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ABU DHABI / WAM The Federal Tax Authority (FTA), announced that the sale and possession of all types of cigarettes not bearing ‘Digital Tax Stamps’ will be prohibited across UAE markets starting August 1. In a press statement released on Wednesday, the Authority explained that two types of Digital Tax Stamps were approved, the first of which is ‘Red’ and ...

Dubai / Emirates Business The DIFC Courts has announced changes to the rules of wills registrations, which will now accommodate all resident and investor assets across the Emirates, as well as assets held outside the UAE. Effective from July 1, the Courts’ Wills Service Centre also confirmed that existing wills registered with the Courts can be amended free-of-charge until August ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM The Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation has received a thank you letter from the Director-General of the Agriculture and Irrigation Office in Yemen, Fahmi Al-Ghathanim, in which he expressed his appreciation to the Foundation for its conservation efforts in the Socotra archipelago. In the letter, the Yemeni official detailed the UAE’s efforts in the conservation ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM Japanese companies are making a strong presence in the UAE, with their number increasing 23.44 percent in the past six years, according to a top Japanese diplomat. “The number of Japanese corporations in the UAE has slowly but steadily been increasing; from 273 in 2013 to 337 in 2018,” Akihiko Nakajima, the Japanese Ambassador to the ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM The Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development announced that the registration for the third edition of the ‘Pitch@Palace UAE’ competition, aimed at providing Emirati entrepreneurs with an opportunity to pitch their innovative projects before a global audience in Abu Dhabi has now been extended to August 20. Mouza Al Nasri, Acting Chief Executive Officer, Khalifa Fund, emphasised ...

Bloomberg North Korea greeted US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s latest trip to Asia with twin signals of frustration: test-firing missiles and withholding top diplomats from a chance at nuclear talks. Kim Jong-un’s regime fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea on Wednesday, the South Korean military said, the second such test in less than a week. The launches ...

Bloomberg Russian authorities raided the homes of people involved in a Moscow demonstration, stepping up a crackdown that threatens to be the harshest since officials crushed large-scale protests in 2012. Interior Ministry officers and Federal Security Service agents were searching for information on electronic devices that proved participation in the unauthorised protest or how it was organised, the state-run Tass ...

Bloomberg US President Donald Trump plans to outline his “deal of the century” Middle East peace plan to Arab leaders at a summit before Israel’s September 17 election, Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will invite the leaders to the summit at the Camp David presidential retreat during his swing through the Middle East ...

Bloomberg In its latest effort to increase pressure on Taiwan, Beijing said it will suspend a programme that allowed individual tourists from 47 Chinese cities to travel to Taiwan, citing the current state of relations between the two sides. The ban is effective from August 1, according to a statement from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and means that ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong’s decision to charge dozens of protesters with a colonial-era rioting charge that carries a 10-year prison term suggested that the government was heeding calls for a tougher response to the unrest. The arrests of 49 people — including 44 on the rioting charge — drew outrage from pro-democracy groups and spurred hundreds of demonstrators to surround a ...