DUBAI: When Dareen and her family fled to Lebanon in 2014, escaping violence in their home city of Aleppo, northern Syria, she thought their displacement would last a year at most. Eight years on, she and her three children still reside in an informal settlement in Chtaura, near the Syrian border.

ABU DHABI: Emirates Falconers Club hosts on Monday a global conference on the role of indigenous people and local communities in linking intangible cultural heritage and wildlife conservation.
Based on the theme, “Sustainability and Heritage . . . A Reborn Aspiration,” the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center welcomes 24 young falconers (aged 18 to 30), representing 24 countries, to participate in the conference between Sept. 26 and Oct. 2, the Emirates News Agency reported.

RAMALLAH: Israel is deliberately impeding progress toward a two-state solution and can no longer be considered a reliable partner in the peace process, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the UN on Friday.

Israel had acted with “total impunity” against people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and Palestinians’ trust in the prospects for peace was “regressing,” he said.

“(Israel) is, through its premeditated and deliberate policies, destroying the two-state solution,” the Palestinian Authority president said in a speech to the UN General Assembly.

NEW YORK: Sudan’s ruling military general, who mounted a coup nearly a year ago, said he will not run in future elections for a civilian-led government, but offered no timeline on when a vote might happen in order for him to relinquish power.
Gen. Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan spoke with The Associated Press on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Thursday. It marked nearly one year after he mounted a coup that upended the Arabic-speaking African nation’s short-lived transition to democracy after three decades of repressive rule by strongman Omar Bashir.

NEW YORK CITY: Britain is bringing back VAT-free shopping for overseas visitors — including British expats — to boost its flagging retail sector, Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng said on Friday.

Kwarteng told Parliament the government would also replace the previous paper-based system with a digital one as soon as possible.

It is welcome news for British expats living in the Gulf who, along with foreign visitors, will be able to claim the value added tax they pay during visits home before they leave the country — as long as they can prove they live abroad.