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PALMA DE MALLORCA/ WAM RIU Hotels & Resorts and Dubai master developer Nakheel have formally signed their business partnership agreement. Ali Rashid Lootah, Chairman of one of the Middle East’s biggest developers travelled to Mallorca to sign the joint venture agreement with Luis Riu, CEO of RIU Hotels. Thanks to this partnership, the chain’s first hotel in Dubai will become ...

ABU DHABI / WAM Dr Amal Abdullah Al Qubaisi, Speaker of Federal National Council (FNC) has expressed the FNC’s wishes for every success for the new government in the performance of its tasks and in foreseeing the future of the country, stressing that the FNC and the government constitute a working team with an aim to achieve further progress. He ...

Bloomberg Vienna’s Hotel Imperial, once Adolf Hitler’s favorite and now used by stars including Madonna and Mick Jagger, was bought by Dubai’s Al Habtoor Group LLC for $78.8 million. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. sold the 138-room property, which will continue to operate under its Luxury Collection brand, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company said in a statement on Tuesday. All ...

DUBAI / WAM H.H. Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority and Chairman of Emirates Group, on Tuesday honoured the winners of the 8th Dubai Award for Sustainable Transport (DAST) 2015. The Award is one of the key initiatives developed by the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) to leverage the public and private sectors to ...

ABU DHABI / WAM The Federal National Council on Tuesday passed a federal bill regulating the responsibilities of the National Media Council. According to Article 2 of the bill, the NMC is a federal government body affiliated with the Cabinet and has a corporate character and a mandate to undertake the responsibilities of overseeing and supervising media in the UAE. ...

DUBAI / WAM Ahmed Mahboob Musabih, Director of Dubai Customs (DC) and the Consul-General of the Republic of Korea in Dubai, Heo Nam Duk, have exchanged views on issues of common interest and on the possibilities of strengthening cooperation and creating better coordination in Customs processes. This came at meeting held at DC head office, in the presence of Faisal ...

DUBAI / Emirates Business Wadi.com, the fastest growing e-commerce platform of the Middle East, has raised USD 67m with Al Tayyar Travel Group as the lead investor ten months after its launch. The investment marks the largest series A funding in the tech history of the Middle East and will further accelerate the growth of the company. Wadi.com was started ...

Yangon / Bloomberg The European Union’s regulatory arm proposed more oversight of natural-gas contracts with Russia and other external suppliers as a part of a wider plan to boost energy security. The European Commission is also seeking closer regional cooperation among the EU’s 28 nations to prevent supply disruptions, under its winter gas package presented in Brussels on Tuesday. The ...

Yangon / Bloomberg Over 3,000 people have fled their homes in northern Myanmar following clashes between two ethnic rebel groups, the United Nations said Tuesday, raising fears the government’s fragile peace efforts could be fracturing. Heavy fighting in the northern state of Shan broke out last week between the Restoration Council for Shan State (RCSS) and the Ta’ang National Liberation ...

Bloomberg Two years after Russian President Vladimir Putin swiped Crimea, the fallout from his Ukrainian land grab continues to reverberate through nearby budgets. It’s most visible in Lithuania, whose split from the Soviet Union was among the bloodiest of the communist collapse. The government there raised defense spending by more than 30 percent in 2015, outdoing NATO’s 27 other members. ...