Saudi Arabia has pledged a total of US$8 billion in investment and aid to Egypt over the next five years, as Riyadh looks to boost military and economic ties with its ally.
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman “ordered that Saudi investments in Egypt exceed 30 billion riyals (US$8 billion)” and that the kingdom “contribute in providing Egypt with its needs for petrol,” a statement published by the Saudi Press Agency said.
In addition, Saudi ships would “support” traffic in the Suez Canal, Saudi defense minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced on Tuesday during a visit to Egypt.
The pledges come despite a sharp fall in Saudi Arabia’s income from oil, which makes up more than 90 percent of public revenues, due to the global decline in crude prices since June last year.
OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia has offered billions of dollars in aid to Egypt since the 2013 ouster of Islamist former president Mohamed Morsi.
In March, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates each offered US$4 billion in investment and aid.
Egypt is taking part in a Saudi-led coalition that has been battling Iran-backed rebels in Yemen since March.
It is also participating in a 34-member alliance to fight “terrorism,” which was announced on Tuesday by Prince Mohammed.
During his visit, Sunni Islam’s leading seat of learning, Al-Azhar University, urged all Muslim countries to join the new coalition.
Cairo is fighting a swelling insurgency led by the Islamic State group in the Sinai Peninsula.
However, it has been criticized by rights group for carrying out a crackdown on Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood that left hundreds dead and tens of thousands imprisoned.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained