The world financial system is stronger now and able to deal with the problems that arise.'

Dubai is serving as a catalyst for an overdue correction in risk assets.'

UK banks have greater exposure than rivals due to Britain's traditional links to the Mideast.

Dubai news also casts doubt over strength of the fledgling US economic recovery.

Aluminum producer Alcoa down 2.6 percent, and Bank of America, down 3 percent.

Landmark Properties CEO sees a shortage in the villa market next year.

Temperatures over the extended holidays likely to be pleasant - Dubai Met office.

Some food outlets violate food safety regulations on busy occasions - official.

UAE banks with largest exposures to Dubai World remain on review - ratings agency.

Many of those who lost their lives in Saudi floods were in cars and buses caught up in the rising waters.

The filming of Aqaribabzah to be finished in the second week of Dec.

The United State says the International Atomic Energy Agency's vote Friday censuring Iran shows a growing international "deficit of confidence" over Tehran's insistence that its nuclear program is peaceful.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslim pilgrims performed the ritual "stoning of the devil" at Muzdalifa, outside the Saudi holy city of Mecca, Friday, in one of the high points of the annual Hajj.

Shirin Ebadi and her colleagues say the government is demanding $400,000 in back taxes on her $1.3 million prize. But they say such prize money is not taxed under Iranian law.

Philippine authorities have charged a town mayor with mass murder in connection with an election-related massacre of 57 people that shocked the nation.

The world's worst industrial disaster took place 25 years ago, in central India. A chemical leak at the plant of the Indian subsidiary of an American corporation, Union Carbide, poisoned an estimated half million residents of the city of Bhopal.

India's rapidly expanding telecommunication sector has been hit by a raging price war. India is the world's second largest wireless communications market after China.

State-owned investment company Dubai World, which manages much of the city-state's massive development projects, is asking creditors for a delay in repaying about $60 billion in debt.

Mr. Karzai says he is once again calling on his Afghan brothers - the Taliban and other Islamist militants groups - to come back to their homeland to work toward peace, stability and prosperity.