A knifeman who threatened to slit his flatmate's throat unless she paid him Dh2,000 has been hit with a court fine.
The Vietnamese offender, 45, grabbed a knife from the kitchen, pressed it against the woman's neck and threatened to kill her while making the cash demand.
Good Samaritan neighbours forced their way into the woman's home, after being alerted by her screams, to rush to her aid.
The hero helpers wrestled the knife from the attacker's hand before calling police.
The defendant had been kicked out of the flat in the Al Muraqqabat area of Deira just days earlier by the 28-year-old woman, also from Vietnam, after she caught him taking drugs at the property.
The incident took place in June of this year.
“He threatened to slit my throat if I didn’t pay him Dh2,000 at once,” said the woman, who works as a hairdresser.
During police questioning, the defendant denied the woman’s version of events saying he did not take any drugs and accused the woman of fabricating the story because she owed him money.
The defendant denied a charge of issuing threats when he first appeared before Dubai Criminal Court last month.
But he was convicted of the charge and ordered to pay a Dh5,000 fine.
Start-up hopes to end Japan's love affair with cash
Across most of Asia, people pay for taxi rides, restaurant meals and merchandise with smartphone-readable barcodes — except in Japan, where cash still rules. Now, as the country’s biggest web companies race to dominate the payments market, one Tokyo-based startup says it has a fighting chance to win with its QR app.
Origami had a head start when it introduced a QR-code payment service in late 2015 and has since signed up fast-food chain KFC, Tokyo’s largest cab company Nihon Kotsu and convenience store operator Lawson. The company raised $66 million in September to expand nationwide and plans to more than double its staff of about 100 employees, says founder Yoshiki Yasui.
Origami is betting that stores, which until now relied on direct mail and email newsletters, will pay for the ability to reach customers on their smartphones. For example, a hair salon using Origami’s payment app would be able to send a message to past customers with a coupon for their next haircut.
Quick Response codes, the dotted squares that can be read by smartphone cameras, were invented in the 1990s by a unit of Toyota Motor to track automotive parts. But when the Japanese pioneered digital payments almost two decades ago with contactless cards for train fares, they chose the so-called near-field communications technology. The high cost of rolling out NFC payments, convenient ATMs and a culture where lost wallets are often returned have all been cited as reasons why cash remains king in the archipelago. In China, however, QR codes dominate.
Cashless payments, which includes credit cards, accounted for just 20 per cent of total consumer spending in Japan during 2016, compared with 60 per cent in China and 89 per cent in South Korea, according to a report by the Bank of Japan.
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