Month: July 2020

ISLAMABAD: A sum worth Rs30 billion has been allocated to the Naya Pakistan housing scheme, Prime Minister Imran Khan announced in a live televised address on Friday, in line with helping the underprivileged class build their own homes. Addressing the nation after chairing a meeting of the National Coordination Committee on Housing, Construction, and Development, PM Imran said the scheme was aimed at the “working class, the welder, the small shop owner, who do not have a lot of money to build their own houses”. “The goal of the Naya…

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The world-famous Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul – originally founded as a cathedral – has been turned back into a mosque. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the decision after a court annulled the site’s museum status. Built 1,500 years ago as an Orthodox Christian cathedral, Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453. In 1934 it became a museum and is now a Unesco World Heritage site. Islamists in Turkey long called for it to be converted to a mosque but secular opposition members…

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DUBAI: Malaysia recorded 4,233,425 tourist arrivals for the first quarter of 2020. This marks a decrease of 36.8% compared to the same period in 2019. The tourist expenditure for the first quarter recorded a total of RM12.5 billion, a decrease of 41.5% compared to RM21.4 billion registered for the same period in 2019. Per capita expenditure also showed a decline of 7.4% from RM3,201.8 in 2019 to RM2,964.5 this year. The average length of stay (ALOS) in Malaysia saw a decrease of 1.9 nights from 6.0 nights in 2019 to 4.1 nights. From January to March 2020, Malaysia received less tourists each…

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