Saddha Batolni / AFP A Pakistani plane carrying 48 people crashed on Wednesday in the country’s mountainous north and burst into flames killing everyone on board, authorities said, in one of the deadliest aviation accidents in the country’s history. Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Flight PK661 came down while travelling from the city of Chitral to Islamabad, the civil aviation ...

  Bangkok / AFP Thai authorities are investigating the BBC over a Thai-language profile of the nation’s new king, officials said on Wednesday, after the article outraged ultra-royalists in a country where criticism of the monarchy is outlawed. Thailand’s harsh royal defamation law has been used to jail scores of critics and spawned a culture of self-censorship across the media, academia ...

  Meureudu / AFP Rescuers scrabbled through the rubble of shattered homes, shops and mosques in search of survivors on Wednesday after a powerful earthquake struck western Indonesia and killed at least 97 people. The shallow 6.5-magnitude quake struck Pidie Jaya district in Aceh province at dawn as many in the mainly Muslim region on Sumatra island were preparing for morning ...

  Brussels / AFP Damaging economic sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine crisis must be kept in place to force Moscow to meet its Minsk ceasefire commitments, NATO head Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday. “The international community must keep pressure on Russia to respect its obligations, especially (when) the security situation in eastern Ukraine remains so serious,” Stoltenberg said ...

  Seoul / AFP Friends and associates of the woman at the heart of a corruption scandal engulfing South Korean President Park Geun-Hye told a hearing on Wednesday her influence extended to everything from Park’s wardrobe to senior appointments. The impeachment-threatened Park has been accused of letting long-time confidante Choi Soon-Sil meddle in a wide range of state affairs, and ...

  The Hague / AFP Prosecutors urged UN judges on Wednesday to jail Ratko Mladic for life, accusing the former Serb commander of a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing to create a Greater Serbia in the 1990s Balkans wars. “It would be… an insult to the victims, living and dead, and an affront to justice to impose any sentence other than ...

  MANAMA / WAM The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states and the United Kingdom have agreed to launch the GCC-UK Strategic Partnership to foster closer relations in all fields, including political, defence, security, and trade. This was announced on Wednesday, following the first GCC-UK Summit in Manama, which was presided over by His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, ...

  Abu Dhabi / WAM The 2017 edition of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) is on track to be the most important in the event’s history for driving commercially focused action, said industry leaders at a press event on Wednesday. Hosted by Masdar, the forthcoming ADSW theme is ‘Practical Steps Towards a Sustainable Future’. The week’s anchor event, the World Future ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business Dubai Wholesale City, a global integrated wholesale trading hub and member of TECOM Group, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with The China Commodity City (CCC) Group, the world’s largest exporter of goods, in China’s Zhejiang Province. Aiming to build a long-term strategic relationship between the two parties and leverage possible future collaborations between ...

  Manama / WAM British Prime Minister, Theresa May confirmed that the UK will participate in Dubai’s Expo 2020. The Prime Minister informed His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, during a meeting in the margins of the annual meeting of leaders from the GCC currently being held in the Bahraini capital, ...