Armoured & Luxury
Chauffeur Driven Cars

The United Arab Emirates has tightened its law on internet use, making it a criminal offence to mock its rulers or organise unauthorised demonstrations.

A presidential decree says anyone who creates or runs a website or uses the internet to deride or damage the state or its institutions faces imprisonment.

The institutions include the rulers and senior officials across the federation of seven semi-autonomous Gulf emirates.

Activists have criticised the move as an attempt to limit freedom of speech.

The UAE has not experienced the unrest seen elsewhere in the region.

However, since March the authorities have detained without charge more than 60 civil society activists, some of whom have ties to Islah — a local group that advocates greater adherence to Islamic precepts — including human rights lawyers, judges and student leaders.

The authorities have also been accused of deporting and harassing human rights defenders, denying legal assistance to political detainees, and intimidating and deporting lawyers seeking to assist detainees.

Government and police officials have said the crackdown is a response to a foreign-inspired Islamist plot that aims to overthrow the government.

Deportation

The amendments to the UAE’s existing law on internet crime were announced on Tuesday in a decree by President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nuhayyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi.

Many of the measures focus on issues such as online fraud, privacy protection, and efforts to combat prostitution, pornography and gambling. However, a major section imposes restrictions on online dissent.

The legislation now stipulates «penalties of imprisonment on any person who creates or runs an electronic website or uses any information technology medium to deride or damage the reputation or stature of the state or any of its institutions,» according to the state news agency, WAM.

The minimum prison sentence will be three years, according to Abu Dhabi-based newspaper, The National. Foreign nationals will meanwhile be deported, it added. The UAE has nearly four million migrant workers.

The institutions include the president, vice-president, any of the rulers of the seven emirates, their crown princes and deputy rulers, as well as the national flag, national anthem, or any of symbols of the state, it said.

The law also prohibit «information, news, caricatures or any other kind of pictures» that authorities believe could threaten security or «public order».

This includes posts calling for «demonstrations, marches and similar activities without a licence being obtained in advance from the competent authorities» or «disobeying the laws and regulations of the state».

Those responsible for posts which «display contempt» for Islam or any other religion could also be jailed.

The decree was issued by Sheikh Khalifa just hours after the UAE was elected to a three-year term on the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The European Union has approved a 5bn-euro ($6.4bn) financial support package for Egypt, Egyptian officials say.

A statement by President Mohammed Mursi’s office said the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) would each provide 2bn euros.

The remaining 1bn euros would come from EU member states, the statement added.

The announcement came after Mr Mursi held talks with the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, in Cairo.

In a statement, the presidency said the packages was «a strong sign of the EU’s support for Egypt’s path to development».

Representatives of some 100 of Europe’s largest firms as well as European Commission members and European MPs are participating in the meetings, due to conclude later on Wednesday.

Their focus is on strengthening bilateral relationships between Egypt and the European Union and deepening economic co-operation.

New jobs
In September, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso offered Egypt 700m euros of financial aid, which he said was conditional on it reaching an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Egypt is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding with IMF representatives for a $4.8bn loan this week to help it deal with a $28bn budget deficit, or 11% of GDP, and a balance of payments crisis which are the result of reduced tourism and foreign investment revenues.

In the 21 months since the overthrow of former President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, Egypt’s growth rates have dropped and its foreign reserves have been almost halved.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Hisham Qandil caused controversy among Egypt’s poor — about 40% of its 83 million people live on less than $2 a day — by saying he would restructure the government subsidy programme.

He also said natural gas prices would be increased for energy-intensive industries, and that there would be unspecified fiscal and tax reforms.

Mr Qandil said the government aimed to increase Egypt’s GDP growth rate to 3.5% this fiscal year, up from 2.2%, and create 700,000 new jobs.

South African police have arrested a man who they say swallowed 220 polished diamonds in an attempt to smuggle them out of the country.

The man was arrested as he waited to board a plane at Johannesburg airport.

Officials said a scan of his body revealed the diamonds he had ingested, worth $2.3m (£1.4m; 1.8m euros), inside.

The man was reportedly of Lebanese origin and was travelling to Dubai.

«We nabbed him just before he went through the security checkpoint,» Paul Ramaloko, spokesman of the South Africa elite police unit the Hawks said, according to Agence France Presse.

Authorities believe the man belongs to a smuggling ring. Another man was arrested in March also attempting to smuggle diamonds out the country in a similar way.

South Africa is among the world’s top producers of diamonds.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has dissolved parliament ahead of a general election next month.

Mr Noda, in power since August 2011, will face newly-elected opposition leader Shinzo Abe in the polls.

Mr Abe’s party is expected to win the most seats but the election is seen as unlikely to deliver a clear winner.

Mr Noda has lost support over his sales tax rise and handling of the Fukushima aftermath, while Mr Abe is an ex-PM who struggled to connect with the public.

Support ratings for both the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) are low.

A number of other smaller parties draw some support — controversial former Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has formed one, so too former DPJ stalwart Ichiro Ozawa. Toru Hashimoto, the Osaka governor, is also forming a political party.

Polls show almost half of all voters are undecided, indicating that the next government will likely be a coalition.

«This is an election to decide on the nation’s direction — to go forward or to go backward,» Mr Noda said of the election set for 16 December.

«We are determined to do our best to have the Democratic Party of Japan at the helm of the nation… and fight it out to move politics forward,» he added.

Revolving door

Mr Noda, who has been under pressure to call elections for months, agreed on Wednesday to do so after the opposition said it would back him on electoral reform and a deficit-financing bill.

He had lost public support over the move to double sales tax, although many analysts say it was necessary to tackle the country’s massive debt.

The debate over nuclear energy, restarting suspended reactors and his perceived flip-flopping on the issue has also affected his popularity.

His main election rival will be Shinzo Abe, the man chosen to lead the once-dominant LDP despite a short term as prime minister in 2006-7 that saw his poll figures plummet.

Mr Abe is seen as a hawk — last month he visited the Yasukuni Shrine, angering China and South Korea who see the shrine as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism. The shrine honours Japan’s war dead, including those convicted of war crimes.

The LDP enjoyed more than 50 years of almost unbroken rule but lost power to the DPJ in 2009.

The DPJ promised more welfare spending and a better social safety net, but has struggled to deliver amid the economic downturn and 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

It has also seen multiple leadership changes — Mr Noda is the third DPJ prime minister since 2009.

Reports suggest the Tokyo and Osaka governors, Shintaro Ishihara and Toru Hashimoto, are in talks over a potential link-up in the polls.

Georgian authorities have arrested a further nine former government officials, accusing them of abusing their power while in office.

All the officials worked at the interior ministry under President Mikheil Saakashvili, whose party was ousted from power last month.

Mr Saakashvili says politicians from his administration are now being persecuted by the new authorities.

The ex-defence minister has been charged with torturing army personnel.

The charges relate to an incident in February 2010, when Bacho Akhalaia allegedly ordered 17 servicemen to be locked up and abused.

‘Political persecution’

Mr Akhalaia left his post in September, ahead of the polls, amid a prisoner abuse scandal.

Currently being held in pre-trial detention, he says the charges against him are politically motivated.

«Former senior officials from the interior ministry are suspected of illegally obtaining personal information, including financial and commercial, with computers,» Justice Minister Tea Tsulukiani told reporters, Reuters reports.

Lawyers for the nine detainees said they had been charged with abuse of power and illegal confinement.

The BBC’s Damien McGuinness, in Tbilisi, says that Georgia was widely praised after October’s elections for ensuring the first peaceful transition of power in the country’s post-Soviet history. Mr Saakashvili is expected to step down in October 2013.

But tensions between the ousted government and the country’s new leadership have been mounting over the past week.

After a dirty election campaign, our correspondent adds, Mr Saakashvili’s party is accused of all kinds of abuses while in power: ranging from allegedly imprisoning critics unfairly to confiscating funds from the businesses of political opponents.

The mayor of Tbilisi, whose deputy was arrested, has condemned the move as political persecution, accusing the new government of becoming a «dictatorship».

But Georgia’s new Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose six-party coalition unexpectedly swept to power in October’s elections, says it is about restoring justice, after years of authoritarian behaviour by the former authorities.