Dubai / Emirates Business Global Village, the region’s leading family destination for cultural entertainment and shopping, held an entertaining and educational activation for more than 200 orphan children at Awqaf and Minors Affairs Foundation Headquarters in Dubai on June 20. The activation comes under Global Village’s continuous engagement with the Arab Reading Challenge as well as its diverse range ...

  Dubai / WAM The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has marked World Environment Day by holding an array of environmental events. The RTA’s Energy and Green Economy Team held several awareness workshops to highlight the concept of green economy and energy saving. During the events, several departments and teams were congratulated for their excellent performance in implementing RTA environmental policies ...

  Amman / AFP A car bomb outside a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan killed six soldiers on Tuesday in a remote desert area where hundreds have been held for screening for suspected links to the IS group. There was no immediate claim for the bombing but Jordan is a leading member of the US-led coalition fighting IS in neighbouring Syria ...

  Kuala Lumpur / AFP A Malaysian opposition politician who worked on native land rights issues was shot dead on Tuesday six weeks after a failed run for a local assembly seat. Bill Kayong, 43, was gunned down in his pickup truck while stopped at a traffic light in the small city of Miri in Sarawak state, police said. Kayong ...

  BEIRUT / AP The IS group has launched a counteroffensive in Syria’s northern province of Raqqa, retaking wide areas the militants recently lost to government troops. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday that the government forces have lost all territories they gained in Raqqa province since launching their offensive in early June. The IS-linked Aamaq ...

  BAGHDAD / AP A senior Iraqi military commander says about 2,500 IS militants have been killed during a month-long offensive to recapture the city of Fallujah. The counterterrorism forces’ chief in the operation, Lt. General Abdul-Wahab Al Saadi, told the local al-Sumaria TV late on Monday that the number of IS fighters inside Fallujah ranged between 3,500 to 4,000 ...

  Dubai / AFP Iran has warned Bahrain that it is fanning armed rebellion and “will pay the price” after an escalating crackdown on the country’s Shiite majority saw a top cleric stripped of citizenship. Washington and the United Nations have also raised concerns about moves by the Sunni-ruled kingdom against Shiites, who account for some 70 percent of the ...

  Kandahar / AFP Taliban on Tuesday kidnapped around two dozen people after pulling them off buses in southern Afghanistan, officials said, the latest in series of abductions on the country’s increasingly dangerous highways. The pre-dawn incident in Washer district of Helmand province comes a day after militants killed more than 20 people, including 14 Nepali security guards, in a ...

  Brussels / AFP EU ambassadors agreed to roll over damaging economic sanctions against Russia for six months in the absence of any progress on resolving the Ukraine conflict, European sources said on Tuesday. The measures target the oil, financial and defence sectors of the Russian economy and were first imposed after the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 ...

Seoul / AFP North Korea appears to be readying another test of a powerful, new medium-range missile, following a series of failures for a ballistic weapons programme that aspires to threaten the US mainland, multiple reports said on Tuesday. Japanese and South Korean media quoted official sources as saying North Korea looked to have deployed a so-called Musudan missile near ...