Abu Dhabi Municipality has declared a ban on the issue of building permits for all kinds of office and residential accommodation. The move is designed to protect local landlords in the city where there are an estimated 25,000 vacant flats.
The property market accounts for 33 per cent of all bank credit in the UAE, and totals over Dh 6.8 billion.
The government is expected to take over more than Dh 4 billion of these investments. The Abu Dhabi building ban has brought fresh gloom to the construction business in the UAE.
US task force for the Gulf?
The United States ordered an aircraft carrier, task force into position to move into the Indian Ocean near troubled Iran if the situation there continues to deteriorate.
Government sources said the carrier Constellation and several escort ships were ordered to take up station in the southern Pacific and told to be ready to move through the Straits of Malacca.
Miracle escape for 175
A US airliner with 185 people on board crashed into a residential area in Portland, Oregon while trying to make an emergency landing and most of the passengers escaped with only cuts and bruises. Officials said at least 10 people were killed and 34 injured when the United Airlines DC-8 clipped some fir trees, slammed into an unoccupied house and stopped alongside a second empty house. There was no fire and dazed passengers were helped down emergency chutes from the plane's shattered fuselage.
Emotional funeral for Boumedienne
President Houari Boumedienne buried in Algeria's "Martyrs' Cemetery" after a three-hour long state funeral.
The state funeral was disrupted for more than 30 minutes when crowds broke through police ranks to reach the gun carriage carrying the coffin of President Boumedienne.
