The News Journal

Borouge, the joint venture between Adnoc and Austrian chemicals producer Borealis, will pay an interim dividend of $325 million to its shareholders after the company posted a strong profit in the first half of the year on the back of higher revenue. The total interim dividend payment, amounting to 3.97 fils per share for the year 2022, was approved during the company’s general assembly meeting, the company said in a statement on Friday to the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, where its shares are traded. This is the first payment of the expected total dividend of $975m for the full year. “Borouge reported strong maiden half-year results with double-digit growth in revenue, significant sales volume growth and strong cash flow generation,” said Hazeem Al Suwaidi, chief executive of Borouge. “We are optimistic regarding the future growth of the company and we will continue to focus on executing our strategy built around our differentiated products and innovative solutions that have a positiv...

Mali on Sunday announced that it will quit the multinational military force in West Africa's sub-Sahara region, after it was blocked from assuming the presidency of the group. The country's military government blamed a lack of progress in the fight against the Islamists and the failure to hold recent meetings in Mali. “The government of Mali is deciding to withdraw from all the organs and bodies of the G5 Sahel Force," including the joint force fighting the extremists, Bamako announced. “The opposition of some G5 Sahel member states to Mali's presidency is linked to manoeuvres by a state outside the region aiming desperately to isolate Mali,” it added, without naming the country. The G5 Sahel force, which includes troops from Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, was set up in 2017 to counter Islamist extremists who have swept across the region in recent years, killing thousands of people and forcing millions to flee their homes. Read More : https://www.thenationa...

 Somalia's newly elected politicians were sworn in after a long-delayed voting process marred by a power struggle between the country's president and the prime minister. The formation of Somalia's 11th parliament is the next step on the road towards selecting a new president for the nation, a process that is more than a year behind schedule. Of the 275 parliamentarians, 250 took their oaths of office on Thursday alongside 40 out of 54 senators at the African Union military base in the capital, Mogadishu. Dozens more are yet to be selected and sworn in. The legislators will then elect speakers and deputies for both parliamentary chambers before they sit to choose a new president. The rivalry between President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, better known as Farmajo, and Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble has continually delayed the elections and stoked fears of further instability in Somalia, which is also battling a decade-long insurgency and the threat of famine. Elections had...

 The death toll from Wednesday's attack in central Somalia in which a parliamentary election candidate was killed has risen to 15, state-run television said. Amina Mohamed, a vocal critic of the government, was killed by a suicide bomber in the city of Beledweyne, around 300km north of Mogadishu, witnesses and relatives said. Somalia has been rocked by another deadly suicide bombing “Police in Beledweyne town launched operations to secure the town after terrorist suicide bombings had killed 15 people last night,” state-run Somali National Television said on its Twitter account. Al Shabab, Somalia’s extremist rebel group, claimed responsibility for the attack. Two other extremist attacks occurred in Beledweyne on Wednesday, killing former politician Hassan Dhuhul, an elder and civilians sitting outside a busy restaurant, police said. No more details were immediately available on those attacks. Somalia is conducting parliamentary elections in an indirect process that involves clan el...