1 Diplomatic crisis as Qatar is isolated (Patrick
Wintour in The Guardian) The Gulf has been hit by its biggest diplomatic crisis
in years after Arab nations including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain
cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of destabilising the region with its support
for Islamist groups.
The countries said they would halt all land, air and
sea traffic with Qatar, eject its diplomats and order Qatari citizens to leave
the Gulf states within 14 days. Shoppers in the Qatari capital, Doha, meanwhile
packed supermarkets amid fears the country, which relies on imports from its
neighbours, would face food shortages after Saudi Arabia closed its sole land
border.
The small but very wealthy nation, the richest in
the world per capita, was also expelled from a Saudi-led coalition fighting in
Yemen. The coordinated move dramatically escalates a dispute over Qatar’s
support of Islamist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, and its
perceived tolerance of Saudi Arabia’s arch-rival, Iran.
Qatar’s foreign affairs ministry said the measures
were unjustified and based on false claims and assumptions. As the Qatari stock
market tumbled and oil prices rose, it accused its fellow Gulf states of
violating its sovereignty.
In a sign of Qatar’s growing isolation, Yemen’s
internationally backed government – which no longer holds its capital and large
portions of the country – joined the move to break relations, as did the
Maldives and the government based in eastern Libya
Monday’s diplomatic moves came two weeks after four
Arab countries blocked Qatar-based media over the appearance of comments
attributed to the Qatari emir that praised Iran. Qatar said hackers had taken
over the website of its state-run news agency and faked the comments.
2 India launches heavy rocket (BBC) India's space
agency has successfully launched its heaviest rocket. The 640-tonne rocket
blasted off from a launching site off the Bay of Bengal in Sriharikota.
The rocket will reduce the Indian Space Research
Organisation's (Isro) reliance on European vehicles to launch heavy satellites.
The coverage of the launch has been euphoric, and often colourful, with
websites comparing the rocket to the weight of 200 elephants, or five jumbo
jets.
Such comparisons highlight the importance of the
launch for the country, which is aggressively competing to get a bigger share
of the global commercial satellite launch market. The GSLV Mark III can carry
put a payload weighing more than three tonnes into the high altitude orbit
occupied by the spacecraft that relay TV, telephone calls and broadband
connections.
But it's far from being the world's heaviest rocket
because Nasa's Saturn V, which was used between 1967 and 1973, still holds that
record, with total mass at lift-off about four times that of India's GSLV Mark
III. Experts say the rocket gives India more flexibility in launching different
kinds of satellites.
Isro hopes that the rocket, called the
"monster" by one newspaper, will be able to carry an astronaut to
space by 2024. India wants to become the fourth country after the US, China and
Russia to send a person into space.
3 One in five Singapore
staff fears automation job loss (Straits Times) Nearly one in five employees in
Singapore fears that automation will take away their jobs, a survey by
recruitment firm Randstad found.
The poll also showed
that workers in Singapore (19 per cent) and Hong Kong (20 per cent) held the
highest fears of losing their jobs to automation. Malaysian employees, on the
other hand, were more relaxed with only 13 per cent fearing automation will
hurt their job security.
About three in four, or
72 per cent, of Singapore employees were open to retraining for a new role -
provided that their salaries would remain the same or higher than before. The
remaining 8 per cent would rather move to another company than retrain. Despite
fears of automation taking jobs away, a large group of employees feel that
automation will in fact make their jobs better.
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