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LONDON - Prince Charles suggested Tuesday on a visit to the United Arab Emirates that banning McDonald’s fast food was crucial for improving people’s diets, a British news agency reported. Charles’s comments came while visiting the Imperial College London Diabetes Center in Abu Dhabi for the launch of a public health campaign, Britain’s Press Association news agency reported. ”Have you got anywhere with McDonald’s? Have you tried getting it banned? That’s the key,” Charles asked one of the center’s nutritionists, according to the news agency. A McDonald’s spokeswoman called the remark disappointing. ”This appears to be an off-the-cuff remark, in...

Report: Hezbollah Leader Offers Assad Refuge, Soldiers JULY 25, 2012 9:54 AM Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s Secretary General, has offered refuge in Lebanon and elite military units to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as the latter continues his fight to remain in power. In a recent conversation between the two leaders, Nasrallah told Assad that “Hezbollah’s elite units will stand at the front and fight the rebels,” according to a report in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Gomhoriih. While Syrian diplomats continue to defect – including reports on Wednesday that officials in Cyprus and the United Arab Emirates have left their posts – and...

The United Arab Emirates on Sunday inaugurated a much-anticipated overland oil pipeline that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, giving the OPEC member insurance against Iranian threats to block the strategic waterway. The 380-kilometer (236-mile) Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline snakes across western desert dunes and over the craggy Hajar mountains to the city of Fujairah on the UAE’s Indian Ocean coast, south of the strait. Until now, all Emirati exports were loaded in the Gulf and then sailed out through Hormuz. Once it is running at full capacity, the pipeline could allow the country, OPEC’s third biggest exporter, to ship...

THE DEAD BABY MEDIA If the text on that one is too small for you, it's a CNN piece headlined, "Why the Syrian regime is killing babies." There's not much to add to that. The Syrian regime may be killing babies, but CNN killed journalism. With some help from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the BBC. Anyone who has spent time in the Middle East knows quite well that parading around dead bodies is part of the Muslim ceremony of rallying for the next attack. These aren't funerals, these are corpse parades and the corpses are often...

Joplin is getting another big boost from the Middle East as the Missouri city rebuilds and prepares for the anniversary of a devastating tornado that killed 161 people. United Arab Emirates Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba was in Joplin Friday to announce that the oil-rich Persian Gulf nation is donating $5 million to Mercy Hospital for a pediatric section and the development of a neonatal intensive care unit, a first for the Joplin hospital. Mercy was one of the most prominent of 8,000 buildings destroyed in the May 22 twister. The towering structure was left little more than a shell after...

America's most sophisticated stealth jet fighters have been quietly deployed to an allied base less than 200 miles from Iran's mainland, according to an industry report, but the Air Force adamantly denied the jets' presence is a threat to the Middle East nation. Multiple stealth F-22 Raptors, which have never been combat-tested, are in hangars at the United Arab Emirates' Al Dafra Air Base, just a short hop over the Persian Gulf from Iran's southern border, the trade publication Aviation Week reported.

Reports: DOD deploys F-22 fighters near Iranian borderBy Carlo Munoz - 04/27/12 04:00 PM ET As tensions continue to rise between Washington and Tehran, the White House upped the ante this month by sending a squadron of advanced U.S. fighters to Iran's doorstep. The Air Force has reportedly begun rotating a squadron of F-22 Raptors to Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates. UAE is directly to the south of the Iranian coastline, separated by the Straits of Hormuz. Aviation Week first reported the details of the Raptor deployments. Air Force spokesman Capt. Phil Ventura would not confirm...

Hillary Rodham Clinton, US Secretary of State, who met with the foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) here yesterday, proposed a strong missile shield to protect Gulf Arab states from Tehran and sought to work with them to help end the violence in Iran's ally Syria. Clinton said: "It is a US priority to help the GCC build a regional missile defense architecture" against what that country sees as a looming ballistic missile threat from Iran. Clinton said that she looked forward to discussing the wide range of common strategic concerns, including preventing Iran from acquiring a...

Hackers who attempt to attack Israel in cyberspace will be met with a "forceful response," warned Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon on Saturday -- one comparable to the response meted out to terrorists. Speaking at a cultural forum at a community center in Be'er Sheva, Ayalon said Israel views incidents such as the attack in which a Saudi hacker exposed the credit card numbers and information of thousands of Israelis at least twice last week as "acts of terror." An Israeli blogger claimed Friday that he was able to figure out the identity of the hacker, who claimed he was...

The United States has signed a $3.5 billion sale of an advanced antimissile interception system to the United Arab Emirates, part of an accelerating military buildup of its friends and allies near Iran. The deal, signed on December 25 and announced on Friday night by the U.S. Defense Department, "is an important step in improving the region's security through a regional missile defense architecture," Pentagon press secretary George Little said in a statement. The U.S. Congress had been notified of the proposed sale in September 2008 by former President George W. Bush's administration. At that time, the system built by...

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia formally called for the formation of a Gulf Union on a backdrop of regional unrest and growing tensions with rival Iran. "I ask today that we move from a phase of cooperation to a phase of union within a single entity," Abdullah said during his address at the opening session of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council conference in Riyadh. "You must realise that our security and stability are threatened and we need to live up to our responsibilities," said King Abdullah. "Our summit opens in the shadow of challenges that require vigilance and a united...

A jealous husband is facing life in prison after chopping off his wife's fingers because she began studying for a degree without his permission. Rafiqul Islam, 30, blindfolded his wife Hawa Akhter, 21, and taped her mouth, telling her he was going to give her a surprise present. Instead he made her hold out her hand and cut off all five fingers. One of his relatives then threw Ms Akhter's fingers in the dustbin to ensure doctors could not reattach them. Mr Islam, who is a migrant worker in the United Arab Emirates, had warned his wife there would 'severe...

The Arab League voted to suspend SyriaÂ’s membership at its meeting on Saturday and said it would impose economic and political sanctions against the regime of Bashar al-Assad as well as call for the withdrawal of Arab ambassadors from Damascus. The Arab foreign ministers meeting at the LeagueÂ’s headquarters in Cairo also called on the Syrian army to cease its involvement in the killing of civilians and invited the Syrian opposition for transition talks. Opponents of Assad were hoping that the Arab League would suspend SyriaÂ’s membership after Assad pressed ahead with a military crackdown on the unrest despite an...

DUBAI: UAE issues shock Eurofighter Typhoon request By: Craig Hoyle Dubai France’s long-running campaign to sell up to 60 Dassault Rafales to the United Arab Emirates faces a shock last-minute challenge, with the Eurofighter consortium having been asked to submit a proposal based on its Typhoon combat aircraft. News of the development broke on the eve of the Dubai air show, where both types are scheduled to take part in the daily flying display. Sources have confirmed that the UK provided a formal briefing about the Typhoon to UAE officials on 17 October, after being asked to explore how it...

The government of Iran, much like many across the Middle East, believes that the Obama administration is so consumed with a desire to undo the wrongs of the Bush era and get out from under the costs of two difficult, hard-to-justify wars in the region that it would never intervene against them militarily. Iranian leaders seem to believe that the United States would not risk another war in the region just to stop their development of nuclear weapons. The government of Israel, also worried that its number one ally has lost its appetite for complex entanglements in the region, seems...

The U.S. administration plans to build up the American military presence in the Persian Gulf after it withdraws the remaining troops from Iraq by the end of this year, The New York Times reported on Sunday, referring to diplomatic sources.

MacDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — The Obama administration plans to bolster the American military presence in the Persian Gulf after it withdraws the remaining troops from Iraq this year, according to officials and diplomats. That repositioning could include new combat forces in Kuwait able to respond to a collapse of security in Iraq or a military confrontation with Iran.

With the special interest of Chairman United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has launched number of projects with the title "To help Pakistan" cost of US $ 100 million for the development of the population of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Bajaur and South Waziristan. This was stated by Abdullah Khalifa Al Ghafli, UAE Project Manager "to help Pakistan." In a satement, he said the framework of supervision translated as initiative of highness of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. He said the main purpose of these projects to provide a better life for the residents of the targeted projects...

The battle for Libya is far from over as brigades of NTC fighters close in on two major cities and move to control thousands of square kilometres of desert believed to be occupied by pockets of African mercenaries and Qaddafi loyalists, said one of the Libyan rebels top military commanders. Fawzi Bukatif, the head of the Union of Revolutionary Forces on the eastern side, the director of the rebel army control room and top commander with the powerful February 17 brigade, spoke during an interview late on Saturday. "Ours is a big country," he said. "We have information about a...

It was hard to know what they were doing, I didn't see it as my eyes were closed. They also hurt my legs when I was on the ground. When I screamed they said, "You're screaming like a bitch... Now you're so scared!?" They also insulted my family and my origins, I'm Palestinian. They'd taunt me, "Why didn't you go and fought Israel?" Then they'd hit me again. They took me back to my cell, then to another area of the prison which I could see. They'd said I was going home now, and it turned out they were "joking."...