Abu Dhabi / Emirates Business The Landmark Group, the Middle East’s leading retail and hospitality conglomerate, pivoted its E-commerce strategy to offer a simpler, more useful and more customer-friendly online shopping experience. On November 24, the Landmark Group’s Web Team replaced the existing online portal LandmarkShops.com with seven individual, brand websites – HomeCentre.com, BabyshopStores. com, MaxFashion.com, SplashFashions.com, ShoeMartStores. com, ...

  MARRAKECH / WAM A delegation headed by Alya Al Mazroui, Manager of the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science (UAEREP), concluded a series of productive meetings with leading policy makers and researchers at COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco. Running from November 6 -18, the Conference of Parties (COP22) in Morocco marked the maiden participation to a COP event for ...

  Aleppo /AFP Syria’s rebels lost all the northern neighbourhoods of their stronghold in east Aleppo on Monday, as the army made significant advances in its offensive to recapture the entire city. The regime’s gains have prompted an exodus of desperate civilians, most fleeing to districts held by the government or Kurdish forces, others heading south into areas still under ...

  Tel aviv / AFP Israel’s air force targeted gunman linked to the IS group in Syria overnight, the army said on Monday, after they fired on an Israeli soldier in the occupied Golan Heights. “Overnight the (Israeli air force) targeted an abandoned UN building that has been used by the IS as an operations centre along the border in the ...

  Ankara / AP The UN’s expert on torture was on Monday beginning a week-long visit to Turkey following claims prisoners have been ill-treated in the wake of the July failed coup. Nils Melzer, special rapporteur on torture, arrived in Turkey on Sunday and will speak with alleged victims and inspect detention facilities, the United Nations in Ankara said. His visit, ...

  Bartalla / AFP An Iraqi officer shuffled through identity cards as he sat at a battered desk by the side of the dust-blown highway heading east from the city of Mosul. Six men in dirt-spattered tracksuits huddled nearby, waiting on a concrete slab, part of the latest convoy of civilians to flee fighting as government forces try to oust IS ...

  Imamnazar /AFP Asian neighbours Turkmenistan and Afghanistan on Monday opened the first section of a $2 billion link connecting their two countries by rail for the first time and set to extend to Tajikistan. Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and his Afghan counterpart Ashraf Ghani attended the colourful celebrations featuring Turkmen traditional dancers. A train pulling 46 freight cars completed ...

  Kolkata / AP Tens of thousands of people turned out on Monday for nationwide protests against India’s controversial ban on high-value banknotes, which opposition party organisers say has caused a “financial emergency”. India is still reeling from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s shock decision nearly three weeks ago to pull 86 percent of the currency from circulation overnight, triggering a chronic ...

  Dhaka /AFP Multiple boats packed with Rohingya refugees fleeing violence in Myanmar were turned back by Bangladesh border guards on Monday, despite appeals by the country’s opposition to provide shelter to the persecuted Muslim minority. Thousands of desperate Rohingya from Myanmar’s western Rakhine state have flooded over the border into Bangladesh in the last week, bringing with them horrifying ...

  For a man who had been reported dead so many times before, and whose vision of the world had shrunk long ago to the size of a t-shirt, Fidel Castro triggered a remarkable commotion when he died this weekend at age 90. Nowhere were the paeans more heartfelt than in Latin America. “A great one has died,” wrote Ecuador’s ...