In my conversations with customers across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, a few key patterns and themes have become clear. Chief financial officers (CFOs) recognise that the role of corporate finance needs to change to keep pace with the world around them. Rapid changes in consumer technologies, new regulations, and a flood of millennials entering the workforce are forcing the world of business to adapt. Those companies that cannot keep pace run the risk of becoming extinct. In extensive talks with customers, partners, researchers, and subject-matter experts, we have identified five things that global CFOs should focus on in the year ahead.

In his first overseas trip since becoming North Korean leader in 2011, Kim Jong-un boarded an armoured train and crossed the Yalu River that separates North Korea and China to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping late last month. This Chinese-North Korean Summit meeting was the first of its kind between the two leaders. Relations between China and North Korea have been frosty of late, particularly after the American-Chinese Summit meeting in Florida in April 2017 where United States President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping agreed to cooperate on the North Korean issue.

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, 50 years ago on April 4, 1968, setting off a period of mourning, reflection and anger that gripped America. He was in Memphis to rally support for striking sanitation workers, who were protesting unsafe working conditions, and while on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel (now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum), he was shot once and fatally by James Earl Ray, from the bathroom of a nearby boarding house. By the age of 39, King had become a primary leader of the civil rights movement and had been active since the 1950s as a minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He was an instrumental figure in protests (in Montgomery, Washington, Selma and elsewhere) and in the passage of landmark civil and voting rights legislation. He had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at 35. In the last years of his life, King faced criticism from some African-American activists who wanted him to employ more confrontational strategies for change. At the same time, he had become more outspoken on issues of poverty and the need to end the war in Vietnam, significantly in the "Riverside Church" speech, delivered in New York a year to the day before his death.

The Baseera Center is currently considered one of the most important research centers in Egypt, although there are other research centers which are older and larger. Perhaps Baseera has established this reputation for its objectivity, impartiality, independence, and accessibility of presentation for the results of its studies of public opinion. In early 2018, Baseera Center asked a representative sample of Egyptians about their wishes for the new year. The two most important aspirations of the Egyptians were: to obtain stable employment, and the success of their children in education. The desire to get rich or to travel abroad is no longer at the forefront of Egyptian wishes, as was the case in previous years, particularly during the last quarter of the 20th century.

This morning, a flurry of major news from the Korean Peninsula has set the Korea-watching world aflutter. It appears that major diplomatic breakthroughs have been made between Pyongyang and Seoul. But before you break out the good soju, it is worth examining what s been reported and what it actually means. A team of high-ranking South Korean officials attended a four-hour dinner with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang. This was the first ever meeting between South Korean officials and Kim.

In the past week, both Erin Burnett of CNN and Katy Tur of MSNBC have engaged in a national conversation about evangelicals and forgiving a most controversial subject: Donald Trump. Bob Vander Plaats While there is value in these discussions, there is danger in looking at forgiveness and faith through the lens of politics. As we head into Easter weekend, I want us to look higher than headlines -- to look through God s eyes, rather than our own.

Egypt s National Elections Committee will officially announce the results of the presidential elections on Monday 2 April, and it is virtually certain that President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi will win a second term until 2022. In the light of the debate before, during and after the elections, it is important to discuss the goals and challenges facing Al-Sisi during his second term in office, which will officially begin in June.

His most recent early tirade: four tweets about President Obama supposedly wiretapping his phone at 6:35 a.m., 6:49 a.m., 6:52 a.m., finishing up at 7:02 a.m., with this flourish: "This is Nixon/Watergate," calling Barack Obama "a bad (or sick) guy." And then comes the lunchtime cleanup, Trump-style. Which is to say, the President digs in. And those around him desperately search for ways to defy gravity and logic to please the boss.

New York, NY—Rarely was there so much expectation for the appearance of a book as is the case of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House of the North American journalist Michael Wolff. And never before were so many copies sold so quickly. Before its appearance, the book and its e-book version had reached the top of sales on Amazon.com and the Apple iBooks Store. By 8 January, more than one million copies had been sold. One of the earliest criticisms was that of Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea; one of the most widespread memes on the internet shows him laughing hysterically while leafing through the book.

Tougher security settings on Facebook just won t cut it, says DW s Zulfikar Abbany. In his opinion, you shouldn t be using Facebook in the first place — and users have themselves to blame in part for data breaches.Imagine you re an alien, snooping around from space, and you happen to catch some American cable network coverage of Facebook s (current) data scandal, as I just did in a Hamburg hotel this week. You might think the tech giant s only issue was tumbling stock. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who famously took his first cynical steps towards creating the society-smashing social network in a university dorm, has seen his company take a financial hammering. Or so the story goes.

Another episode unfolded in the turbulent relations between Britain and Russia this month, pushing them further towards a dark abyss. The tension escalated after former Russian spy Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in a sleepy town in southwest England.

There are many urgent tasks and challenges that Egypt needs to address from the start of President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi s anticipated second term. Here I will enumerate seven: promoting industrialisation, developing education, creating jobs, curbing the population explosion, achieving water and food security, realising the principles of social justice and equal opportunity, and fighting takfiri thought.

We have a problem with some influential Western news outlets that cover affairs in Egypt in a selective manner and present them in a negative light. These outlets do not seem to possess an alternative method that would work towards a better understanding of our circumstances. As a result, we need a better understanding of the Western media s view of our country and the region.

We have so much that we can say or write about Mohamed Salah – the Egyptian football star that’s made it to the top of the British Premier League. But sometimes their words, the British ones, are more touching than ours. British writers and critics will never see Mohamed Salah with our Egyptian eyes that will always be biased towards anyone Egyptian. They don’t have to exaggerate or compliment or write or speak with their hearts. That’s why I don’t feel the need to write about Mohamed Salah from my own perspective. Here I’ll just go through some of the comments British writers have made after our beloved Momo scored a super hat-trick in Liverpool’s latest match against Watford. In The Guardian, Chris Brereton wrote, “Mohamed Salah continued to write his own Liverpool destiny with four superb finishes in a personal performance at Anfield that was as complete and as ruthless as anything this famous stadium has seen down the decades.” He went on to say, “Two of his goals carried the same jinking manner and positional nous as that displayed by Lionel Messi”.

It has been five weeks since the start of Comprehensive Operation Sinai 2018 and the Egyptian Armed Forces have successfully utilised the media to make the people live the military operation blow by blow through daily statements accompanied with audio, video and photo coverage and accurate statistics. This has prevented anyone from spreading rumours or fabricated news, and kept the morale of soldiers, officers and citizens high and supportive of military action against armed terrorist groups and their sponsors in North Sinai, on the western border, and in operations in the south, Delta, by air and by sea to protect the vital interests of the economy and the Egyptian state in its domestic and regional context.

Will there be a direct or indirect reversal following the resignation of Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn on the negotiations of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)? The answer may be yes, and may be no. Expectations indicate that in the coming period, Ethiopia will focus on the internal situation to stabilize the new power that will succeed Desalegn, and this is expected to lead to more flexibility in the negotiations with Egypt, especially as the Egyptian demands are not big. Egypt has approved the constructing of the dam, but on condition that it does not affect our water rights by controlling the water storage period and reviewing its filling capacity. The project started with 14 billion cubic meters of water and reached 74 billion cubic meters in its final design.

This week, the Minister of Investment and International Cooperation launched a new chapter in ‎the rich United Nations history in Egypt. We have signed – all 19 UN agencies with operational ‎activities in the country – a new United Nations Partnership Development Framework (UNPDF) ‎with the Minister Dr. Sahar Nasr, detailing our partnership with the Government of Egypt over ‎the next five years. It entails a total resource envelope of US$ 1.2 billion and builds on the ‎capacities of the UN development system, that reached in 2015/16 nearly 33 million Egyptians ‎through various projects and partnerships with Government and civil society. ‎

Today, newspaper journalism faces many challenges in terms of financing, which in turn has caused fewer newspapers to be published. One factor contributing to the rising costs of publication is the rising cost of paper, which has been increasing annually by 10 per cent. Combined with the costs of printing and distribution, this means that the modern newspaper industry is in dire need of additional financing.

A ccording to a New York Times article, published on Monday 12 March, the White House is expected to wrap up its much-awaited peace plan for the Middle East. The plan would deal with the major questions of borders, security, refugees, and the status of Jerusalem. According to three senior officials in the United States government, President Donald Trump s administration is actually adding the finishing touches to this plan, and Trump is expected to present it. However, no date has been set for the announcement thus far. But it will be sooner rather than later. The Trump administration has been working on this plan for a year now, although few details are known about its general contour and the specifics, if any. Absent is the basic notion of a two-state solution unless the Israelis and the Palestinians would adopt it.

It is no wonder that a number of countries, corporations, and major banks have begun to consider the adoption of dealing with blockchain and the related cryptocurrencies as means of payment. Some European countries, such as Germany, have announced the adoption of encrypted currencies as a means of payment. Venezuela created a new currency linked to oil; a crypto-oil currency. Moreover, HSBC aims to adopt the technology of blockchain at its branches. The banking even considered using it for national recording of data, theoretically, given its high levels of confidentiality and safety. Why? Because blockchain technology is of high quality, safety, and speed. It is impossible to be hacked. It can be adapted according to need. And it is flexible to meet all different clients needs. It has become an important resource for companies, and even many countries, of which some have started to impose taxes on it, such as Australia, while others made the technology tax exempt. In addition, some of the currencies created through it have become a tool for fund raising and repayment of debts and obligations. It has also become a tool to repatriate corporate profits smoothly and at lower fees. There are companies that use it for their logistics system, such as China s Alibaba Group.

The global struggle for domination between the US and Russia is not a novelty or a temporary state of conflict. This struggle has been ongoing for seven decades with short periods of dormancy. However, strong words and the exchange of accusations between the two superpowers are now reaching alarming new heights, with Russian President Vladimir Putin bragging about the development of new Russian nuclear inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to counter the US redeployment of nuclear missiles in Europe.