Australian burqini wearer was ‘indecent’, says French mayor


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NICE // The right wing mayor of a French Riviera Beach town where locals asked a burqini-wearing Australian to leave has defended their actions — calling her behaviour “indecent”.

Lionnel Luca said on Monday that Sydney native Zeynab Alshelh “could have asked herself whether the people in the area weren’t still reeling from the jihadist attack that killed 86 people” in nearby Nice in July.

“She could not just innocently come to our beaches with religious garb that is the sign of the fundamentalism that killed us,” he said, calling the 23-year-old’s actions “pretty indecent”.

Ms Alshelh told Australian television the beachgoers threatened to call the police unless she left the beach at Villeneuve-Loubet, even though a ban on the controversial full-bodied swimsuit had recently been overturned.

The burqini became a political hot potato over the summer as France gears up for a presidential election next spring.

Ms Alshelh, a medical student, said she had travelled to Europe to show solidarity with French Muslims by wearing a burqini on the beach. The Islamic swimsuit was invented by an Australian designer.

Footage broadcast on Sunday evening showed locals making disparaging gestures towards Ms Alshelh.

Nice and about 30 other French towns banned the burqini after the July terror attack in which a man ploughed his lorry into crowds gathered for Bastille Day fireworks in Nice.

In August, France’s highest court suspended the burqini bans, declaring the swimsuit’s prohibition an “illegal violation of fundamental freedoms”.

Separately, French police on Tuesday arrested eight associates of the extremist who killed 86 people when he ploughed his lorry into a Bastille Day crowd in Nice, an investigation source said.

“They are associates of the perpetrator. We are carrying out checks and they are in custody,” the source said.

“They are all men, of French and Tunisian nationality.”

The men were arrested in Nice and in the neighbouring towns of Saint-Laurent-du-Var and Cagnes-Sur-Mer.

Police were also searching properties on Tuesday, the source said.

Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian, rammed a 19-tonne lorry through a crowd of more than 30,000 people gathered on the seafront Promenade des Anglais in Nice on July 14 before police shot him dead.

The ISIL extremist group claimed he was one of its followers.

Bouhlel was initially thought to have planned the attack alone but antiterror investigators later said he had received help from several people and had spent several months planning it.

Six people have already been charged over the attack.

* Agence France-Presse

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UPI facts

More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
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List of officials:

Referees: Chris Broad, David Boon, Jeff Crowe, Andy Pycroft, Ranjan Madugalle and Richie Richardson.

Umpires: Aleem Dar, Kumara Dharmasena, Marais Erasmus, Chris Gaffaney, Ian Gould, Richard Illingworth, Richard Kettleborough, Nigel Llong, Bruce Oxenford, Ruchira Palliyaguruge, Sundaram Ravi, Paul Reiffel, Rod Tucker, Michael Gough, Joel Wilson and Paul Wilson.

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Family: A daughter, two sons and wife

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Runner up favourite tree: Frankincense 

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The lowdown

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Born: Mukalla, Yemen, 1979

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Name: Dukkantek 

Started: January 2021 

Founders: Sanad Yaghi, Ali Al Sayegh and Shadi Joulani 

Based: UAE 

Number of employees: 140 

Sector: B2B Vertical SaaS(software as a service) 

Investment: $5.2 million 

Funding stage: Seed round 

Investors: Global Founders Capital, Colle Capital Partners, Wamda Capital, Plug and Play, Comma Capital, Nowais Capital, Annex Investments and AMK Investment Office  

ESSENTIALS

The flights

Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.

The hotels

Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.

The tours

A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages. 

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Company profile

Name: Tharb

Started: December 2016

Founder: Eisa Alsubousi

Based: Abu Dhabi

Sector: Luxury leather goods

Initial investment: Dh150,000 from personal savings

 

How to get exposure to gold

Although you can buy gold easily on the Dubai markets, the problem with buying physical bars, coins or jewellery is that you then have storage, security and insurance issues.

A far easier option is to invest in a low-cost exchange traded fund (ETF) that invests in the precious metal instead, for example, ETFS Physical Gold (PHAU) and iShares Physical Gold (SGLN) both track physical gold. The VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF invests directly in mining companies.

Alternatively, BlackRock Gold & General seeks to achieve long-term capital growth primarily through an actively managed portfolio of gold mining, commodity and precious-metal related shares. Its largest portfolio holdings include gold miners Newcrest Mining, Barrick Gold Corp, Agnico Eagle Mines and the NewMont Goldcorp.

Brave investors could take on the added risk of buying individual gold mining stocks, many of which have performed wonderfully well lately.

London-listed Centamin is up more than 70 per cent in just three months, although in a sign of its volatility, it is down 5 per cent on two years ago. Trans-Siberian Gold, listed on London's alternative investment market (AIM) for small stocks, has seen its share price almost quadruple from 34p to 124p over the same period, but do not assume this kind of runaway growth can continue for long

However, buying individual equities like these is highly risky, as their share prices can crash just as quickly, which isn't what what you want from a supposedly safe haven.

The specs

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RedCrow Intelligence Company Profile

Started: 2016

Founders: Hussein Nasser Eddin, Laila Akel, Tayeb Akel 

Based: Ramallah, Palestine

Sector: Technology, Security

# of staff: 13

Investment: $745,000

Investors: Palestine’s Ibtikar Fund, Abu Dhabi’s Gothams and angel investors

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Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel

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The rules on fostering in the UAE

A foster couple or family must:

  • be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
  • not be younger than 25 years old
  • not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
  • be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
  • have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
  • undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
  • A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
The five pillars of Islam

1. Fasting

2. Prayer

3. Hajj

4. Shahada

5. Zakat 

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