Month: July 2013

A delegation of women from the UAE government, business and media recently visited Washington D.C. and New York City and met their peers in the US government to address common challenges in women’s issues.

The women led by Amal Al Qubaisi, first deputy speaker of the UAE Federal National Council, also took part in the annual Executive Board meeting of UN-Women.

During their visit, the Emirati delegation shared their experiences as women leaders working in a variety of sectors, and highlighted the UAE’s initiatives that promote women’s empowerment and equality.

The Al Dhabi lounge at the Abu Dhabi International Airport has been voted the best airport lounge in the Middle East and Africa in the Priority Pass 2013 Lounge of the Year Awards.

Nearly 60,000 Priority Pass members voted for the award, based on lounge quality including refreshments, staff, business facilities and overall ambience.

Now in their ninth year, the awards recognise excellence within Priority Pass’s network of over 600 partner-operated lounges worldwide.

Egypt’s newly-assigned caretaker president Adli Mansour has dismantled the Shura Council, the country’s upper house of parliament, in his first constitutional declaration, state media reported.

The interim president also issued a presidential decree appointing Mohamed Raafat Shehata as his adviser for security affairs and Mohamed Ahmed Farid as chief of the general intelligence agency, Xinhua said.

On Friday, Mansour appointed Ali Awad Saleh as the president’s constitutional advisor, and Mostafa Hegazy as his political advisor.

The civil war in Syria is harming the country’s agriculture sector and one-fifth of the population – around four million people – cannot produce or buy enough food, the UN has said.

And impending risks to Syrian crops threaten to worsen food shortages, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) warned in a joint report.

Syrian farmers are short of seeds and fertilisers they need to plant their next crop, and Syria will need to import 1.5 million metric tonnes of wheat for the 2013-14 season.

A feminist activist from the radical group Femen staged a topless protest at an Istanbul airport today to denounce Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s religious conservatism.

Wearing only mini-shorts and high heels, she performed her stunt inside Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport, on the Asian side of the bi-continental city.

The woman, with the words “Air Dictator” painted in red on her chest, brandished a banner representing a plane ticket that read “Erdogan, from: Istanbul to: Kabul”.

Police arrested her after the brief protest.

A defence lawyer in Bahrain says 29 protesters have been sentenced to one month in prison for trying to enter a heavily guarded area that was once the center of the Gulf nation’s anti-government uprising.

The court decision comes as some opposition groups, inspired by Egyptian crowds that helped topple President Mohammed Mursi, are calling for stepped-up protests.

Lawyer Mohamed al-Wasti said today the group was convicted of trying to bypass security cordons last year to reach Pearl Square, the hub of protests in early 2011.