DUBAI: Government stiffs creditors amid fears of global recession backlash

The chairman of Dubai's Supreme Fiscal Committee would like the world to know that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, everything is under control.

"Our intervention in Dubai World was carefully planned and reflects its specific financial position," said Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, following Dubai's surprise announcement Wednesday that it would freeze its own debt repayments in order to restructure Dubai World, its biggest investment holding company.

"This is a sensible business decision," said Maktoum, adding that Dubai's economic fundamentals are sound and ensure it will remain an attractive regional market.

Dubai's creditors, along with most of the global banking and financial community, seem to disagree. Oil prices dropped and world markets suffered steep losses amid widespread fears that Dubai's latest financial woes could cause a global economic backslide just as many markets were showing signs of recovery. In the United States, Wall Street opened with sharp losses.

"You can't just say to the world: 'I don't want to pay my debts,' " David Buik, senior partner at BGC Partners, told the BBC. "There is no income coming in from any of these properties. I think this is shocking P.R."

QATAR: Awash in oil and gas cash, Doha announces $25-billion rail system

Just two months after Dubai unveiled its plush metro system, Qatar announced it will build its own multibillion-dollar railway that will include a local metro in Doha, its capital, as well as freight and passenger trains to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia via the world's longest causeway.

The railway is expected to cost $25 billion and be completed by 2026, but officials are eager to have sections up and running by 2022, when Qatar hopes to host the World Cup, Reuters reported.

The deal between Qatari Diar, a real estate investment company owned by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, and the German transport company Deutsche Bahn was announced today. 

The contract comes against a background of increased spending on rail projects by the oil-rich Arab gulf states that is expected to exceed $100 billion.

-- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Photo: The west bay of Doha, Qatar. Credit: wikimedia commons

IRAN: Deceased airline executive's tale shows civil aviation challenges, dangers

Contrary to reports in the Iranian news media and this paper, the son of a well-known Aria Airlines executive who perished in a crash aboard one of his company's planes last summer is alive and well, and hoping to clear up some facts about his late dad.

The executive, Mehdi Dadpay, or Dadpei, was a retired U.S.-trained air force fighter pilot. 

After the revolution, he risked his liberty to return home, distinguishing himself as a commander of an Iranian air force unit fighting in the Iran-Iraq war. He later organized humanitarian interventions in disaster areas. All this earned him the "grudging respect" of the political leadership, his son Ali Dadpay says. 

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Named after famed scientist, robot readied for life of mall drudgery

He has facial expressions, speaks classical Arabic and wears elegant traditional robes. 

Perfect, scientists say, for directing hungry shoppers to the food court.

Students and faculty at United Arab Emirates University in Al-Ain have created what a team at the university's lab says is the world's first Arabic-speaking socially interactive robot.

Nicholas Mavrides, a professor of computer science, said the human-like Ibn Sina, named after the Islamic philosopher and scientist commonly known in English as Avicenna, said the robot could be used as a receptionist, salesman or shopping assistant at one of the Persian Gulf's many shopping malls.

"We're very close to being able to get him to work as a receptionist or a helper in a mall," he told Agence France Presse. "If we work on it in a group of five people, we will be able to develop those skills in six months to make him ready for full operations."

-- Los Angeles Times

Photo: Karim Sahib / AFP/Getty Images

LEBANON: Hezbollah chief denies links to allegedly crooked moneyman

It's turning into the biggest financial scandal to hit Lebanon in years, perpetrated by a businessman being dubbed  the nation's Bernie Madoff. 

Now, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah is weighing in on the topic amid allegations that Salah Ezzedine (pictured, at right) was a financier of the Shiite militant group and political organization. 

In a speech last night, Nasrallah said the party had nothing to do with Ezzedine, now in jail after allegedly losing $1.5 billion of investors' money in what some are calling a Ponzi scheme.

Ezzedine was a financier and owner of a publishing house close to Hezbollah. But Nasrallah denied allegations that Hezbollah leaders had invested huge unexplained sums with Ezzedine, who reportedly offered returns of between 25% and 55% to investors, luring families.as well as charities to pour cash into his company.

"I tell you that these are false allegations," he said. "These Hezbollah leaders own nothing of the funds that people claim they own." 

LEBANON: Local Bernie Madoff allegedly swindles Shiites, Hezbollah

Until recently Salah Ezzedine was a pillar of Lebanon's Shiite community. 

A successful and outwardly pious businessman, Ezzedine handled investments for thousands of people, from poor villagers in southern Lebanon to expatriate millionaires in West Africa, and even officials from the militant party Hezbollah.

But that all came crashing down last week when Ezzedine declared bankruptcy, prompting an investigation that revealed the shocking extent of his alleged fraud.

Local media reports now estimate that Ezzedine lost up to $1.5 billion of his clients' money. He's now being dubbed Lebanon's Bernie Madoff.

EGYPT: 'Iron Lady' captured after 22 years on the run

Twenty-two years after she fled the country to Greece to escape charges of forgery and embezzlement of bank loans, an Egyptian businesswoman was detained Friday morning at Cairo International Airport upon her return from Athens.

Hoda Abdel-Monem, who was known as "The Iron Lady" during the '80s, became famous for establishing her own real estate and contracting company, Hedico, and luring thousands of Egyptians to buy units in her heavily advertised housing developments. 

LEBANON: Security forces destroy 'one third' of hashish plantations

Most summers, if Lebanon isn’t paralyzed by war, civil strife or political crisis, security forces make a show of razing hashish fields in the fertile Bekaa Valley, an exercise in futility that leaves enough crops for the drug to remain the country’s top export. 

The raids are announced ahead of time, and those growers who haven’t been able to pay off the police have plenty of time to harvest a lucrative yield.

This year, peaceful elections and a record tourist season have perhaps emboldened the government to take a stronger stand against the drug trade. Police chief Ashraf Rifi boasted on Tuesday that security forces had destroyed about a third of the hashish plantations and will continue the campaign “until the remaining quantities have been eradicated."

IRAN: Ahmadinejad cuts wages raised before election

Tens of thousands of Iranians were in for a shock in recent days when they got their paychecks and found their wages had dropped back to the same level as before election season.

After boosting the salaries of government employees and retirees for two months in the run-up to the June 12 elections -- in what critics decried as a naked attempt at vote-buying --  the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has slashed wages again.

According to a report Sunday by the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency, wages for retired army personnel have been cut by $100 to $250 per month. Hamshahri, a daily newspaper run by Tehran's mayor, put the decreases at $60 to $200 per month.

That's no small change in a country where civil servants and retirees typically live off a  few hundred dollars a month and inflation continues to eat into people's standard of living.

The salary cuts also have hit other public service employees, who were lavished with praise and bonuses in the weeks before the election. 

One schoolteacher, speaking on condition of anonymity, said her salary was increased from $370 to $540 two months before the election. When she looked at her paycheck at the end of the Persian month of Tir several days ago, she discovered it was back down to the same as before the election.

Many considered the salary increases long-overdue adjustments for inflation.

-- Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

Photo: Retirees in a park in Iran. Credit: Hooshang Hadi / Iranian Labor News Agency

SYRIA: List of top 100 businessmen signals another turning point

Just one month after Syria launched its fledgling stock exchange, the country appears to be taking another step down the path of economic liberalization with the release of the very first "Top 100 Syrian Businessmen" list by the Syrian business magazine Al-Iqtisadi. 

Similar lists appeared regularly on the pages of Forbes until Wall Street’s collapse turned the formerly celebrated Fortune 500 CEOs into reviled symbols of market excess almost overnight.

And so, even as the U.S. gets ready to nationalize large sections of the financial sector in a move that right-wing critics are calling seeping socialism, Syria is struggling to shed its semi-socialist protectionism in favor of free(er) market capitalism and the foreign investment that comes with it. 

But lack of transparency has proved a major obstacle to attracting this much-needed investment, and gaining access to the financial records of Syria’s most powerful men constitutes a major feat of investigative journalism. 

“[The list] took nearly a year to compile,” Al-Iqtisadi executive editor Hamoud Mahmoud told Syria-news.com. “It took a lot of research to get all the information, which is being published for the first time.”