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MADRID — The number of foreign tourists visiting Spain rose sharply this summer as COVID-19 travel restrictions were lifted but arrivals remained below the level seen before the pandemic, official figures showed on Tuesday.

Spain, the world's second most visited country before the pandemic, welcomed 9.1 million foreigners in July, and 8.8 million in August, national statistics institute INE said.

That represents a 106.2 per cent increase in arrivals in July from the same month last year, and a 69.7 per cent jump in August from the same year-ago period, it added.

But the total number of arrivals during the two months — 17.9 million — remained lower than the record 20 million seen in 2019 before the pandemic-related travel restrictions ravaged the global tourism industry.

Tourism Minister Maria Reyes Maroto called the arrival figures for the two peak holiday months "extraordinary".

"We are facing an autumn without inflation and the uncertainty caused by the war" in Ukraine hurting the sector's recovery "for now", she added in a statement.

During the first eight months of the year Spain welcomed 48 million foreign tourists, equivalent to 83 per cent of its pre-pandemic level.

The largest numbers of visitors during the period were British, accounting for more than 10 million arrivals, followed by French, who made up seven million visits, and Germans, who accounted for 2.3 million.

In the same period, the most popular destinations were the northeastern region of Catalonia, the Balearic Isles, the Canary Islands and Andalusia in the south, the INE said.

Spain in 2019 hit a record for the seventh year in a row, welcoming a total of 83.5 million foreign tourists. Only France received more that year. 

The number of foreign visitors plunged to 19 million the following year due to the pandemic.

Last year, only 31.1 million foreigners visited Spain, well below the 45 million expected by the government.

Tourism accounts for some 12 per cent of Spain's gross domestic output and the drop in arrivals hit the economy, the eurozone's fourth largest, hard.

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Palestinians living in Gaza have long endured an unstable and costly electricity supply, so Yasser Al Hajj found a different way: solar power.

Looking at the rows of photo-voltaic panels at his beachfront fish farm and seafood restaurant, The Sailor, he said the investment he made six years ago had more than paid off.

"Electricity is the backbone of the project," Hajj said, standing under a blazing Mediterranean sun. "We rely on it to provide oxygen for the fish, as well as to draw and pump water from the sea."

The dozens of solar panels that shade the fish ponds below have brought savings that are now paying to refurbish the business, he said, as labourers loaded sand onto a horse-drawn cart.

Hajj said he used to pay 150,000 shekels ($42,000) per month for electricity, "a huge burden", before solar power slashed his monthly bill to 50,000 shekels.

For most of Gaza's 2.3 million residents, living under Hamas Islamist rule and a 15-year-old Israeli blockade, power cuts are a daily fact of life that impact everything from homes to hospital wards.

While some Gazans pay for a generator to kick in when the mains are cut — for around half of each day, according to United Nations data — ever more people are turning to renewables.

From the rooftops of Gaza City, solar panels now stretch out into the horizon.

Green energy advocates say it is a vision for a global future as the world faces the perils of climate change and rising energy costs.

Swap to green power 

Gaza bakery owner Bishara Shehadeh began the switch to solar this summer, by placing hundreds of gleaming panels on his rooftop.

"We have surplus electricity in the day," he said. "We sell it to the electricity company in exchange for providing us with current during the night."

Solar energy lights up the bright bulbs illuminating the bustling bakery, but the ovens still run on diesel.

"We are working on importing ovens, depending on electrical power, from Israel, to save the cost of diesel," said Shehadeh.

Both the bakery and the fish farm have relied partially on foreign donors to kick-start their switch to solar, although their owners are also investing their own cash.

But in a poverty-stricken territory where nearly 80 per cent of residents rely on humanitarian assistance, according to the UN, not everyone can afford to install renewable energy.

Around a fifth of Gazans have installed solar power in their homes, according to an estimate published in April by the "Energy, Sustainability and Society" journal.

Financing options are available for Gazans with some capital, like Shehadeh, who got a four-year loan to fund his bakery project.

Import restrictions 

At a store selling solar power kits, MegaPower, engineer Shehab Hussein said prices start at around $1,000 and can be paid in instalments.

Clients included a sewing factory and a drinks producer, which see the mostly Chinese-made technology as "a worthwhile investment", he said.

Raya Al Dadah, who heads the University of Birmingham's Sustainable Energy Technology Laboratory, said her family in Gaza has been using simple solar panels that heat water for more than 15 years.

"The pipe is super rusty, the glass is broken... and I just had a shower and the water is super hot," she said during a visit to the territory.

But Dadah encountered obstacles when she tried to import a more sophisticated solar system for a community project in Gaza, where imports are tightly restricted by Israel and Egypt. 

"Bringing them to the Gaza Strip has proved to be impossible," she said.

The advanced set-up includes more efficient panels and equipment that tracks the sun's path.

Such technology is being used by Israeli firms such as SolarGik, whose smart control systems factor in weather conditions and can harness up to 20 per cent more energy than standard panels, Chief Executive Gil Kroyzer said.

Across the frontier in Gaza, in the absence of such high-tech equipment, Dadah relies on the standard panels to power a women's centre and surrounding homes in the strip's northern Jabalia area.

Despite the challenges, Dadah said solar energy remains a "brilliant" option for Gaza, with its copious sunlight: "It is really a very promising energy source, and it's available everywhere."

BAGHDAD — Decent salaries and stability are the hallmarks of a job in Iraq's civil service, an institution much coveted by young graduates, even as it starves the private sector and hobbles the economy.

The patronage systems that feed the public sector in the oil-rich but war-battered nation are so entrenched that even the outgoing finance minister has despaired of ever trimming them down to size.

"We want work!"

It's a refrain that fresh graduates chant each year on the streets of the southern city of Nassiriyah.

Maitham Mohammed Redha, 32, is among them. Public sector jobs are "our legitimate right", he says, adding that he has personally lobbied the provincial governor for work because he doesn't have "wasta", or an inside connection.

His situation is mirrored across Iraq, a country of 42 million in which four out of 10 young people are unemployed and where the state is by far the biggest employer. 

Propped up by oil production, which accounts for 90 per cent of national revenues, young Iraqis view public sector jobs as a refuge against the political winds and insecurity that perpetually batter businesses. 

The lure is such that the private sector is robbed of bright young talent, as the smartest tend to opt for a largely unproductive easy ride in government service.

"Graduates, if they start working in the private sector, consider it a temporary job until they can find an opportunity in the public sector," said Maha Kattaa, Iraq country coordinator for the International Labour Organisation.

"The private sector feels it cannot compete with the advantages, benefits provided by the public sector," she added.

Mohammed Al Obeidi, who has worked for nearly two decades at a ministry, acknowledges that "the salaries are good". 

"Some ministries have good benefits" and the option to retire at 60 — or even as young as 55 — provides scope for early retirees to take on private sector work while also drawing their pension. 

 'Vain populism' 

Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhemi has repeatedly stressed the need to trim the public sector. 

He noted last summer that "previous governments have... inflated public sector jobs in a vain populism that has exhausted the Iraqi economy".

Between 2004 — the year after a US-led invasion toppled longtime dictator Saddam Hussein — and 2019, the number of civil service posts quadrupled, he said.

The public sector wage bill alone accounts for two-thirds of the state budget, he said, while Kattaa estimated the government employs nearly 40 per cent of Iraq's population of working age.

Such numbers are "among the highest... in the world", she said. 

Kadhemi has acknowledged the urgency for reform, but equally that he does not have a "free hand" to enact it.

His survival as head of government always depended on bargaining over patronage opportunities by the country's main Shiite factions.

In the public sector, and even in private firms, recruitment is often driven by the allocation of tribal and political favours. 

Aptitude or formal qualifications therefore often count for little.

Even the country's finance minister professes to have given up in despair. 

High growth 

a bright spot 

"Nearly everything conspires to thwart real change and [instead conspires] to cement... rotten practices," Ali Allawi lamented, in a letter read out to the Cabinet when he resigned in August. 

Placing the blame squarely on the "cancer" of corruption, Allawi contends that the state has been unable to "break free from the control of political parties and outside interest groups".

Kattaa says companies must improve working conditions, by matching private sector social benefits and wages. 

One bright spot is that the oil price boom of the last year has driven national output higher — the IMF predicts Iraq's economy will grow 10 per cent this year.

Entrepreneurs are seeking to capitalise on this, among them Maitham Saad, 41.

Three years ago, he set up a company that sells dates from southern Iraq to international markets.

It now employs about 30 people, despite struggling to recruit, especially young people. 

"Once they are employed in the private sector, if their boss is decent, they are happy," he says.

Unlike in the civil service, youngsters "can negotiate their salary", he says, expressing guarded optimism for the future.

SAN FRANCISCO — Google on Thursday said it is shutting down Stadia, the cloud video game service it launched three years ago to let people access console-quality play as easily as they do email.

"It hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected so we've made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service," Google Vice President Phil Harrison said in a blog post.

Google said it will refund purchases of Stadia hardware, such as controllers, as well as game content bought through its online store, and that players will have access to the service through January 18 of next year, he added.

"They had a great idea and a bad business model," Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said of Stadia.

"They tried to offer the service as a subscription without games."

Xbox-maker Microsoft, meanwhile, offered a rival Game Pass service "with a ton of games", making it a more tempting option for players, Pachter said.

Game Pass has some 25 million subscribers, while Stadia has fewer than a million, the analyst noted.

Microsoft is considered the streaming video game heavyweight with its Xbox Game Pass service and large community of players who use its consoles and desktop computers.

The Redmond, Washington-based company also has a stable of video game studios.

While Microsoft makes Xbox video game consoles, it has been leading a shift to letting people play titles on internet-linked devices of their choosing with titles hosted in the cloud.

Microsoft recently announced that the ability to play Xbox games will be built into Samsung smart televisions in its latest cloud gaming move.

"We're on a quest to bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone on the planet, and bringing the Xbox app to smart TVs is another step in making our vision a reality," Microsoft Gaming chief Phil Spencer said in a post.

Microsoft catapulted itself into the big league in one of the world's most lucrative markets early this year by announcing a $69 billion deal to take over video game maker Activision Blizzard — the biggest acquisition in the sector's history.

Amazon early this year launched its Luna video game streaming service for the general public in the United States, aiming to expand its multipronged empire into the booming gaming industry.

Luna allows players to access games directly online with no need for a console as part of the cloud gaming technology that is seen as a future direction of the industry.

Luna takes on Microsoft and PlayStation-maker Sony as well as Stadia.

HELSINKI — Finnish airline Finnair said on Thursday it was opening negotiations to cut around 200 jobs, in an effort to stem losses after a difficult few years for the aviation industry.

The Nordic carrier announced a new strategy earlier this month to cut costs, including trimming its fleet, after the closure of Russian air space and the COVID-19 pandemic eroded profitability.

In the latest move Finnair said in a Thursday statement that it had started negotiations on redundancies which could see around 200 jobs lost globally.

"Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the closed Russian airspace have impacted our business significantly," Finnair CEO Topi Manner said.

"Thus, in addition to other actions to restore Finnair's profitability, we have to discuss measures that are, unfortunately, the most painful ones for our employees."

The airline has maintained connections to Asia following the European Union's decision to close its airspace to Russian aircraft and a tit-for-tat response from Moscow, but at the cost of a diversion of several hours and added fuel costs.

The carrier said the profitability plan will meet the "changes in Finnair's operating environment", adding it will be "operating with a smaller capacity than before the pandemic."

Like many of its competitors, Finnair was forced to take major cost-cutting measures to cope with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. 

At the end of 2021, Finnair had 5,365 employees, about 850 fewer than at the end of 2020 and 1,400 fewer than before COVID-19.

FRANKFURT — Luxury sports car maker, Porsche, raced onto the Frankfurt stock exchange on Thursday with one of Europe's biggest listings in years, leveraging its brand power to defy global market turmoil.

Its shares rose to over 84.70 euros ($81.90) in morning trading, bettering the 82.50 euros price set by its parent company Volkswagen, and outperforming a weak Frankfurt market.

Even as markets worldwide suffer from surging inflation and mounting recession fears, the maker of the 911 sports car has pushed ahead with the bold flotation that gives Porsche a valuation of more than 76 billion euros.

The carmaker's chief Oliver Blume said the listing was a "historic moment for Porsche", as he rang the bell to mark the start of trading at the Frankfurt exchange. 

"A big, proud day for all of us... We are adding a new chapter to the unique history of Porsche," added Blume, who is also the CEO of the wider German auto group Volkswagen.

Volkswagen is set to raise 9.4 billion euros ($9.2 billion) from the listing, with some to be ploughed into the group's shift to electric vehicles that is bringing it into greater competition with US rival Tesla.

In terms of value of shares issued, Porsche's is the biggest stock market debut in Germany since Deutsche Telekom's in 1996, and the largest in Europe since the 2011 flotation of Switzerland-based commodities giant Glencore.

'Crazy, cool' 

Analysts have looked to the car maker's market entry for some cheer against a morose economic backdrop, with investment bank Berenberg saying it could "offer a catalyst in an industry sorely lacking positive surprises".

It has generated buzz in Porsche's home market of Germany, where top tabloid Bild described it as "crazy, cool, fast-paced".

"Sports car icon Porsche goes full throttle and races onto the stock market," read a column in the paper.

It has also drawn interest from major investors, including Qatar and Abu Dhabi's public investment funds, Norway's sovereign wealth fund and US asset management firm T. Rowe Price. 

The IPO has seen 113.9 million shares of "Porsche AG" issued.

While the carmaker's valuation is below some earlier estimates, it still catapults it above rivals such as BMW, with a valuation of 47 billion euros, and Mercedes-Benz, with a 56 billion-euro capitalisation.

Electric drive 

Porsche has joined the electric drive of the Volkswagen group, whose brands also include Audi and Skoda, in earnest. 

The electric "Taycan" has been the brand's best-selling model since January, an electric version of the "Macan" is due in 2024, as well as the launch of a new SUV in the middle of the decade.

The electric strategy includes building battery factories across Europe and the US. Volkswagen announced this week it will work with Belgian group Umicore to produce battery materials. 

The IPO sees preferential shares sold to investors, which have no voting rights, while Volkswagen is also selling 25 per cent of the carmaker to Porsche SE. 

The eponymous company is a listed holding controlled by the Porsche-Piech family, who in turn are the main shareholders in Volkswagen.

This means that Porsche SE will have a blocking minority that will allow it to steer the future of the company.

Volkswagen hopes that listing a minority stake in Porsche will push up its own stock market value, which is 85 billion euros — just a fraction of Tesla's, at just over $900 billion.

While the Porsche IPO generated excitement, concerns surrounding governance have been brewing at Volkswagen.

The dual role of Blume — who has kept the top job at Porsche, despite being recently appointed CEO of Volkswagen group — has in particular raised eyebrows.

DUBAI — A new $3 billion railway is to link Oman's Sohar port with Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, officials said on Wednesday.

The 303 kilometre railway, with passenger trains travelling up to 200 kilometres per hour, will join up with the UAE's national network that is now under construction.

The joint venture between Oman Rail and the UAE's Etihad Rail was agreed during a visit by UAE President Mohamed Bin Zayed to the Omani capital Muscat.

"The railway... promises huge strategic economic and social gains," Abdulrahman Salim Al Hatmi, Group CEO of Oman Rail's parent company Asyad, said in a statement issued by the Abu Dhabi government.

Sohar, a deep-sea port on the Gulf of Oman and itself a joint venture with the port of Rotterdam, bills itself as a nexus of trade between Asia and Europe.

No finish date was given for the project. A multibillion dollar railway linking the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries has languished since a feasibility study was approved in 2004.

When completed, Etihad Rail, the UAE network, will operate 1,200 kilometres of track connecting all seven emirates and the border of neighbouring Saudi Arabia, as well as Oman. 

Construction is 70 per cent finished, according to its website, although the first stage — a remote line transporting sulphur through the Abu Dhabi desert — began full operations in 2016. 

A spirit of competition between the emirates, which each have their own specialities and areas of interest, is seen as having slowed the project's progress.