CAIRO: Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, on Saturday launched a national program for coders that aims to establish 1,000 tech companies and increase start-up investments from 1.5 billion dirhams ($408 million) to 4 billion dirhams ($1 billion).
The program, which is in cooperation with Google, Microsoft, Amazon AWS, Cisco, IBM, HPE, LinkedIn, Nvidia, and Facebook, is aimed at training 100,000 coders and establishing tech companies that will go global.
“The new program represents a new step toward establishing our digital economy. The world is rapidly changing and the fast-growing digital economy will create new types of jobs,” he said on Twitter.

ALEXANDRIA: Heavy fighting broke out between Yemeni government troops and Iran-backed Houthi forces in key battlefields in the provinces of Al-Bayda, Marib and Jouf, as both sides sought to make territorial gains on the ground, local officials and state media said on Saturday.

During the past 24 hours, the Houthis mounted counterattacks on army troops and allied tribesmen in different locations in the central province of Al-Bayda, where loyalists scored major advances over the last seven days.

Rebel media said their forces managed to recapture the center of Al-Zaher district, and pushed back government forces from recently-liberated areas in the province.

Yemen’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that the rebel forces suffered heavy casualties and lost military equipment in a fierce five-hour battle in Al-Zaher.

Backed by air support from the Arab coalition, government troops last week mounted an offensive to seize control of districts in Al-Bayda, and to relieve pressure on other government troops battling Houthi attacks in the central province of Marib.

Government troops seized control of a large swathe of territory in Al-Zaher district, south of Al-Bayda province, and pushed deeper into Houthi-controlled areas in Al-Saoma and Al-Hazemia, southeast of the province, after killing, wounding and capturing dozens of rebel fighters.  

The offensive slowed over the weekend as the Houthis mounted deadly counter-offensives.

By attacking the Houthis in Al-Bayda, Yemen’s government has sought to secure neighboring provinces such as Lahj, Abyan, Shabwa and Al-Dhale, push into other Houthi-controlled provinces such as Sanaa, Ibb and Dhamar, and weaken the Houthi offensive on Marib, local army officials and experts said.

On Saturday, local media reports said that a Houthi field commander called Abu Yahya Al-Hanemi was killed in the fighting in Al-Zaher.

Government supporters on social media mourned the death of many loyalists killed in Al-Bayda.

Local officials say that fighting could escalate there in the coming days as the Houthis and government continue bringing in military reinforcements.  

People from Abyan told Arab News that the Houthis had shut down internet and mobile services in Al-Bayda.

In Marib province, the scene of the heaviest fighting, Yemen’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that army troops and tribesmen mounted an attack on the Houthis in the Halhalan Valley and Mezam Mas, northeast of the province, as other government troops pushed back Houthi attacks in Al-Mashjah and Al-Kasara, west of Marib city.  

Thousands of combatants and civilians have been killed in the province since February when the Houthis resumed an offensive on oil-rich Marib, the government’s last bastion in the northern part of the country.

In the province of Jouf, Rabia Al-Qurashi, a Yemeni army spokesman, told Arab News on Saturday that government troops repulsed a Houthi attack in Al-Jadafer region, west of Hazem, the provincial capital, adding that several Houthis were killed in the area when a warplane from the Arab coalition targeted their vehicle.

ATLANTA: A vital border crossing between Syria and Turkey has been kept open thanks to Washington and Moscow forging an agreement to pass a resolution at the UN Security Council (UNSC), the deputy to the US ambassador to the UN told a press briefing attended by Arab News on Saturday.
Jeffrey Prescott said keeping the border crossing open will “save lives” and deliver critical food and medicine, especially vaccines, to internally displaced Syrians. The US had initially expected Russia to veto the resolution, he added.
Prescott described the passing of the resolution as a “critical starting point” that the US and others will have to build on in the months ahead in order to expand humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people.
The UNSC voted unanimously on Friday to extend its authorization to keep the Bab Al-Hawa border crossing open for humanitarian aid to the Syrian people for another year in two six-month intervals.
The UN said the resolution applies “only to Bab Al-Hawa, not to several other crossing points whose use was previously curtailed by the council.”
It added: “The second six-month extension remains pending, subject to the issuance of a substantive report by the secretary-general on transparency in aid delivery operations and progress on cross-line access.”
Vassily A. Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, attributed the passing of the resolution to the “spirit of commitment” that was achieved during the recent summit between presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. “We are grateful for this,” Nebenzia added.

CAIRO: Newly appointed Algerian Prime Minister Ayman Benabderrahmane is infected with COVID-19, Algerian state TV said on Saturday.
The prime minister, who had just formed his new government on Wednesday, will quarantine for seven days, but will continue performing his duties virtually, state TV said.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune ordered his government to reimpose physical distancing and mask-wearing measures across the country on Saturday, as well as to speed up a vaccination drive to cope with a surge in infection cases, it said.
The North African country has so far reported 145,296 confirmed cases of coronavirus including 3,824 deaths.

BEIRUT: A major power station in Lebanon is to resume operations on Sunday, two days after it ground to a halt due to a lack of fuel at a time of constant power cuts and economic collapse.
Zahrani in south Lebanon — one of the country’s four main power plants — went offline on Friday because the state electricity company was unable to access fuel shipments stuck offshore due to pending payments.
Electricity of Lebanon (EDL) said Saturday that foreign correspondent banks had completed payment procedures and preparations were underway to unload the cargo the same day.
“Zahrani power plant will be back in service starting tomorrow morning after the entire cargo aboard the tanker is unloaded into its tanks,” EDL said in a statement.
The state electricity company did not refer to Deir Ammar power station which also went offline on Friday because it ran out of fuel.
Together, Deir Ammar and Zahrani provide about 40 percent of the country’s electricity.
Lebanon is mired in what the World Bank has called one of the worst economic crises since the 1850s, and the cash-strapped state is struggling to buy enough fuel to keep the lights on.
Power cuts in recent months have lasted up to 22 hours a day in some areas, while even private generator owners have been forced to ration output as fuel prices rise, resulting in periods of complete blackout.
This has disrupted work at businesses, government offices and hospitals.
The government’s Covid-19 vaccine committee on Friday said it canceled a mass vaccination drive planned for the weekend because of power outages in most centers.
The international community has long demanded a complete overhaul of the electricity sector, which has cost the government more than $40 billion since the end of Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war.
Lebanon has been without a fully functioning government since the last once resigned in the wake of a devastating explosion at Beirut port last year that killed more than 200 people.
The economic crisis has seen the Lebanese pound lose more than 90 percent of its value against the dollar on the black market, and left over half the population living below the poverty line.