UAE

30 Dec 2020; MEMO: The number of women addicted to alcohol and drugs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is on the rise, a top official at Dubai Police said citing social changes in the country.

Colonel Abdullah Matar Al-Khayat, manager of Hemaya International Centre at Dubai Police, said the majority of cases were girls who had travelled abroad with their friends without parental supervision.

DUBAI (Reuters) - A Saudi court on Monday sentenced prominent women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul to five years and eight months in prison, local media reported, in a trial that has drawn international condemnation and as Riyadh faces new U.S. scrutiny.

Hathloul, 31, has been held since 2018 following her arrest along with at least a dozen other women’s rights activist.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Gulf Arab foreign ministers will hold a virtual meeting hosted by Bahrain on Sunday ahead of an annual summit to discuss steps towards ending a diplomatic row that has undermined‮ ‬regional stability and thwarted Washington’s efforts to form a united front against Iran.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain severed diplomatic ties with Qatar in 2017, accusing it of backing “terrorist” groups. Doha denies the charge and accuses its neighbours of seeking to curtail its sovereignty.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Qatar’s foreign minister has called for a de-escalation of tension in the Gulf region and for dialogue between Arab countries and Iran, Al Jazeera reported on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and non-Gulf state Egypt severed diplomatic, trade and travel ties with Qatar in mid-2017 over accusations that Doha it supports terrorism, charges which Qatar denies.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates’ top diplomat has publicly acknowledged a so-far unexplained ban on visitors from Pakistan, which travel agents say also targets tourists and laborers from a dozen Muslim-majority countries amid the pandemic and the UAE’s normalization of ties with Israel.

17 Dec 2020; MEMO: Activists on Wednesday launched an online campaign to boycott the Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB) over its cooperation with Israel's Leumi Bank which is involved in settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Popular Campaign to Boycott Zionist Enterprises said on Twitter that ADIB has concluded an agreement with Leumi Bank; which is on the United Nations list of companies involved in illegal Israeli settlements, and called for a boycott.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran has begun construction on a site at its underground nuclear facility at Fordo amid tensions with the U.S. over its atomic program, satellite photos obtained Friday by The Associated Press show.

Iran has not publicly acknowledged any new construction at Fordo, whose discovery by the West in 2009 came in an earlier round of brinkmanship before world powers struck the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.

17 Dec 2020; MEMO: The UAE's tourism hotspot Dubai has witnessed a "remarkable tourism boom in the past two weeks" with more than 50,000 Israelis making the journey to visit it, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An oil tanker off Saudi Arabia’s port city of Jiddah suffered an explosion early Monday after being hit by “an external source,” a shipping company said, suggesting another vessel has come under attack off the kingdom amid its yearslong war in Yemen.

The Singapore-flagged BW Rhine saw all 22 sailors on board escape without injury, the BW Group said in a statement. The company warned it was possible some oil leaked out from the site of the blast.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Morocco’s normalisation of relations with Israel is a betrayal and a stab in the back of Palestine, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, an adviser to Iran’s parliamentary speaker, said on Friday.

Israel and Morocco agreed on Thursday to normalise relations in a deal brokered with U.S. help, making Morocco the fourth Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past four months.