options closer to home as they look for places to park their cash.

"The oil price is at a high level, higher than the levels at which Gulf government budgets are based on, and this excess revenue needs to be invested," Azar said.

"Some of it is being channeled indirectly into the region in the form of investments such as Qatar Telecom's bid for Wataniya and the rest is invested outside the region."

Barclays has been advising Qtel's $2.2 billion bid for the 47.5 percent of Kuwaiti telco Wataniya it does not own. The Qatari group has also increased its stake in Iraqi firm Asiacell to 60 percent in a $1.47 billion deal in June.

Gulf-based banks are also said to be keen to acquire stakes in Egyptian lenders being offloaded by French owners who want to divest assets to shore up capital positions at home.

Azar said further opportunities would emerge this year.

"The bank worked on several deals in the region worth around $4.7 billion and the year is not over yet. We are now looking at a number of additional deals in the pipeline." — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Oil prices recover on Middle East supply concern

Singapore - Oil prices recovered from multi-month lows in Asian trade Monday as analysts said concerns over Middle East supply were resurfacing.

Oil was also supported by Group of Eight (G8) leaders calling for Greece to stay in the eurozone at a weekend summit in the United States as they debated deep divisions about how best to tackle Europe's fiscal woes.

New York's main contract, West Texas Intermediate crude for delivery in June was up 37 cents to $91.85 per barrel while Brent North Sea crude for July gained 77 cents to $107.91 in the afternoon.

"The Middle East concerns are coming back into the market, and the upcoming talks between Iran and Western countries is being seen as a crunch point for oil," said Justin Harper, market strategist at IG Markets Singapore.

"The G8's commitment to growth and to keep Greece in the eurozone has also spurred the market," he added.

G8 leaders on Saturday sent a strong message to major producer Iran that tough sanctions imposed over its nuclear programme would be firmly applied, days before the next round of nuclear talks between global powers and Tehran in Baghdad.

Iran faces a raft of sanctions from the United Nations, the United States and the European Union over suspicions that the Islamic republic's nuclear program masks a push to develop atomic weapons.

Tehran has so far denied the charges, and threatened to blockade the strategic strait of Hormuz if it is faced with further measures.

Meanwhile, market fears over the eurozone's debt troubles were slightly soothed by a broad agreement by the G8 leaders for the bloc to embrace growth measures along with austerity as a way to stave off a major debt contagion.

"The G8 talk of helping global economic growth has helped steady the ship a little in these choppy waters," said Harper.

DBS Bank said however that the G8 statement was "long on promises and short on details" and that attention had now shifted to an EU informal summit on Wednesday.

The G8 club of developed nations is made up of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States. — AFP

source: gmanetwork.com