News

Bloomberg The World Economic Forum (WEF) is looking at sites in countries less affected by Covid-19 than Switzerland to replace Lucerne for the meeting scheduled to take place next May, according to the Schweiz am Wochenende newspaper. The Swiss newspaper, which didn’t say the source of the information, also published an interview with WEF founder, Klaus Schwab, who said the ...

Bloomberg The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) killed a proposal to allow in-flight voice calls via mobile phones, ending its examination of an idea that evoked fears of air rage from passengers trapped beside jabbering seat mates. The idea drew “strong opposition” from pilots and flight attendants, the agency said in a four-paragraph order. The FCC in 2013 proposed allowing ...

Bloomberg Boris Johnson defended his decision to put most of England into the highest levels of pandemic restrictions even as the rate of infection across the UK fell to its lowest level since mid-August. Leading members of Johnson’s Conservative Party have said the government’s new three-tier system to contain the coronavirus when the national lockdown ends next week is too ...

Bloomberg The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating whether faulty suspension parts on nearly 115,000 Tesla Inc cars can result in damage to the tires. The agency said it received 43 complaints about 2015 through 2017 Tesla Model S and 2016 through 2017 Model X vehicles. NHTSA said 32 of the complaints involve failures that occurred during parking ...

Bloomberg England’s luxury stores will have more than Christmas sales to worry about when they reopen next week. Many fear a planned tax change related to Brexit could hurt business even more than Covid-19 lockdowns. Retailers are calling on UK Finance Minister Rishi Sunak to reverse a decision to abolish a perk for shoppers from China, the Middle East, the ...

ABU DHABI / WAM Abu Dhabi’s Emergency, Crisis and Disasters Committee for Covid-19 pandemic has approved special measures for participants in the Phase III clinical trials of the Covid-19 vaccine or the National Vaccination Programme for emergency use. The special measures apply to participants in the vaccine trial immediately after their first dose. They apply to participants in the National ...

DUBAI / WAM Emirates has announced it completed an intensive programme to clear its backlog of refund requests which was caused by pandemic-related travel disruption. Over the seven-month period starting April, Emirates received, validated and processed nearly 1.7 million refund requests. This resulted in the airline returning AED6.3 billion refunds to its customers. Of this sum, AED4.7 billion was refunded ...

ABU DHABI / WAM Mohammed bin Ahmed Al Bowardi, Minister of State for Defence Affairs, and Yousef Mohammed Ali, Director of the President’s Office and Acting Minister of Defence of the Union of the Comoros, on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), via video conferencing, on joint cooperation in the defence and military fields. Al Bawardi said that the ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM The Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority, ADAFSA, has launched the “Agricultural Registry” project to build an accurate and comprehensive database for the agricultural sector in the Abu Dhabi Emirate. It will help estimate local production, update farm and farm owners’ data, and link such data directly to the databases of Abu Dhabi Digital Authority ...

DUBAI / WAM As part of the economic stimulus package announced by the Government of Dubai to alleviate the burden on businesses and help them navigate the challenges of Covid-19 pandemic, Dubai Customs launched an initiative offering 80 percent discount on fines for customs cases and violations detected or committed before March 31, 2020. The decision applies to uncollected customs ...