DUBAI: Airlines flying into Dubai are preparing for diversions and schedule changes as the emirate’s main airport plans to reduce the number of flights it handles during construction work on its runways. Dubai International will cut flights by 26 percent for an 80-day period, Dubai’s airports authority said yesterday. The cut-back will occur between May 1 and July 20 as first one runway and then the other is closed for resurfacing and other construction work, Dubai Airports said. During that period eight airlines which now fly into Dubai International will divert to the emirate’s new Al Maktoum International Airport, which opened to passenger traffic last October.
Israeli, Palestinian negotiators meet
JERUSALEM: Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met yesterday in a fresh bid to save their teetering US-brokered peace talks, a Palestinian official said. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat was meeting in Jerusalem with his Israeli opposite number, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special envoy Yitzhak Molcho, he said. There was no immediate word from the Israeli side, which was to observe the seven-day Jewish holidays of Passover from sunset today.
First case of MERS case in Yemen
SANA’A: Yemen reported its first case of the deadly MERS coronavirus yesterday in a further spread of the deadly strain in the Middle East two years after its outbreak in neighbouring Saudi Arabia. “Medical personnel have recorded one case of the coronavirus in Sana’a and the victim is a Yemeni man who works as an aeronautics engineer,” the semi-official Al Thawra newspaper quoted Public Health Minister Ahmed Al Ansi as saying.
Bomber kills seven policemen in Iraq
KIRKUK: A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle at a checkpoint in northern Iraq yesterday, killing seven police, and gunmen shot dead three people, officials said. The suicide bombing at the police checkpoint northwest of Kirkuk also wounded 11 police officers. North of Baghdad, gunmen attacked a police officer’s house, killing his father and brother. Agencies
