UAE

DUBAI (Reuters) - Emirates Airlines President Tim Clark said on Wednesday Boeing’s 777x jet was unlikely to be delivered before the first quarter of 2024.

Boeing has been developing the widebody jet, a new version of its 777 series, with the goal of releasing it in late 2023, already three years later than planned.

“The 777x was due to come in June of last year, Now it’s unlikely to be, I think, before the first quarter of 2024,” Clark told a virtual summit by aviation consultancy CAPA.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates was set to swing into orbit around Mars in the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission Tuesday, the first of three robotic explorers arriving at the red planet over the next week and a half.

The orbiter, called Amal, Arabic for Hope, traveled 300 million miles in nearly seven months to get to Mars with the goal of mapping its atmosphere throughout each season.

08 Feb 2021; MEMO: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) established an electronic spy network that included "former members of the US National Security Agency, with the aim of spying on Qatar", The New York Times reported.

The US daily said the aim of the hacking network was to prove Qatar's terrorism financing allegations and Qatar's funding to the Muslim Brotherhood group.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Three young Saudi men who faced death sentences for acts they were accused of committing as minors have been handed a 10-year prison sentence instead, the Saudi Human Rights Commission said.

Ali al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoun and Abdullah al-Zaher, youth from Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority, were detained separately on charges stemming from their participation in anti-government Shiite protests over discrimination that rocked the country’s eastern province in 2011-2012.

DUBAI (Reuters) - The Saudi-led military coalition engaged in Yemen said it had intercepted and destroyed an armed drone on Sunday launched by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement towards southern Saudi Arabia.

The bomb-laden unmanned aerial vehicle aimed to target “civilians and civilian objects”, coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki said in a statement carried on Saudi state media.

DUBAI (Reuters) - The United Nations special envoy on Yemen is visiting Iran for the first time to discuss Yemen’s crisis, Iranian state TV reported on Sunday, days after Washington announced an end to its support for Saudi-led military operations in Yemen.

A Saudi Arabia-led coalition intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015, backing government forces fighting Iran-aligned Houthi rebels. Saudi Arabia and Iran compete for influence across the Middle East, from Syria to Iraq and Yemen.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday that Tehran’s “final and irreversible” decision was to return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal only if Washington lifts sanctions on the Islamic Republic, Iranian state TV reported.

The deal between Iran and six major powers limited Iran’s uranium enrichment activity to make it harder for Tehran to develop nuclear arms - an ambition Iran has long denied having - in return for the easing of U.S. and other sanctions.

DUBAI (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone to Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister on Friday for the first time, Saudi state media said early on Saturday.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud congratulated Blinken on taking up his new appointment last week and said the kingdom hopes to work with the United States to face common challenges and maintain regional stability, state news agency SPA reported.

Jerusalem, Feb 6 (AP-PTI) The United Arab Emirates drastically reduced its funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in 2020, the year it signed a US-brokered normalisation accord with Israel that was heavily criticized by the Palestinian Authority.

The agency known as UNRWA provides education, health care and other vital services to some 5.7 million registered Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, mainly descendants of the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven out of Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation.

03 Feb 2021; MEMO: US President Joe Biden yesterday reimposed tariffs on aluminium imports from the United Arab Emirates, reversing a last-minute decision by his predecessor, Donald Trump.