DUBAI // Two policemen were among five people jailed for three months for fighting at a nightclub in which two men were stabbed. A 41-year-old Emirati officer was convicted of attempting to kill a Jordanian salesman, 30, and a Syrian marketing manager, 27, on February 19. He denied the charges in Dubai Criminal Court. He and an Emirati inspector, 35, were both convicted of assaulting the Jordanian […]
Photo Passengers leaving the hijacked Afriqiyah Airways plane at Malta International Airport on Friday. Credit Matthew Mirabelli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images CAIRO — All 109 passengers and crew members on board a hijacked Libyan airliner en route to the capital, Tripoli, were released on Friday, hours after two men claiming to be carrying explosives forced the plane to divert to Malta, Malta’s prime minister said. The hijackers, […]
By Wa Lone and Simon Lewis | YANGON YANGON Before entering the courthouse in the capital of eastern Myanmar’s Shan State, Maw Maw Oo said it was ominous that several blue police vans were already waiting in the parking lot. “But I don’t want to guess what the court’s decision will be,” she told a Reuters reporter by phone. Hours later she was jailed for a month […]
Misplaced fear. That was how the President’s chief legal counsel described the reaction of Vice President Leni Robredo on the possible return of martial law. “The Vice President’s fears maybe misplaced. She may have not understood the context under which the President made the martial law statements,” chief presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo told reporters in a chance interview on Friday. Duterte on Thursday said he wanted […]
ABU DHABI // After going through a divorce and a custody battle for her children, Aysha Al Naqbi knows the trauma that marriage break-ups can cause. So, Ms Al Naqbi has decided to dedicate herself to helping other women going through similar experiences. “It can be tough being a divorced female,” says Ms Al Naqbi, 38, from Khor Fakkan. “You will get questioned a lot, ‘why you’re […]
Good morning. A media A-list’s favorite books of 2016 Jake Tapper, the CNN reporter-show host, needed far less time than even a hyperactive wire service rewrite guy to answer a question about his favorite book this year: “‘Moonglow’ by Michael Chabon.” Bam, that didn’t take long. But it’s why amid a Trump- and-terrorism-centric moment, I asked busy and smart journalists to go high when so many others […]
For 15 years, Chandran Nair led a top Asian environmental consultancy that was active in China. In 2006, he founded the Global Institute for Tomorrow, a Hong Kong think tank focused on a shift of global power from the West to Asia, at a time when China’s rise is changing the geopolitical balance. Mr. Nair, who was born in Malaysia to a large South Indian family, is the […]
By Manuel Mogato | MANILA MANILA The United States provided the Philippines with $127 million in security assistance in the 12 months ended in September, the biggest sum in about 15 years, overlapping with a stream of angry threats from President Rodrigo Duterte to sever their defence alliance. The U.S. embassy in Manila on Friday confirmed its longtime Asian ally had received a 154 percent increase in […]
By Tom Westbrook | SYDNEY SYDNEY Australian police said on Friday they had foiled a plot to attack prominent sites in the city of Melbourne with a series of bombs on Christmas Day that authorities described as “an imminent terrorist event” inspired by Islamic State. Police laid terrorism charges against one man, and were expected to charge at least three others, after authorities conducted overnight raids on […]
Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse have agreed to pay out billions to resolve a probe into the alleged mis-selling of mortgage-backed securities at the height of the US housing bubble, striking deals before the Trump administration takes power. The deals came as federal prosecutors announced they were suing Barclays and two of its executives over the issue of allegedly fraudulent residential mortgage-backed securities. The suit followed the breakdown of talks […]
By James Pearson | SEOUL SEOUL As hundreds of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets every weekend for two months to call for President Park Geun-hye to resign, the opposition’s leading contender to replace her appeared reluctant to seize the moment. That is changing as Moon Jae-in, a 63-year-old human rights lawyer who lost the 2012 election to Park by more than a million votes, […]
Law Blog rounds up the morning’s legal news: VW buy-back: Volkswagen agreed to pay around $1 billion to repurchase or fix an additional batch of diesel-powered vehicles tainted with emissions-cheating software, resolving what had become a sticking point more than a year into Volkswagen’s diesel-emissions crisis. [WSJ] Unrevealing: A newly unsealed search-warrant application in the Clinton probe confirms the FBI found thousands of emails potentially linked to […]
More than four decades after a sweeping British military withdrawal from bases “east of Suez”, the UK is scaling up its defence engagement in the Gulf and Asia in what analysts regard as a recognition of the region’s growing global importance. Britain is reopening a naval support facility in Bahrain, creating a permanent army presence in Oman and establishing new defence staff centres in Dubai and Singapore. […]
NEW YORK A New Jersey man groped a woman during a transcontinental flight and then apologised in a pair of notes in which he acknowledged his actions were “stupid,” U.S. authorities said on Thursday. Ganesh Parkar, 40, of Windsor appeared in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, on Thursday to face a charge of abusive sexual contact, one day after the overnight Air India flight from Mumbai […]
By David Shepardson | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON A federal judge said on Thursday that Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) has reached an agreement in principle to provide “substantial compensation” to the owners of about 80,000 3.0-liter polluting diesel vehicles, a key hurdle to resolve the German automaker’s emissions scandal. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer did not disclose the amount of owner compensation, which is not included in a $1 billion […]
Mr. Trump, who last week nominated as ambassador to Israel a bankruptcy lawyer who heads a fund-raising effort for a West Bank settlement, made clear on Thursday that he would not wait for his inauguration to weigh in. In a statement, he said bluntly that the resolution should be vetoed. Continue reading the main story “As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and […]
Sales of a new Dubai real estate project, which will feature an amphitheatre and a gourmet market, will be launched in early 2017, it has been announced. T.ZED Architects have been appointed as the design leads for Canvas, KOA’s first mixed-use development which is scheduled to be completed by the end of next year. Canvas will include 70 apartments and will also feature a co-working space, a […]
As journalists grapple with the rise of fake news, it’s worth examining what happens when policymakers embrace misinformation instead of evidence when it comes to climate change. In September, YourNewsWire breathlessly told its readers that thousands of scientists had declared climate change “a hoax.” This was big news — at least on Facebook — where the YourNewsWire post was shared more than 550,000 times, making it the […]
DUBAI // Three Pakistanis used fake UAE residency papers to forge visit visas to Turkey, Dubai Criminal Court heard last week. The defendants deny charges of forgery, using forged documents and forging stamps of a number of UAE banks. Two of the defendants were arrested when they presented the forgeries to the Turkish embassy. During questioning by police, they tipped off the authorities to the third person. […]
By Mohamed Argouby, Joseph Nasr and Steve Scherer | OUESLATIA, Tunisia/BERLIN/ROME OUESLATIA, Tunisia/BERLIN/ROME In his impoverished Tunisian hometown, Anis Amri drank alcohol and never prayed, his brothers say. Then after joining the wave of migrants crossing the Mediterranean, he ended up in an Italian jail, only to emerge an utterly changed man. Now he is prime suspect in this week’s attack on a Berlin Christmas market and […]
FUJAIRAH // The deaths of three youngsters in accidents at their homes in Fujairah in the past two months has prompted experts to remind parents to be extra vigilant when it comes to keeping their children safe. On December 14, four-year-old Manal Al Sarsi was seriously injured after falling from a window at her family’s third-floor apartment in Merbeh. The Egyptian child died in hospital a few […]
The pound stumbled towards Christmas, falling for the fourth consecutive day against the euro reflecting investors’ concerns about the UK’s economic prospects in 2017. Sterling was half a per cent weaker against the euro on Thursday, pushing it a two-week low of €1.1780. Against the dollar, the pound hovered just above $1.23, its lowest level since November 23. Over the past two weeks the pound has fallen […]
Law Blog rounds up the morning’s legal news: Repeal rejected: A bipartisan agreement to repeal North Carolina’s transgender bathroom law fell apart Wednesday, after Republican legislative leaders required a late addendum of a six-month “cooling-off” period for local policies that Democrats said was a violation of a hard-fought deal. [WSJ, Charlotte Observer] Goldman and 1MDB: Investigators are trying to determine whether Goldman Sachs had reason to suspect […]
PANAMA CITY: From the Panama Papers to the impeachments of the presidents of Brazil and South Korea, 2016 was a year marked by corruption scandals and by rising public outrage over graft. The question is will that translate into a lasting demand for cleaner politics? “A new phenomenon” is being seen, said Jose Ugaz, a renowned Peruvian lawyer and the chairman of Transparency International, a Berlin-based anti-corruption […]
