SEOUL: South Korea’s central bank kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 2.50% on Thursday, maintaining the Base Rate as policymakers balanced a steady inflation backdrop with improving economic momentum and ongoing financial stability concerns. The Bank of Korea’s Monetary Policy Board said it would hold the current level while assessing developments in domestic and external policy…

NEW DELHI: India joined the Pax Silica initiative on Feb. 20 by signing the Pax Silica Declaration and a bilateral addendum titled the Joint Statement on the India-U.S. AI Opportunity Partnership at an event held on the margins of the AI Impact Summit. The documents were signed by S. Krishnan, secretary at India’s Ministry of Electronics…

SHARJAH: Air Arabia (PJSC) reported a record AED 1.8 billion net profit before tax for 2025 and said its board has proposed a cash dividend of 30 fils per share, subject to shareholder approval. The Sharjah-headquartered low-cost airline said the results cover the year ended Dec. 31, 2025, and marked its strongest annual financial and…

EuroWire, PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY: The 6th Sustainable Development Forum is scheduled to be held in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky from Feb. 17 to Feb. 21, bringing together government officials, business representatives and industry specialists for a multi day program focused on regional development in Kamchatka Krai and the wider Russian Far East. Organizers describe the forum as an interregional platform covering multiple…

BEIJING: China’s rapid shift to electric vehicles is reshaping the world’s largest auto market and dulling growth in the transport fuel demand that once underpinned its appetite for imported crude, including heavy oil from Venezuela. The International Energy Agency said China sold over 11 million electric cars in 2024, with electric models accounting for almost half…

MENA Newswire, SEOUL: South Korea’s consumer inflation eased to 2.0% in January from 2.3% in December, as measured by the consumer price index, government data released Tuesday showed. The CPI, with 2020 set to 100, rose to 118.03 in January. On a month-to-month basis, prices increased 0.4%, following a 0.3% rise in December. The CPI report, published by…

MENA Newswire, NEW DELHI: India’s government has proposed a tax holiday through 2047 for foreign companies that provide cloud services to customers worldwide while running those workloads using data centre services based in India, a long-horizon incentive unveiled in the Union Budget 2026 to strengthen the country’s role in global digital infrastructure under Prime Minister Narendra…

MENA Newswire, NEW YORK: Gold and silver prices tumbled in a sharp, disorderly selloff that erased an estimated $7 trillion in notional value across precious metals, after a record-setting rally gave way to forced liquidations, margin pressures, and a stronger U.S. dollar. The drop reverberated across commodities and global equities, underscoring how quickly leveraged positioning can…

WASHINGTON: More than seven years after President Donald Trump launched sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods, official data and widely cited economic studies show the measures raised costs inside the United States while leaving the core U.S. goods trade deficit with China largely intact. The tariff program began in 2018 under a federal trade law investigation and…