‘No country demand anything like the same assurances as the USA immigration authorities’ Photo: GETTY Having recently returned from the US, I feel obliged to offer a few thoughts about American transport. Because – certainly at Los Angeles and New York – something has gone very badly wrong. A lot of people complain about Heathrow and Gatwick but the truth is that we British have quietly set about […]
DUBAI // A wish list of 21 requests from Indian expatriates in the UAE was delivered to Narendra Modi’s office on Monday as the Bharatiya Janata Party leader was sworn in as prime minister. It included long-standing demands such as voting rights for non-resident Indians, encouraging investment in infrastructure, joint-venture incentives and exemption from restrictive taxes. “These issues relate to NRIs all over the world, not just […]
FUJAIRAH // Free health testing for women will be available this week at malls in Fujairah and Ajman. It is part of an initiative to raise awareness about cardiovascular disease – the number one killer of women not only in the UAE but across the world. The tests will include blood pressure, blood sugar, body mass index and cholesterol level checks. The Go Red for Women campaign […]
JERUSALEM — Making history for the second day running, Pope Francis laid a wreath Monday on the grave of the founder of Zionism, becoming the first pope to do so, a gesture of support to Israel after several symbolic signals the day before that lent a spiritual lift to Palestinian aspirations for sovereignty. At the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Francis added to his marathon morning […]
A Dubai-based startup has raised $1.6 million in new funding to help launch its software that better connects social media users and the brands they follow. Brndstr Inc. (pronounced ‘brandster’) uses software that allows the brand’s Twitter accounts to automatically respond to #hashtags with offers and vouchers. For example, if a Twitter user retweets a brand’s tweet, then that user can automatically be sent a voucher giving […]
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Cameron. Photo: AFP Tory MPs may have agreed not to panic in the light of Ukip’s big win, but that doesn’t mean David Cameron isn’t going to come under a huge amount of pressure from them in the coming days and weeks to do something, anything, to show he’s got the message. One of their demands is bound to be that the […]
A full-size replica of the Great Sphinx of Giza is seen in Shijiazhuang, north China’s Hebei province on May 13, 2014. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Chinese tourists may have been thrilled about getting their very own Sphinx. Egypt, however, was less than pleased. The country said it planned to file a complaint to Unesco over an imitation Sphinx built in China earlier this year because it “harms the […]
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 […]
JERUSALEM — The intimate Mass to be celebrated by Pope Francis on Monday in the Cenacle, the hall on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion venerated by Christians as the room of the Last Supper, is intended to cap a Holy Land pilgrimage promoting peace and tolerance. But ancient rivalries lurk just beneath the flagstones here, and the pope’s visit has brought them to the surface. Also holy to Jews […]
Egyptians head to the polls in a presidential election that ex-army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is expected to win easily. The two-day vote, which starts at 0600 GMT on Monday, follows more than three years of political turmoil that has seen two presidents overthrown, mass protests, thousands killed in clashes, deadly attacks and a battered economy. About 53 million people are registered to vote. Sisi is expected to trounce […]
CAIRO — Helicopters hovered over parts of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, early Monday as voting in the two-day presidential election began. Security was tight in many neighborhoods. Police blocked off streets and parts of city blocks to protect voters at polling stations. More than 400,000 Egyptian police and army soldiers were deployed Monday for the election, and more than 14,000 judges are overseeing the vote at polling stations across […]
|By K Raveendran| It is indeed a milestone in the history of UAE’s expatriate business. The purchase of a controlling stake in Travelex by Dr B R Shetty is easily the biggest acquisition by an expatriate both in terms of its value and profile. It is also perhaps the biggest global brand acquired by a UAE-based Indian entrepreneur. There have been buyouts of higher values, but these […]
BANHA, Egypt — His face smiles down from campaign banners everywhere, but splashes of red paint have bloodied a few. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the former army field marshal who led the military takeover last summer, is certain to win a landslide victory in the pro forma presidential election on Monday and Tuesday. But in this town about 30 miles north of Cairo, the mood is a discordant […]
DAMASCUS, Syria — For Younes al-Nasr, a lifelong train lover, the Hejaz railway station here in the heart of the Syrian capital is a repository of shelved ambitions. Every day, Mr. Nasr, 68, a Transportation Ministry employee, pads around his offices in the Ottoman-era building, where light filters through red, yellow and blue stained glass. He imagines the past — the few short years a century ago […]
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Former President Bill Clinton said on Sunday that he believed that New York University and the Abu Dhabi government would conduct a thorough investigation into worker rights abuses at the university’s new campus here in the country’s capital. Delivering the first graduation speech at the campus, Mr. Clinton said the controversy had “dominated the coverage” of the university during the days […]
JERUSALEM — Pope Francis inserted himself directly into the collapsed Middle East peace process on Sunday, issuing an invitation to host the Israeli and Palestinian presidents for a prayer summit at his apartment in the Vatican in an unexpected overture that has again underscored the broad ambitions of his papacy. Francis took the extraordinary step in Bethlehem, where he became the first pontiff ever to fly directly […]
The Middle East’s oil boom was made in China HSBC As the world’s second-largest consumer of oil, China in the past decade has relied heavily on the Middle East to secure the resources required to fuel its ascendancy to become an economic superpower. In doing so, it overtook the U.S. as principal investor in the Middle East and played a pivotal role in transforming the region by […]
Naomi Campbell during her birthday party At The Billionaire’s Club Photo: GETTY IMAGES Sir Cam makes a stand on Scotland If there’s one thing likely to get Sir Cameron Mackintosh’s goat, it’s asking him to comment on reports about run-ins with locals in the Scottish coastal village of Mallaig. Sir Cameron Mackintosh: Mallaig people ‘unbelievably supportive’ (REX FEATURES) Over the past decade, his nearly 15,000-acre estate in the […]
ON THE EAST BANK OF THE JORDAN RIVER — After visiting a site on Saturday where Jesus is believed to have been baptized, Pope Francis spoke about Jesus’s humility, “the fact that he bends down to wounded humanity in order to heal us.” So when some burly men prepared to carry a doctor in a wheelchair up four steps to the stage for a blessing, perhaps it […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Waving to television cameras and assembled dignitaries, President Michel Suleiman departed the presidential palace on Saturday, the last day of his six-year term, leaving behind a political vacuum caused by the failure of the country’s political powers to agree on a successor. The vacancy in the president’s office is the most recent crisis in Lebanon’s fragile political system, which relies on agreements among the […]
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 […]
Two protesters were killed in clashes in Egypt between Islamist demonstrators and their opponents after midday prayers on Friday, the final day of campaigning ahead of next week’s presidential election, the authorities said. The Health Ministry said one person was killed in Cairo and another in the town of Fayoum, about 50 miles southwest of Cairo. At least 23 people were wounded, the ministry added. In the […]
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 […]
