Saudi Arabia – along with Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt – abruptly broke off diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar, then followed that up with an ultimatum and a 10-day deadline to respond. The first of 13 unreasonable demands targets Iran, Saudi Arabia’s key rival in the region by urging Qatar to...
A gamble: Saudi Arabia's newly anointed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, seen here shaking hands with US President Donald Trump, throws down the gauntlet for Qatar; Saudi leaders are threatened by critics including Qatari-owned Al Jazeera, which...
To combat a growing image problem, multinational corporations must capitalize on their enormous potential for reducing poverty. MNCs can and do change the very conditions that create poverty, yet lack presence in the world’s poorest countries. More recently, NGO leaders and development...
Business – the creation of profitable enterprise – is essential to global poverty reduction. Multinational corporations reduce poverty by connecting local business with world markets and bringing access to credit and...
Microsoft is launching a program, Planetary Computer, to aggregate environmental data – mapping trillions of data points to monitor the Earth’s biodiversity, water tables, forestry data, carbon and waste to provide a searchable dataset. “The move is the company’s latest major environmental push,...
Oman stands out in the Middle East for its deliberate pursuit of neutrality to ensure stability. “Omani officials have relied on their country’s relative anonymity to exercise considerable influence behind the scenes, maintaining contacts with competing regional powers such as Iran, Israel and...
Precarious balance: Oman's ruler Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said is received by Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, and the sultan also met with former US Secretary of State John Kerry
UPDATE: Sultan Qaboos bin Said, age 79, has died. His cousin Haitham...
Israel’s attorney general announced that charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust will be filed against Benjamin Netanyahu. This comes as both Netanyahu and opponent Benny Gantz failed to form a coalition government. Netanyahu describes the charges as false, calling for an independent...
Following stirring political revolutions in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, the balance of power in Central Asia is shifting in favor of Russia for the first time since 9/11. Accusing the West, particularly the United States, of trying to install pro-Western regimes in the former Soviet region, Central...
THE BALANCE of power in Central Asia is tilting toward Russia for the first time since the United States established a foothold in the region after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
A shift in the geopolitical...
Italian authorities have cracked down on illegal immigration by patrolling the waters between Italy and Libya. If immigrants were allowed to reach Italian soil, they would be entitled to apply for asylum, a lengthy process that usually results in most applicants ultimately remaining in Italy,...
Click here for the article in NRC Handelsblad.
The EcoVadis Global Corporate Social Responsibility Risk and Performance Index evaluated corporate social responsibility efforts of more than 20,000 companies and found that human trafficking and forced labor are common in global industries where minimal skills are required, reports Adela Suliman...
