MAKKAH: Saudi weather buffs have been warned they could face imprisonment and hefty fines in the wake of a national ban on unofficial forecasting. The Kingdom’s Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution announced that new regulations would make it illegal for any individual or organization outside of the National Center of Meteorology to predict the weather and climatic
DUBAI: American actor Will Smith has congratulated Dubai’s Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed on the birth of his twins. The UAE royal announced his joy at the births by sharing a picture of himself holding the newborns on May 21. On Friday, Sheikh Hamdan shared a picture on his Instagram Stories of two large gift boxes he received from Smith, a blue one tagged “Prince
AFP
China is walking a tightrope between economic growth and inflation as industries cope with climate change promises and commodity costs climb.
April readings of factory gate prices may have served as a warning of higher costs to come. The producer price index (PPI) jumped 6.8 percent from a year earlier in its strongest surge since 2017.
The consumer price index (CPI) rose at a slower 0.9- percent rate, weighed down by weaker pork prices, although the pace was still the fastest in seven months.
The CPI sent mixed signals of a still-restrained recovery of consumption from the COVID-19 crisis a year before. The lag behind PPI growth suggested that manufacturers profits will shrink if material costs continue to rise.
MIAMI: The Cyprus-flagged oil tanker Berlina was drifting near the Caribbean island of Dominica earlier this year when tracking technology showed it stopping in its tracks and in two minutes turning around 180 degrees.
It was an amazingly quick pivot since the 274-meter (nearly 900-foot) ship needs roughly 10 times that amount of time to perform such a maneuver.
Even more intriguing: Around the same time the Berlina was pinging its location at sea, it was physically spotted loading crude oil in nearby Venezuela despite US sanctions against such trading.
Meanwhile, nine other ships, some connected to the same Greece-based owner of the Berlina, were digitally monitored moving nearby at an identical speed and direction with sudden draft changes, indicating they had somehow been loaded full of crude though apparently out at sea.
GENEVA: The World Health Organization warned Friday that efforts to uncover the Covid-19 pandemic’s origins were being hampered by politics, insisting scientists needed space to work on solving the mystery. “We would ask that we separate the science from the politics, and let us get on with finding the answers that we need in a proper, positive atmosphere,” WHO emergencies