DUBAI / EMIRATES BUSINESS The Middle East and North Africa’s leading shopping mall, retail and leisure pioneer, Majid Al Futtaim, on Wednesday unveiled a strategic development plan that will see the company increase its total investment in the UAE by AED 30 billion by 2026, taking its total investment in the country to AED 48 billion. The investments, which ...

  Tokyo / AFP Japan’s prime minister said on Wednesday that he will delay a consumption tax hike that threatened the fragile economy, but analysts said the move highlighted his failure to spark growth. Shinzo Abe announced his decision to members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in televised remarks ahead of a press briefing expected around 6:00 pm ...

  London / AFP India’s Tata Steel on Wednesday completed the part-sale of its European assets, safeguarding 4,800 jobs, but thousands more are threatened with no buyer found for the rest of the business. Tata Steel UK announced completion of the sale of its European piping business to Greybull Capital, a British-based family investment firm for an undisclosed sum. The ...

  Beijing / bloomberg Upstart smartphone maker Xiaomi has bought nearly 1,500 patents from US technology giant Microsoft, the companies and reports said, as part of a “global partnership” that will help the Chinese firm expand outside its home market. The patents cover wireless communications, video, cloud and multi-media technologies, Bloomberg News quoted a Xiaomi spokeswoman as saying. “This will ...

  Jakarta / Tribune News Service Farmers in the Pelalawan village of Pelalawan, Pangkalan Kerinci, used to employ the slash and burn method when it came to clearing their land for farmland or rice fields. That approach triggered massive fires as the soil in the village was combustible, especially with peatland at a depth of around 3-9 meters. In a ...

  Paris / AFP Transport chaos hit France again on Wednesday, just nine days ahead of Euro 2016, as railway workers went on strike in the latest salvo of a months-long battle between the government and unions. Between a third and half of France’s trains were expected to grind to a halt, as workers from railway operator SNCF launched their ...

  BEIJING / AFP Chinese President Xi Jinping urged all parties to disputes on the Korean Peninsula to maintain calm and restraint in a meeting on Wednesday with a high-ranking North Korean envoy that appeared aimed at easing strains in the bilateral relationship. Xi’s meeting with Ri Su Yong, head of the ruling Workers Party of Korea’s international department, came ...

  Brussels / AFP The European Union on Wednesday formally warned Poland’s rightwing government that it must roll back its overhaul of the top Polish court, which critics warn endangers its independence. “We have decided to send a rule-of-law opinion to the Polish authorities,” European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans said. “Despite our best efforts we have not been ...

  Manila / AFP Media groups expressed outrage on Wednesday at Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s endorsement of killing corrupt journalists, warning his comments could incite more murders in a nation already one of the world’s most dangerous for reporters. Duterte, who won last month’s elections in a landslide after pledging to kill tens of thousands of criminals, told reporters on ...

Near Fallujah / AFP Iraqi forces struggled on Wednesday to break into Fallujah city centre where hundreds of fighters from the IS group and some 50,000 increasingly desperate civilians were holed up. Fighting also raged hundreds of kilometres further up the Euphrates Valley in Syria, as US-backed Kurdish and Arab fighters opened a new front against the extremists in the ...