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  Abu Dhabi / Emirates Business Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, announced an expanded codeshare agreement with Hong Kong Airlines, an internationally-acclaimed Skytrax 4-star airline, to give air travellers enhanced connections between Australasia, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America. The two airlines have obtained regulatory approval to codeshare on nine additional routes, bringing ...

  Bloomberg UK retail sales surged far more than economists expected in October as cooler weather boosted spending on winter fashions lines, sending clothing and footwear sales to the biggest increase in more than 2 1/2 years. The volume of goods sold in stores and online jumped 1.9 percent from September, when they rose 0.1 percent, the Office for National ...

  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc. is turning to merchants who sell on its marketplace for extra warehouse space, a less-costly way to expand inventory available for quick delivery. Inventory available for delivery within two business days expanded by 6 million items under the Seller Fulfilled Prime program, the company announced on Thursday. Amazon earlier this year introduced the program, which lets ...

  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 ...