DOHA: The Ministry of Economy and Commerce said yesterday that it had collected samples of a food product for laboratory tests after reports that it contains pork.
According to a post on the ministry’s Twitter account, a neighbouring GCC country has seized stocks of the product for containing pig meat. The ministry, however, didn’t disclose the name or details of the product.
DUBAI: Etihad Airways reported serious disruption to arrivals and departures for all airlines after fog forced temporary closure of Abu Dhabi International Airport yesterday.
The airport was closed for a little more than an hour from 2.30am, Etihad said. “These conditions have resulted in unprecedented congestion at the airport and will lead to knock-on delays throughout the network for the next 24 hours,” the airline said. The Peninsula
ANKARA: Turkey’s Islamic-rooted government has authorised the building of the first church in the country since the end of the Ottoman empire in 1923.
The church is for the tiny Syriac community and will be built in the Istanbul suburb of Yesilkoy on the shores of the Sea of Marmara, which has Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Catholic churches.
“It is the first since the creation of the republic,” a government source said yesterday. “Churches have been restored and reopened to the public, but no new church has been built until now,” he added.
Turkey, which once had large Christian minorities, is 99 percent Muslim, and critics of the ruling party AKP have accused it of trying to Islamicise its officially secular society.
PANGKALAN BUN: Indonesia pledged yesterday to investigate flight violations by AirAsia, as search teams found four large parts of the airline’s plane that crashed into the sea last weekend with 162 people on board. The transport ministry said the aircraft had been flying on an unauthorised schedule when it crashed, and the airline had been suspended from flying the route from the city of Surabaya to Singapore. Agencies
