Seven foreign hostages kidnapped last month by a Nigerian Islamist group from a construction company compound have been killed, the Italian and Greek foreign ministries said on Sunday. The al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansaru announced on Saturday that it had killed the hostages seized on February 7 in the northern state of Bauchi because of attempts
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Over 2,200 pigs have been found dead in one of Shanghai's main water sources, official media reported on Monday, triggering a public outcry in China where concerns over food safety and environmental pollution run high. The carcasses were probably dumped in the Huangpu river in Zhejiang province and the total number was expected to increase,
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The driver of the bus in which a young Indian woman was gang-raped and fatally injured in December hanged himself in New Delhi's Tihar jail on Monday, officials said, a dramatic twist in a case that has provoked outrage across India. Ram Singh's lawyer said his client had been composed and calm when he spoke
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Etihad Airways is to expand significantly its reach across Africa after signing a strategic commercial partnership agreement with Kenya Airways, the national flag carrier of Kenya. The national airline of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will place its EY code on flights from Nairobi to 27 destinations across Kenya Airways’ network in Africa. As part
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The credit quality of corporates in Dubai is likely to benefit from the combination of emerging markets' growth prospects, strong oil prices and access to debt capital markets, Moody's Investors Service said in a new report . However, the rating agency said that delays in addressing structural issues along with Dubai's $20 bln of direct
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All of Moody's-rated sovereigns in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have been affected by the global crisis and Arab Spring to varying degrees, but a clear divergence has emerged over recent years, with stable sovereign credit ratings among oil-rich countries and downward rating pressure facing those countries most affected by the Arab Spring,
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The Lebanese Ministry of Telecommunications (LMoT) and the state-owned Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (Cyta) have agreed to share capacity on Cyta’s Alexandros cable subsystem between Cyprus–Egypt–France, thereby creating reciprocal Eurasia and Eastern Mediterranean business opportunities. As part of the agreement, LMoT will buy multiple capacity connectivity to France and Egypt, thus enhancing the robustness of Lebanon’s
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It's the green-hued fuel that has fired flights of poetic fancy since the 1800s, but now the European Union is examining whether to change how absinthe is defined. The intensely alcoholic spirit, dubbed "la fee verte" (the green fairy) by Parisian writers in reference to its reputed psychoactive properties, has been a fixture amongst artists
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Former Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond is set to be paid about 2 million pounds ($3 million) in July, a year after he left the bank following its Libor interest rate rigging scandal. Diamond is entitled to a year's salary, pension and benefits, which will be paid in a lump sum on July 3, Barclays'
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An unspecified number of former managers of Greek state utility PPC were charged with breach of duty on Friday for commissioning a power plant that lost the company about 100 million euros ($130 million), a court source said. PPC commissioned the 250-million euro natural-gas-fired plant at Aliveri in central Greece in October 2007, in a
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