Cairo / AFP Smoke was detected inside an EgyptAir plane shortly before it plunged into the Mediterranean with 66 people on board, investigators said on Saturday, offering clues but no answers about why it crashed. The Airbus A320 had been flying from Paris to Cairo early Thursday when it plummeted and turned full circle before vanishing from radar screens, …

  Sydney / AFP Families of victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was shot down over Ukraine in 2014, are suing President Vladimir Putin and Russia for Aus$10 million each in the European Court of Human Rights, The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Saturday. The compensation claim was filed with the Strasbourg-based court by Sydney legal firm LHD Lawyers …

  Colombo / AFP Foreign aid began arriving in Sri Lanka on Saturday, bringing help to half a million people who have been driven from their homes by heavy rains and landslides that have killed at least 71. The heaviest rains in a quarter of a century have pounded Sri Lanka since last weekend, triggering huge landslides that have buried some …

Amid hedgerows of computer screens in the joint operations center that runs the war against the IS, Marine Brig. Gen. Bill Mullen explains the complex assault that drove the extremist fighters last week from the strategic town of Rutbah at the western edge of Anbar province. The battle showed how the campaign against the IS, which has had a slow …

  Japan’s plan to tame bullish Yen to sensitise its exports has drawn criticism from G7 ministers’ meeting, which brought together finance ministers and central bank governors from Britain, Canada, Italy, France, Germany, Japan and the US, plus leaders from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and European Union. Tokyo’s repeated threats to intervene in forex markets to reverse a …

Sara Hsu SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS China’s peer-to-peer (P2P) lending sector has witnessed expansion in recent years, despite periodic clampdowns on excessive risk. This has led to on-again, off-again surges in activity in this shadow banking sector. In some cases, criminal activity has highlighted the perils of borrowing or lending through this industry, but the loan availability for borrowers and …

Vu Minh Khanh was in Washington last week to address a congressional hearing. As the wife of the respected Vietnamese human rights lawyer Nguyen Van Dai, she vividly recalled her husband’s ordeal. He has been missing ever since he was arrested last December. She knows he is in police custody but is unaware of his whereabouts and fears for his …

  The U.S.-Japan and U.S.-ROK alliances have survived the Cold War, drastic regime change, and global economic turmoil, but can they withstand a full-on assault by U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump? Trump’s fiery, and even racist, rhetoric has U.S. allies worried about the future direction of U.S. foreign policy and presence in East Asia. When examining alliances, scholars and alliance …

  Google’s annual developers’ conference, known as the I/O, has now become what Apple’s events have ceased to be: A window into the near future of consumer tech. This year’s event revealed two important bets Google is making for the post-smartphone era. The short version of Google’s (for the sake of convenience I will keep calling it that rather than …

  Abu Dhabi / WAM The e-Dirham system, launched and managed by the Ministry of Finance (MoF) in partnership with the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, recently received the Certification of Compliance in Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). This certification conferred by Trustwave Holdings, is particularly for the system’s 11 components and for the security compliance of its …