Author: Arshad Shaheen

Lebanon’s judiciary’s disciplinary council on Thursday removed from office Judge Ghada Aoun, who brought charges against the country’s central bank governor and commercial banks, the local al-Jadeed TV reported. While the reasons for dismissing Aoun were not made public, she has been reported to have faced complaints over her conduct. According to al-Jadeed report, around 12 complaints against Judge Aoun were reviewed by three Judges in the judiciary’s disciplinary council before making this decision. The National News Agency reported later in the day that Judge Aoun appealed against the decision of the judiciary’s disciplinary council. Last year, Aoun charged Central…

Qatar said its position regarding normalizing ties with Syria remains unchanged, Qatar’s foreign ministry said on Sunday. In a statement carried by the QNA, Majed bin Mohammad Al Ansari, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized that Qatar always seeks to support achieving Arab consensus and will not be an obstacle to that. Yet he said the official position of Qatar on normalization with “the Syrian regime” is a decision linked primarily to progress in the political solution that fulfills the aspirations of the Syrian people. Qatar will “work with the Arab brothers in achieving the aspirations of the…

Qatar has started to use AI speech-to-text technology in public prosecution to boost efficiency, local media reported Thursday. The system will be used in criminal investigations and editing legal documents in addition to manual input. It will speedily extract useful information from speech and put them down in text, according to Gulf Times’ report. It would enable the Qatar Public Prosecution to better play its role and ensure the timely delivery of justice, the report added. Testing of the system in certain prosecution scenarios showed it has high accuracy, the report cited the public prosecution as saying.

The Qatari Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are expected to reopen their embassies in the coming weeks. Majed bin Mohammad al-Ansari, the ministry’s spokesperson, made the announcement at a weekly press briefing, according to the ministry’s statement. He said there was positive progress in the meetings of the technical committees that work to facilitate the reopening of their embassies. “The issue is currently procedural and it is expected to reopen the embassies in weeks,” he noted. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic ties with Qatar in 2017 and imposed…

The Qatari-Bahraini Follow-up Committee on Wednesday decided to restore diplomatic relations between Qatar and Bahrain in line with the principles of the United Nations Charter and the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, the Qatar News Agency (QNA) said. The decision was made during the second meeting of the committee at the headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the QNA said. Both sides have said that the decision stems from a mutual desire to foster the development of bilateral relations and promote integration and unity within the…

China’s energy and chemical giant Sinopec on Wednesday signed a partnership agreement with QatarEnergy, the state-owned petroleum company of Qatar, to participate in the North Field East (NFE) expansion project. The agreement was signed by Ma Yongsheng, chairman of Sinopec, and Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, the minister of State for Energy Affairs and CEO of QatarEnergy, in a ceremony held in the Qatari capital of Doha. The NFE project, with a total investment of 28.75 billion U.S. dollars, aims to raise Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity from the current 77 million metric tonnes per annum (MTPA) to 110 MTPA,…

Pension manager Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec financed its stake in a Dubai port with $900 million in private debt, tapping an infrequently-used market for deals in the Middle East. Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. arranged the private-bond sale, according to people with knowledge of the deal, who declined to be identified as they are not authorized to discuss the matter. The debt will be primarily used to refinance bridge loans put in place to finance CDPQ’s 21.9% stake in the entity controlling Jebel Ali Port — the biggest in the Middle East — and two…

The center of gravity in the global oil-refining complex is shifting sharply eastward — and that’s spurring a boom in the business of building ships to haul fuel around the globe. As many as 38 mid-range tankers have been ordered this year, marking one of the busiest quarters since 2013, according to ship broker Braemar. The number of ships assigned international serial numbers — another gauge of orders — is at 28 this year, closing in on the total of 31 for all of 2022, according to ship broker Simpson Spence Young. Inefficient refineries in the US and Europe shut…

Five people were killed and four wounded in a bomb attack on Monday in Iraq’s eastern province of Diyala, a local security source said. Major Alaa al-Saadi from the Diyala police told Xinhua that a roadside bomb planted by unidentified armed men detonated in the evening near a civilian car outside the town of Maqdadiyah, 100 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Iraqi security forces sealed off the area and launched an investigation into the incident. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far. Sporadic attacks still haunt Iraq despite an improvement in the security situation after…

The grand ziggurat is seen in the archeological site of Dur Kurigalzu, west of Baghdad, Iraq, on March 5, 2023. (Xinhua/Khalil Dawood) The grand ziggurat is seen in the archeological site of Dur Kurigalzu, west of Baghdad, Iraq, on March 5, 2023. (Xinhua/Khalil Dawood) The grand ziggurat is seen in the archeological site of Dur Kurigalzu, west of Baghdad, Iraq, on March 5, 2023. (Xinhua/Khalil Dawood)