Colm McLoughlin, Irishman who led Dubai Duty Free to become an airport retail giant, dies at age 81

Colm McLoughlin ran Dubai Duty Free from 1983 until he retired earlier this year, a span of over 40 years that saw Dubai grow from a creekside trading port into a modern metropolis. (AFP file photo)

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Updated 27 min 7 sec ago

November 01, 2024 08:34

Colm McLoughlin, Irishman who led Dubai Duty Free to become an airport retail giant, dies at age 81

Colm McLoughlin ran Dubai Duty Free from 1983 until he retired earlier this year
He helped lead Dubai Duty Free into becoming an airport retail behemoth generating billions of dollars

Updated 27 min 7 sec ago

November 01, 2024 08:34

DUBAI: Colm McLoughlin, an Irishman who landed in the deserts of the United Arab Emirates and helped lead Dubai Duty Free into becoming an airport retail behemoth generating billions of dollars, has died. He was 81.
McLoughlin ran Dubai Duty Free from 1983 until he retired earlier this year, a span of over 40 years that saw Dubai grow from a creekside trading port into a modern metropolis, home to the world’s tallest building and other attractions.
And all the millions of passengers coming into Dubai International Airport, now the world’s busiest for international travel, saw the rows of electronics, cigarettes, cigars, alcohol and other goods available duty-free at his stores, hawked by a salesforce in green suit jackets, yellow ties and conversing in multiple languages.
“It’s a very Middle Eastern kind of thing,” McLoughlin told the Los Angeles Times in 1987 as he showed off its gold market. “We have to cater to a lot of tastes.”
Dubai Duty Free said in a statement that McLoughlin died Wednesday after a short illness, without elaborating. The operation’s new managing director, Ramesh Cidambi, praised McLoughlin for steering its “growth to a $2 billion dollar business with over 6,000 employees at the time of his retirement.”
Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the CEO of long-haul carrier Emirates and chairman of Dubai Duty Free, offered his condolences.
“His passion, commitment and pioneering spirit have left a lasting legacy,” Sheikh Ahmed said in a post on the social platform X.
Born in Ballinasloe, Ireland, in 1943, McLoughlin joined Shannon Airport’s first-in-the-world duty-free operation in 1969. In July 1983, he came with a 10-man team to Dubai to set up the sandy airport’s duty-free operation. His six-month contract ended up stretching into 40 years.
Like the rest of the aviation industry, Dubai Duty Free took a hit during the years of the coronavirus pandemic and airline groundings. But sales have since bounced back. In 2023 alone, under McLoughlin, Dubai Duty Free sold 6 million cans of beer, 2.3 million bottles of whiskey, 2.3 million cartons of cigarettes, 10.2 million cigars and 3.3 million bottles of perfume.
One big segment has been Chinese travelers, after Dubai Duty Free worked to accept their credit cards, had staff speaking Mandarin and put in goods they wanted.
“We would be silly if we didn’t take advantage of it and try to serve them,” McLoughlin told The Associated Press in 2012.
And many a bleary-eyed traveler in Dubai’s cavernous airport tried their luck at the constant raffles being offered, whether for $1 million, a luxury automobile or a racing motorcycle.
McLoughlin also was known for Dubai Duty Free’s sponsorship of tennis and golf tournaments, as well as his work supporting Dubai’s Irish community. He received the Irish Presidential Distinguished Service Award in 2014.
“Colm McLoughlin has been an integral part of the Irish community in the UAE,” his award citation read. “Both in his highly successful professional career with Dubai Duty Free and in his leadership roles across almost every Irish organization, Colm McLouglin has played a hugely positive role in the promotion of Irish interests in the UAE.”
McLoughlin is survived by his wife Breeda, son Niall, daughters Tyna and Mandy, and their families.

Lebanon PM says expanded strikes suggest Israel’s ‘rejection’ of ceasefire

Updated 10 min 20 sec ago

AFP

November 01, 2024 08:54

Lebanon PM says expanded strikes suggest Israel’s ‘rejection’ of ceasefire

Mikati said in a statement after overnight raids hit Beirut’s southern suburbs

Updated 10 min 20 sec ago

AFP

November 01, 2024 08:54

Beirut: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Friday criticized Israel’s “expansion” of its attacks on his country, saying they indicated a rejection of efforts to broker a truce after more than a month of war.
“The Israeli enemy’s renewed expansion of the scope of its aggression on Lebanese regions, its repeated threats to the population to evacuate entire cities and villages, and its renewed targeting of the southern suburbs of Beirut with destructive raids, are all indicators that confirm the Israeli enemy’s rejection of all efforts being made to secure a ceasefire,” Mikati said in a statement after overnight raids hit Beirut’s southern suburbs, in the first such attack this week.

In east Lebanon, looming winter hints at stretched aid response

Updated 14 min 48 sec ago

Reuters

November 01, 2024 08:30

In east Lebanon, looming winter hints at stretched aid response

Supplies running tight in Deir Al-Ahmar in eastern Lebanon
Winter snow likely to cut off only safe route

Updated 14 min 48 sec ago

Reuters

November 01, 2024 08:30

Lebanon: Nerjes Hassan was so worried her children would fall ill from bathing in the frigid water of a displacement shelter in northeast Lebanon that she drove back into her hometown to give them a hot bath and pick up food preserves.
While at home on Wednesday morning in the town of Buday, near the eastern city of Baalbek, an Israeli air strike killed her, her husband and her two children, according to her coworkers and neighbors.
Hassan, who worked for the Lebanese Organization for Studies and Training (LOST) aid organization, was among thousands seeking refuge from Israeli strikes in the mountainous Christian town of Deir Al-Ahmar in eastern Lebanon.
The town was already hosting more than 10,000 displaced people before Israel escalated its strikes on predominantly Shiite Muslim Baalbek and nearby towns starting on Wednesday this week.
Thousands more are flowing into Deir Al-Ahmar as Israel’s bombardment continues. The needs are growing, temperatures are dropping, and supplies in the town are getting tight.
In one school now serving as a shelter, aid groups that once served two meals have cut breakfast to feed more at lunch. Townspeople have put together donation drives for winter clothes and blankets but are facing shortages, leaving displaced sharing blankets overnight.
“If we flee the bombing, are we meant to die of cold?” said Suzanne Qassem, a mother of two at one displacement center, whose home in Buday had been destroyed.
“I’m sick, I’ve been taking medicine for a week and I’m still coughing... If my son gets sick, am I going to be able to get him medicine?“

’Like a siege’
Temperatures in Deir Al-Ahmar are dropping to 6 degrees Celsius (43 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight even before winter fully sets in and the schools have no diesel to run central heating systems.
“At night, we’re shaking. I put my mattress up next to my daughter and tell her to hug me so that we can keep warm. But we’re not keeping warm,” said Neyfe Mazloum, 69.
Most families fled with just the clothes on their backs, rushing out of their homes after Israeli evacuation warnings for Baalbek and surrounding towns on Wednesday and Thursday.
More than 1.2 million people have been displaced by Israeli strikes on Lebanon over the last year in its campaign against militant group Hezbollah. That includes nearly 190,000 who have sought refuge in shelters. Others are staying with relatives, have rented out homes, or are sleeping in the streets.
Lebanon’s crisis management cell says that out of 1,130 accredited shelters, 948 have reached maximum capacity. Most of the displaced are in the districts of Mount Lebanon and Beirut — easy to reach for most aid organizations.
But Deir Al-Ahmar is much further afield.
The quickest routes run through the massive area that the Israeli military says must evacuate. To avoid it, aid groups planning to deliver supplies this week will travel further north through mountain peaks before cutting back down to the town.
Imran Riza, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, told Reuters that aid deliveries to the Baalbek region had to be postponed this week due to Israeli air strikes. Other deliveries of medical aid to Lebanon from foreign countries have been delayed due to strikes near the airport.
“Access is becoming more and more difficult. The needs are growing in Deir Al-Ahmar. It’s up to us to try to get there, and to plan a way to be able to access in it a way that is reasonably safe,” he said.
Local volunteers are worried that the looming winter will cut off the only safe route into Deir Al-Ahmar, leaving them stranded.
“That road will close with the first snow. It will be like a siege,” said Khodr Zeaiter, a volunteer with LOST. Displaced himself, he is now helping to organize aid in Deir Al-Ahmar.
Beyond the immediate concerns of food and fuel, Zeaiter is worried about the education ministry’s directive that public schools — now hosting displaced — will need to reopen for students in three weeks.
Volunteers are studying the possibility of refurbishing an abandoned school to host morning and evening classes, he said.
“We’re grateful to the people of Deir Al-Ahmar so much. It’s their solidarity that has gotten us through this. But how long that will last — who knows.”

Urgent need for South Sudan food aid: WFP

Updated 49 min 45 sec ago

AFP

November 01, 2024 08:07

Urgent need for South Sudan food aid: WFP

WFP said it would have to rely on expensive airdrops later in the year to reach isolated communities who are most at risk
Funds received before the end of this year would enable WFP to transport food by road during the dry season

Updated 49 min 45 sec ago

AFP

November 01, 2024 08:07

Nairobi: The UN World Food Programme made an urgent appeal Friday for donors to provide early funding for South Sudan, where millions are on the brink of starvation.
WFP said its stores of food supplies in South Sudan were empty and that it needed $404 million to prepare assistance for 2025 amid “spiralling operational costs and hunger.”
Without early funding, WFP said it would have to rely on expensive airdrops later in the year to reach isolated communities who are most at risk.
“It can take months to turn pledged donor funds into food in the hands of hungry people in South Sudan. The country’s limited road networks are impassable for much of the year — particularly in the east and central parts of the country where food insecurity is highest,” said Shaun Hughes, WFP’s acting country director for South Sudan, in a statement.
Funds received before the end of this year would enable WFP to transport food by road during the dry season from December to April.
“Airdrops are always (a) last resort for WFP. Every dollar spent on planes is a dollar not spent on food for hungry people,” said Hughes.
WFP said it had to double deliveries by airdrop in 2024, adding $30 million to its operational costs.
It said more than half — 56 percent — of people in South Sudan face crisis levels of hunger.
This is expected to worsen due to high inflation, flooding and people fleeing conflict in neighboring Sudan.
Since gaining independence in 2011, South Sudan has remained plagued by chronic instability, violence, economic stagnation and climate disasters.
Like other aid agencies, WFP’s resources have been stretched thin by multiple global crises.
It said only 2.7 million of the 7.1 million hungry people received assistance during South Sudan’s lean season in 2024, and most received half rations.

Topics: Sudan World Food Program

47 Palestinians killed overnight in Israeli strikes in central Gaza, Palestinian news agency says

Updated 01 November 2024

Reuters

November 01, 2024 10:00

47 Palestinians killed overnight in Israeli strikes in central Gaza, Palestinian news agency says

Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and reduced most of the enclave to rubble

Updated 01 November 2024

Reuters

November 01, 2024 10:00

GAZA: Forty seven Palestinians were killed and dozens injured, most of them children and women, in overnight Israeli bombardment of the city of Deir Al-Balah, the Nuseirat camp and the town of Al-Zawayda in the central Gaza Strip, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on Friday.

The Gaza war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and reduced most of the enclave to rubble, Palestinian authorities say.

At least 46 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, mostly in the north where one attack hit a hospital, torching medical supplies and disrupting operations, the enclave’s health officials said.

Israel’s military has accused the Palestinian militant group Hamas of using Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya for military purposes and said “dozens of terrorists” have been hiding there. Health officials and Hamas deny the assertion.

The health ministry in the Gaza Strip called for all international bodies “to protect hospitals and medical staff from the brutality of the (Israeli) occupation.”

Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Thursday that one of its doctors at the hospital, Mohammed Obeid, had been detained last Saturday by Israeli forces. It called for the protection of him and all medical staff who “are facing horrific violence as they try to provide care.”

Topics: War on Gaza

Israel fights a seemingly endless war in Gaza’s most devastated region

Updated 01 November 2024

November 01, 2024 04:57

Israel fights a seemingly endless war in Gaza’s most devastated region

Since its Oct. 7 attack into Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, Hamas has taken heavy losses
esidents say Israeli forces raid shelters for the displaced, forcing people out at gunpoint

Updated 01 November 2024

November 01, 2024 04:57

JERUSALEM: More than a year into a war that has ricocheted across the Middle East, Israeli troops are still battling Hamas in the most heavily destroyed and isolated part of the Gaza Strip.
In northern Gaza, Hamas militants carry out hit-and-run attacks from bombed-out buildings. Residents say Israeli forces have raided shelters for the displaced, forcing people out at gunpoint. First responders say they can barely operate because of the Israeli bombardment.
Since its Oct. 7 attack into Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, Hamas has taken heavy losses. The recent killing of its top leader, Yahya Sinwar, was viewed as a possible turning point, yet the two sides do not appear any closer to a ceasefire, and Hamas, which still holds scores of hostages, remains the dominant power in Gaza.
The conflict has drawn in militants from Lebanon to Yemen, and their key sponsor, Iran, has inched closer to all-out war with Israel. But in northern Gaza, the war seems stuck in a loop of devastating Israeli offensives, followed by Hamas fighters regrouping.
Israel is once again ordering mass evacuations, severely restricting aid despite global outrage and raiding hospitals it says are used by militants.
In the northern border town of Beit Lahiya — one of the first targets of last year’s ground invasion — two Israeli strikes this week killed at least 88 Palestinians, including dozens of women and children. The military said its target was a spotter on the roof.
As the war grinds on, Israel is resorting to ever more draconian measures. There is even talk of adopting a surrender-or-starve strategy proposed by former generals.
On Monday, Israel passed legislation that could severely restrict the UN agency that is the largest aid provider in Gaza despite protests by the United States and other close allies. It accuses the agency of allowing itself to be infiltrated by Hamas, allegations denied by the UN
Another offensive, as Hamas keeps filling the void
Israel launched its latest offensive in northern Gaza in early October, focusing on Jabaliya, a crowded, decades-old urban refugee camp where it says Hamas had regrouped.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted another 250 that day. Israel’s offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, who do not say how many were combatants but say more than half were women and children.
Israel says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence, and the United States says Hamas is no longer capable of mounting an Oct. 7-style attack.
But Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to areas where they had battled before — only to face renewed attacks. At least 16 Israeli soldiers have been killed in northern Gaza since the latest operation began, including a 41-year-old colonel.
Israel has yet to lay out a plan for postwar Gaza and has rejected a US push for the Western-backed Palestinian Authority to return and govern with Arab support. Plainclothes Hamas security men still patrol most areas.
“It’s endless war,” said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who now leads a Palestinian studies program at Tel Aviv University.
He says Israel has only two options to break the cycle: Either completely reoccupy Gaza, which would require several thousand troops to be stationed there indefinitely. Or secure a ceasefire with Hamas that involves the release of its hostages in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli jails, and a full Israeli withdrawal — the kind of deal that has long eluded US and Arab mediators.
“We are in Jabaliya for the fourth time, and maybe in the next month we will find ourselves there for the fifth and the sixth.” he said.
‘Leave now’ if you care about the lives of your children
Around a million people fled the north, including Gaza City, when Israel ordered its wholesale evacuation at the start of the war. They have not been allowed to return.
Some 400,000 have remained, even as Israel has encircled the area and obliterated entire neighborhoods and critical infrastructure.
The UN says at least 60,000 people have fled to Gaza City in recent weeks from Jabaliya and the northern border towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.
Residents who remain describe being stuck in their homes for days at a time because of the fighting, with bodies rotting in the streets and rescue teams unable to venture out.
Amna Mustafa and her children were asleep before dawn in a crowded school-turned-shelter in Beit Lahiya last week when an Israeli drone hovering overhead ordered everyone to evacuate. “If you care about your life and the lives of your children, leave now,” it said.
She said men were ordered to strip down and taken away in trucks. The military says it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians, and that such procedures are used to search and detain militants who it says hide among civilians.
Women and children were ordered to walk to a nearby hospital, where Israeli soldiers searched them before allowing most to walk onward to Gaza City, several miles (kilometers) to the south. Mustafa said she spent two nights in the open before moving into a new tent camp in a soccer field.
“There is no food, no water, no blankets, no diapers and no milk for the children,” she said. “We are here waiting for God’s mercy.”
The Israeli military shared drone footage of a similar exodus, showing thousands of people walking down a plowed up road past tanks. It said Hamas had prevented them from leaving before its forces arrived, without providing evidence.
The UN human rights office warned earlier this month that Israel “may be causing the destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza’s northernmost governate through death and displacement.”
Israel restricts aid despite US warnings
Israel has severely restricted aid to Gaza in October, allowing in only about a third of the humanitarian assistance that entered the previous month.
Alia Zaki, a spokesperson for the World Food Program, said Israel has not allowed UN agencies to deliver aid to the north outside of Gaza City since the latest offensive began.
Col. Elad Goren, a spokesperson for COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs in Gaza, attributed the lack of aid in the first half of the month to Jewish holiday closures and troop movements.
At a briefing last week, he said there was no need for aid deliveries in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya because there was “no population” left in either town. That was before this week’s strikes on Beit Lahiya killed scores of people.
The Biden administration has told Israel to increase the supply of aid entering Gaza, warning it of US laws that could require it to reduce its crucial military support.
Does Israel plan to empty the north?
Palestinians fear Israel is carrying out a strategy proposed by former generals in which aid to the north would be cut off, civilians would be ordered to leave and anyone remaining would be branded a militant. Rights groups say the plan would violate international law.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who visited the region last week for the 11th time since the start of the war, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told him that Israel had not adopted the plan. The military has denied receiving such orders.
But the Israeli government has not publicly repudiated the plan, even after Blinken’s visit.
Milshtein says the fact that Israel is even considering it is “a post-traumatic phenomenon” born of desperation.
“Many people in the (Israeli military) know it’s a bad idea... But they say: ‘OK, we don’t have any other plan, so let’s try it.”

Topics: War on Gaza Israel Hamas

Colm McLoughlin, Irishman who led Dubai Duty Free to become an airport retail giant, dies at age 81

Colm McLoughlin, Irishman who led Dubai Duty Free to become an airport retail giant, dies at age 81

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Lebanon PM says expanded strikes suggest Israel’s ‘rejection’ of ceasefire

Lebanon PM says expanded strikes suggest Israel’s ‘rejection’ of ceasefire

In east Lebanon, looming winter hints at stretched aid response

In east Lebanon, looming winter hints at stretched aid response

Urgent need for South Sudan food aid: WFP

Urgent need for South Sudan food aid: WFP

Dead or alive? Scores missing after paramilitary group’s attacks in Sudan’s Al-Jazira state

WFP calls for full access to Sudan amid looming famine

47 Palestinians killed overnight in Israeli strikes in central Gaza, Palestinian news agency says

47 Palestinians killed overnight in Israeli strikes in central Gaza, Palestinian news agency says

Israel fights a seemingly endless war in Gaza’s most devastated region

Israel wages deadly Gaza strikes as northern areas plead for help

Israel fights a seemingly endless war in Gaza’s most devastated region

Israel fights a seemingly endless war in Gaza’s most devastated region

47 Palestinians killed overnight in Israeli strikes in central Gaza, Palestinian news agency says

Palestinian student wins appeal after UK Home Office revoked visa over Gaza remarks

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Colm McLoughlin, Irishman who led Dubai Duty Free to become an airport retail giant, dies at age 81

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Colm McLoughlin, Irishman who led Dubai Duty Free to become an airport retail giant, dies at age 81

Colm McLoughlin, Irishman who led Dubai Duty Free to become an airport retail giant, dies at age 81

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