The city that boasts the world’s tallest building is equipping its police with US$400,000 Lamborghini sports cars that Dubai’s deputy police chief says are in keeping with the Gulf capital’s image.
They also go fast, since according to the Web site of Lamborghini, an affiliate of the Volkswagen Group, all the Italian company’s cars reach 100kph in well under six seconds.
Major General Khamis Mattar al-Mazeina said that a fleet of Lamborghinis, each estimated to cost around US$400,000, had been obtained by the Dubai police for use at main tourist sites.
Photo: EPA
“The aim is to reflect the reputation of the emirate and the high stature it achieved,” Mazeina said.
“It will also help promote tourism and showcase the security role the Dubai police plays in safeguarding the city,” he said.
The vehicles will be deployed at the downtown area near the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa tower, the Mohammed bin Rashid Boulevard as well as the cafe and restaurant-lined walk of the Jumeirah Beach Residence, one of the most popular waterfront developments in Dubai.
Dubai, one of seven emirates in the UAE federation, is staging a recovery from the financial crisis it suffered during the global financial crisis in 2009. The emirate recently announced several major projects, including a huge tourism and retail development with the largest shopping mall in the world.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the