DUBAI / Emirates Business First Avenue, the new shopping mall and hotel planned for Dubai’s Motor City, signed up leading retailer Carrefour as a key anchor tenant ahead of the project’s launch early next year. As a recent report shows that Dubai’s retail market will surpass US$52 billion in sales by 2020 and the government aims to attract 20 ...

  NEW YORK / AFP President-elect Donald Trump and his team are battling back against charges of chaos and infighting as they race to set up an administration. The incoming Republican administration got an unlikely boost from outgoing Vice President Joe Biden, who said that “no administration is ready on Day One.” Trump stayed out of the public eye on Wednesday, ...

  Seoul/ AFP South Korean President Park Geun-Hye will not be ready to appear before prosecutors until next week despite their demand to question her sooner over a snowballing political scandal, her lawyer said on Thursday. Park, who would be the first sitting president to be interrogated in a criminal case, has seen her approval ratings plunge in recent weeks, with ...

  Kuala Lumpur/ AFP Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak warned on Thursday violence would not be tolerated at a major anti-government demonstration planned for the weekend. Leading NGO and civil-society alliance Bersih called the rally in the capital to demand the scandal-tainted prime minister’s resignation. Bersih has urged its supporters to converge on Kuala Lumpur in its signature yellow T-shirts on ...

  Tokyo/ AFP Japan’s premier Shinzo Abe headed to New York on Thursday for talks with Donald Trump, the first leader to meet with the president-elect whose campaign pledges provoked anxiety over US foreign policy. The brash billionaire is set to receive Abe at his Trump Tower headquarters on Thursday evening, in an encounter that will be closely watched for hints ...

  Davao / AFP Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to follow in Russia’s footsteps on Thursday and pull his country out of the International Criminal Court, incensed at foreign criticism of his deadly drug war. Russia formally withdrew its signature to the ICC’s founding Rome Statute on Wednesday, calling the tribunal’s work “one-sided and inefficient”. Speaking in his home town ...

  Paris /AFP Donald Trump’s election looms large over the race for president of America’s oldest ally France, where mainstream candidates all style themselves as uniquely qualified to prevent a similar upset by the far right. On Thursday evening, right-wing candidates was expected to take part in the last of three debates ahead of the first round on Sunday of ...

  Moscow / AFP Russia’s state communications watchdog said on Thursday it had ordered internet providers to block the LinkedIn professional networking site after a court ruled it was breaching a law on storing users’ data. “The social networking site LinkedIn has been added to a register of violators… and submitted for blocking by internet operators,” the Roskomnadzor watchdog said ...

  Reuters Iran aims to ramp up wheat exports to clear a hefty surplus supported by a government self-sufficiency drive, but may continue to import some wheat to meet the quality requirements of local millers, an industry group said. The government has prioritised wheat — a heavily consumed staple in Iran — in domestic grain production in the face of ...

  Reuters Norwegian oil and gas company DNO is to study the development of an oil field in Iran, becoming the second western company after France’s Total to sign an energy deal in the country since the lifting of sanctions. DNO said it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to conduct a study ...