Dubai / WAM The Dubai Municipality’s “Zero Accident Construction” challenge initiative, announced in August, has received tremendous response from the contracting companies operating in the emirate of Dubai since the opening of registrations, with many companies submitting applications in September. The challenge, which will continue for six months from October 1 to March 31, 2019, is expected to enhance the ...

Bloomberg The US accused China’s navy of “unsafe and unprofessional” conduct near a Chinese occupied reef in the disputed South China Sea, in the latest show of tensions between the countries amid their escalating trade war. A US Navy vessel, the USS Decatur, was sailing “in the vicinity” of Gaven Reef on Sunday, when a Chinese destroyer confronted it with ...

Bloomberg Gaza-based staff of the United Nations agency serving Palestinian refugees began a two-day strike on Tuesday to protest the decision to fire workers and cut some programs due to a shortage of funding. Yousef Hamdouna, secretary general of the staff union at the UN Relief and Works Agency, said the strike was called to protest “the reduction of the ...

Bloomberg Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt stepped up his attack on the European Union over Brexit, saying the UK is “very angry” with the bloc’s attitude to the negotiations. With less than six months to go before Brexit, talks are stalled after the EU dismissed Prime Minister Theresa May’s blueprint for a new free trade area with the bloc that would ...

Bloomberg Serbian leader Aleksandar Vucic was to meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss how to push forward a deal with Kosovo after a plan to rework their borders faced international resistance. Vucic is seeking broad international support from the European Union and the US to mend relations with Kosovo—a precondition for both neighbours in their aspirations ...

Bloomberg Southeast Asian foreign ministers urged Myanmar to prosecute those responsible for a brutal military crackdown against its Muslim Rohingya minority, Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan told his country’s Parliament on Tuesday. Due to the political sensitivities surrounding the issue, foreign ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as Asean, met unaccompanied on the sidelines of the ...

Bloomberg Brazil’s far-right presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, received a significant boost in the latest opinion poll published just days ahead of Sunday’s general elections. The former Army captain rose four points to 31 percent in the Ibope survey released Monday evening, compared with 27 percent in the last poll Sept. 26. His nearest rival, Fernando Haddad, from the leftwing Workers’ ...

Bloomberg Russia’s oil production rose to a post-Soviet high last month as the country completely rolled back the output cuts it had agreed on with Opec, then pumped some more. The country produced a record 11.356 million barrels of oil and condensate a day in September, according to data released on Tuesday by the Energy Ministry’s CDU-TEK statistical unit. That’s ...

Bloomberg Iraq exported more than 4 million barrels a day for a second consecutive month in September as buyers sought alternative supplies to Iran ahead of US sanctions. Shipments from Opec’s No. 2 producer were 4.062 million barrels a day, the highest since November 2016 and compared with 4.061 million a day in August, according to Bloomberg calculations from tanker ...

Bloomberg In the race to solve a fuel-import crisis in Nigeria, Africa’s richest person faces competition from a swarm of tiny challengers. Billionaire Aliko Dangote is building a 650,000 barrel-a-day refinery in Nigeria that will help cut the nation’s $7 billion annual fuel-import bill. Such is the pressure on its finances, the government is pursuing another option, giving licenses to ...