DUBAI // A drunk, jealous maid who was jailed for seven years for trying to stab another maid to death because she stole her boyfriend had her sentence upheld at the Dubai Court of Appeal on Wednesday. Nepali D P, 28, aided by another person identified in court records as N B, attacked Sri Lankan N S, 32, on April 2 last year. At Dubai Criminal Court last October the […]
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has won Egypt’s presidential elections by a huge majority, the country’s election commission has said. The former military chief, who last July overthrew Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, won 96.91 of legal votes cast in last week’s election. SISI 23,780,104 (96.91%) SABAHI 757,511 (3.09%) Accepting the result, Sisi urged Egyptians to work to restore stability and achieve “freedom” and “social justice”. “I look forward to your […]
PARIS — The three young Frenchmen were arrested as they tried to make their way to Syria to wage jihad. They had not harmed anyone in France or made plans to do so, according to the evidence at their trial in January, but in France these days, seeking to fight in Syria is enough to bring a charge of plotting terrorism — and in this case sentences […]
Spain’s King Juan Carlos is abdicating after almost 40 years on the throne and his son Prince Felipe de Borbon will succeed him, the Spanish prime minister has announced. Juan Carlos, whose health is failing and has had a number of hip operations in recent years, is stepping down for personal reasons, Mariano Rajoy said on Monday. “His majesty, King Juan Carlos, has just communicated to me his […]
A Syrian activist group said government air raids have killed nearly 2,000 civilians this year in and around Aleppo, the country’s largest city. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday 567 children and 283 women were among those killed in the northern city, which is a stronghold for opposition fighters. The figure, which relies on the Britain-based group’s contacts with activists and others on the ground, amounts to […]
Sassan Soleimani, the director of “Happy in Tehran,” a viral YouTube tribute to Pharrell Williams that offended Iran’s conservative judiciary, was released on bail Thursday, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group. Evidence of the director’s freedom, after nine days in custody, came in the form of a self-portrait he sent to Kambiz Hosseini, a popular expatriate satirist whose […]
DUBAI // A Pakistani drug mule said he was promised 200,000 rupees (Dh7,444) for bringing 850 grams of heroin into the country in his stomach. However, AS, 26, was apprehended after an official at Dubai International Airport noticed his agitated state. Emirati inspector JA, 30, noticed the man at the airport on February 12. “I requested to see the defendant’s passport and asked him if he had […]
DUBAI // A shopkeeper caught with a large quantity of illegal drugs said he did not know the cars that were chasing him were police. Emirati AK, 40, also said the drugs he had on him were for personal use, even though he was found with 14,500 tramadol pills, 225 grams of hashish, 6.26 grams of opium, 5.05 grams of heroin and 25.75 grams of crystal meth. […]
ABU DHABI // More than 1,000 cases of employers accused of breaking labour laws by ill-treating their workers were referred to prosecutors in the past year, a new report reveals. The prosecutions came amid a massive enforcement campaign by the Ministry of Labour, whose staff conducted 138,801 general inspections, 11,807 visits to workers’ accommodation and 80,571 visits to construction sites to ensure labourers were not working during […]
In Dubai, a city known for some of the world’s most luxurious hotels and penthouses, developer Union Properties PJSC (UPP) is looking to tap demand from people who want to visit the emirate without breaking the bank. The company plans to build around 1,000 hotel rooms in the next five years to address a shortage in the middle- and lower-end of the market, managing director Ahmad Al […]
WASHINGTON — Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. faced a legal and bureaucratic dilemma this year: Obama administration officials could not agree about what he should tell the Supreme Court about a lawsuit in which American victims of terrorist attacks in Israel are suing Arab Bank, the largest financial institution in Jordan. The plaintiffs have accused Arab Bank of providing services to terrorists responsible for the attacks. […]
ABU DHABI // An impoverished farmer in India whose son was one of 13 workers killed in the Dubai bus crash spoke on Tuesday of his family’s grief, their shattered dreams and his struggle with debt. Ramchand Gupta, 50, borrowed money from relatives to send his son Sanjay to the UAE four months ago in the hope of a better life. The plan was that he would […]
A Turkish court has ordered the arrest of four former Israeli military chiefs over a deadly 2010 raid by Israeli commandos on a Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship which killed nine unarmed human rights activists. The court in Istanbul will ask Interpol to issue international arrest warrants for the four commanders, Cihat Gokdemir, a lawyer working on the case, told AFP news agency. Turkish prosecutors are seeking life […]
Alex Salmond’s miscalculation gave No voters a perfect excuse to vote Ukip Photo: Christopher Pledger/Telegraph Has Alex Salmond lost it? The question becomes especially pertinent in the light of the SNP leader’s extraordinary reaction to his party’s decidedly underwhelming result in the Euro-elections. It is one thing for party bosses to be disappointed when their charges perform less well than anticipated. However, it is entirely another when they […]
CAIRO — Voters around the capital lined up Monday morning to cast ballots in an election universally expected to make Abdel Fattah el-Sisi the next president of Egypt, turning out to show their support in a contest where turnout is the biggest question. In an interview on a pro-Sisi talk show Sunday evening, Abdel Aziz Salman, the general secretary of the High Presidential Election Commission, said that […]
JERUSALEM — Pope Francis met with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres Monday as he wrapped up his three-day trip to the Middle East. Netanyahu told the pope why he believes Israel needed to build a separation barrier around the West Bank city of Bethlehem. The Israeli prime minister said that when incitement and terror against Israel ends, there will not be a need […]
JERUSALEM — Pope Francis met with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres Monday as he wrapped up his three-day trip to the Middle East. Netanyahu told the pope why he believes Israel needed to build a separation barrier around the West Bank city of Bethlehem. The Israeli prime minister said that when incitement and terror against Israel ends, there will not be a need […]
An Egyptian elections worker guards boxes of ballots at the Giza courthouse in Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, May 25, 2014. TEXT SIZE – + VOA News May 26, 2014 12:35 AM Egyptians go to the polls Monday and Tuesday to elect a new president. Former Egyptian army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who ousted the elected Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi, is widely expected to win. The two-day election caps more than three […]
Indian-born economist Arvind Panagariya, who is widely expected to take a top advisory role in prime minister-elect Narendra Modi’s government, wants its first budget to boost capital spending even at the risk of a higher fiscal deficit. Panagariya, 61, whose market-friendly, pro-growth economics has helped shape Modi’s outlook, told Reuters in an interview that higher spending is critical to India’s economic revival. Modi swept to power on […]
Sour gripes: Gwyneth Paltrow’s lament has won little support from Angelina Jolie, above Photo: Getty Images Cat fight! Angelina Jolie has gone head to head with Gwyneth Paltrow; which would be pretty much every man’s brunette-on-blonde fantasy, were it not for the fact that one is so skeletal and the other so skinny that there’s a genuine risk their A-list bones might splinter into a million tiny […]
The judicial authorities in Iran appeared to harden their clampdown on expression Friday, moving to block Instagram, imprisoning the director who made the now-famous Iranian version of the Pharrell Williams “Happy” video and warning women to comply with a police campaign on the proper wearing of mandatory headscarves. Taken together, the developments suggested that the country’s Islamic bureaucracy was alarmed over any perception of permissiveness that may […]
Six young Iranians who were arrested for posting a YouTube video of themselves dancing on Tehran rooftops to “Happy,” the globally infectious pop song, were released on bail on Wednesday as new details emerged of their possible mistreatment while incarcerated amid an outpouring of sympathy — including a subtly supportive Twitter post from Iran’s president. The arrests of the six, who were all under 25 and included […]
UNITED NATIONS — The Security Council is scheduled to vote Thursday on a resolution that would ask the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes in Syria. Russia is certain to veto the resolution. Its Western rivals are equally certain to seize on that veto in an attempt to isolate the Kremlin diplomatically. Supporters of the resolution, which was drafted by France, have spent days drumming up […]
Malaysia’s Securities Commission has tightened rules on bai inah, a popular but divisive Islamic financing contract, in a fresh sign that standards in the world’s two main centres for sharia-compliant banking are slowly converging. Regulators and scholars in Malaysia and the Gulf have contrasting approaches to Islamic finance; the Gulf tends to be stricter in defining permissible transactions, and banks in the region have therefore shunned bai […]
