Ankara / AFP Turkish President RecepTayyipErdogan has signed into law a reform lifting immunity for lawmakers, his office said, in a move critics believe is aimed at evicting pro-Kurdish MPs from parliament. Erdogan’s approval came late Tuesday, less than a month after parliament adopted the highly controversial reform, which lifts the immunity of 138 deputies from all parties who ...

  Jakarta / AFP Indonesia plans to quadruple maximum jail terms for animal poachers and traffickers in a major overhaul of wildlife crime laws, but environmentalists expressed scepticismon Wednesday the changes would be effective. Maximum sentences for poaching and trading protected animals will be increased from five years to 20 under the new legislation proposed by the environment and forestry ...

  Strasbourg / AFP More than 10,000 people have died crossing the Mediterranean to Europe since 2014, the UN said Tuesday, as the EU unveiled fresh plans to stem the migrant flow from Africa. Following a rash of deadly shipwrecks that have claimed hundreds of lives, the UN refugee agency said the number of deaths at sea had risen sharply, with ...

  Geneva / AFP Eritrea’s government has systematically committed crimes against humanity in the last 25 years, with top officials bearing direct responsibility, UN investigators said on Wednesday. The second report of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) on human rights also said there was a “rule of law vacuum” in the secretive Horn of Africa nation. Independent UN ...

  Vienna / AFP Austria’s anti-immigration Freedom Party filed on Wednesday a legal challenge two weeks after its candidate lost out by the narrowest of margins on being elected the EU’s first far-right president, alleging “terrifying” irregularities. “We are not sore losers. This is about protecting the very foundations of democracy,” FPOe leader Heinz-Christian Strache said in Vienna as he ...

  Wellington / AFP Prime Minister John Key will this week become the first New Zealand leader to visit Fiji in a decade, saying the military coup that soured Wellington-Suva relations for years is “ancient history”. But human rights groups say worrying legacies of dictatorship remain in the Pacific island nation, despite elections in 2014 that resulted in a landslide ...

  LONDON / EMIRATES BUSINESS United Arab Emirates is ranked as the 61st country in the Global Peace Index (GPI) 2016 released on Wednesday, and is ranked third out of the 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa region. The tenth edition of the GPI highlights a stark and growing inequality in global levels of peacefulness as the ...

  RAS AL-KHAIMAH / WAM Julphar, Gulf Pharmaceutical Industries, has launched its latest Continuous Medical Education, CME, programme for pharmacists, “JUMP” (Julphar Updates on Modern Pharmacy) at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Dubai. The launch event was attended by over 200 pharmacists from the UAE and was an opportunity for to address the audience on pharmacists’ responsibility in the art ...

  ABU DHABI / WAM His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, exchanged greetings over the phone with His Highness Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Crown Prince of the State of Kuwait, and the Grand Imam Dr Ahmed Al-Tayeb of Al-Azhar Al-Sharif, on the occasion ...

  DUBAI / Emirates Business The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) scooped the ‘Leadership Award for Outstanding Contribution towards Building Smart Cities Award’. Abdullah Ali Al Madani, CEO of RTA’s Corporate Technology Support Services Sector, received the award in recognition of his outstanding performance and strenuous efforts towards transforming Dubai into the smartest city worldwide within three years. An announcement ...