In the small number of other countries that have legalised assisted suicide, there have been mistakes Photo: PA As a psychiatrist I have spent my working life helping people to find a reason for living and to make sense of disability – not a reason to hasten their death. So imagine my concern to find yet another attempt to legalise what is euphemistically called ‘assisted dying’ planned for […]
UAE Central Bank data Lending to construction in the United Arab Emirates is booming again, underlining a rapid return in confidence despite the heavy toll bad real estate loans took on local banks during the global financial crisis. Banks had extended almost 181 billion dirhams ($49 billion) of credit to the construction sector last year, according to recently released central bank figures, up from AED129 billion in […]
Dubai saw the steepest house price growth globally over the past year despite government cooling measures, Knight Frank’s Global House Price Index shows. House prices grew 27.7 percent over the 12 months to March 2014, the fastest pace among the 54 countries tracked on the index. However, house prices only climbed 3.4 percent in the first quarter, much slower than 9.2 percent growth in the same period […]
DUBAI // The founder of a website offering relationship and sex advice for married Muslim couples says he is trying to change attitudes across the region. Karaz.me was launched in Palestine three months ago and has already attracted much attention, but its chief executive, Ashraf Al Kiswani, insists all of its products and services adhere to religious standards. Now he is hoping to attract customers in the […]
ABU DHABI // A little boy who has overcome deafness to become an academic star at school has received a personal letter of praise from Barack Obama. “I am proud of you for pushing yourself academically,” the US president told Yusuf Batha, “and I am counting on you to continue to set a good example to help others whenever you have the opportunity.” Mr Obama also told […]
ABU DHABI // If Daniel Bekai has his way, robots will be common features in homes of the future. Daniel, 16, wants to live in a world where humans command robots to perform the mundane tasks that an artificially intelligent machine would be better at anyway. “Suppose you’re in your house and you want some yogurt, you can build a robot that gets yogurt from your fridge […]
By Alan Cochrane, Scottish Editor 8:59PM BST 03 Jun 2014 A FUNNY thing happened to me on my way to save the Union yesterday; Gordon Brown cracked a joke and everyone laughed. Mind you, there was a bit of a delay, a sort of double-take, whilst the people in the room – assorted Labour politicians and reporters – worked out if their ears had deceived them or […]
Abu Dhabi’s economy expanded an inflation-adjusted 5.2 percent in 2013, its official statistics centre said on Tuesday, a much slower rate than the government had previously estimated but still higher than 4.8 percent in 2012. The figure from the Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi (SCAD) was much lower than an estimate in February by the emirate’s Department of Economic Development (DED), which said real GDP grew 7.4 percent […]
Apple Inc on Monday took the wraps off mobile applications that pool and analyze health and home data, kicking off an annual developers’ conference lacking in big surprises, despite hopes the iPhone maker would offer a glimpse into its secretive pipeline of products. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and software-engineering boss Craig Federighi told several thousand developers about new features that come with the latest “Yosemite” Mac […]
A rocky planet weighing 17 times as much as Earth has been found, surprising astronomers who expected it to be a big ball of gas. Scientists dubbed the planet a “mega-Earth” because it’s much larger than previously discovered rocky celestial bodies. The planet, sighted by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Kepler spacecraft, is located 560 light years from Earth and circles a Sun-like star every […]
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 […]
Inside a nondescript office building in central London, a roomful of men and women sit at computer screens and talk over Skype with people in faraway places. Sharp-edged Cantonese fills the air, and a flat-screen TV emits a continuous din. It’s the chanting, singing Midlands crowd at Birmingham, England’s Villa Park Stadium: Liverpool at Aston Villa. The match has just kicked off. The name of the company, […]
CAIRO — Mohamed Morsi did not enjoy being ridiculed on television as president. With the election of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the laughter has stopped. Bassem Youssef, a comedian whose satire of the politically powerful became emblematic of freedom in post-revolutionary Egypt, said Monday that he was ending his popular weekly television show, citing unspecified political pressure and threats. “We consider the shutting down of the show a […]
DUBAI // Two Zayed University students have won Dh45,000 each for their idea to open a gym for pregnant and elderly women. Sumaia Alharthi, and Shamma Alfahim, both 21, decided to enter the “Business for Better” competition as this was a good chance for their voices to be heard, said Ms Alharthi. The competition was aimed at encouraging young entrepreneurs, and eight universities from across the UAE […]
Qatar’s sizzling growth would slow if it lost the right to host the 2022 World Cup soccer tournament, but the tiny country is so rich that the impact on its economy and financial markets would be much smaller than the blow to its reputation. The Qatari stock market sank 1.1 percent on Monday, underperforming the region, after a British newspaper published what it said was evidence of […]
Bassem Youssef, a heart surgeon who became a wildly popular political satirist following the 2011 revolt that felled the durable autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak, announced on Monday that his show would not be returning to the airwaves following months of uncertainty. While the announcement stunned his fans, it did not come as a surprise: the program, called El Bernameg (The Program in Arabic), had been the […]
Ramallah, occupied West Bank – Fatah and Hamas have unveiled a government of national consensus that will pave the way for elections for a new Palestinian president and parliament. The government of 17 politically-independent members, agreed on Monday, is already being put to the test, as Israel announced it would not negotiate any peace deal with it. The announcement came after the passing of a five-week deadline that […]
‘As a scientist, all I can do is tell the truth based on the evidence,’ says Dr Jane Plant Photo: MARTIN POPE In 1993, the breast cancer that had plagued Jane Plant since 1987 returned for the fifth time. It came in the shape of a secondary tumour – a lump in her neck the size of half a boiled egg. Doctors told her that she had only […]
Iran’s smart set turned out in force for this year’s Tehran Art Auction, spending a record amount as the country’s modern and contemporary art scene thrives despite economic sanctions. The annual event on Friday was a sell-out, raising $5.1 million from the auction of works by Iranian artists, more than double the amount fetched last year. While Western sanctions since 2010 on Iran’s oil and financial sectors […]
Whoop, whoop: Kathleen Turner and Ian McDiarmid in ‘Bakersfield Mist’ at the Duchess Theatre Photo: Alastair Muir “They applaud, even when it is good,” said Artur Schnabel, the great Austrian pianist. These days, they stand to cheer, even when it is poor. The standing ovation, which used to be a Broadway phenomenon, something we used to snigger at, has become an increasingly unpleasant feature of theatrical life […]
Ford Motor Co said on Thursday it is recalling 1.39 million SUVs and sedans in North America, most for the possible loss of power steering. About 1.186 million of the vehicles Ford said it is recalling are in the United States. That figure is only 2,200 shy of the total number of vehicles that Ford recalled in the United States during all of last year. Automakers are […]
(Reuters) – It took a Texas man five days to polish off what has been hailed as one of the most expensive drinks produced at Starbucks, a several-thousand calorie frozen concoction that included 60 shots of espresso and was topped with whipped cream. “It was delicious, very strong, very sweet,” Andrew Chifari said on Thursday. “After the first day, the ice crystals had melted and it was […]
The property game: Help to Buy is also helping Londoners Photo: Justin Sutcliffe The Government is persistently defensive about its Help to Buy scheme, partly because the criticism has been so consistent. Two parts of the scheme have been rolled out by David Cameron in an attempt to improve the route to property ownership, or in his emotive words: “As prime minister I am not going to stand […]
Beirut, Lebanon – This was not an ordinary voting day. It was a parade of Syrians celebrating their embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, and expressing support for him in the battle to quell the uprising that erupted three years ago. Since early morning, tens of thousands of Syrians flocked to the heavily fortified area surrounding the Syrian embassy in Lebanon as expatriate voting began ahead of the June […]
