“Effective August 4, 2017, Royal Jordanian passengers are allowed to carry these electronic devices in the cabin,” the airline said in a statement referring to large phones, laptops and tablets.

The United States instituted the laptop ban in March for eight North African and Middle East countries based on intelligence that the Islamic State group was working to build a bomb into a tablet or laptop.

Britain followed suit and banned similar-sized electronics from being carried into cabins on direct flights from six countries — Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.

A week ago, Britain lifted the ban for flights from Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport but had kept it for the other countries and other Turkish hubs.

In early July, Royal Jordanian said the US laptop ban had been lifted for all of its US-bound flights.

Both Washington and London had said the ban would be lifted for airlines that implement new safety measures.

Indonesia and Google have agreed to implement the Trusted Flagger program, which reviews flagged content and removes content deemed inappropriate for the internet on websites such as YouTube.

Trusted Flagger is a program in which volunteers, who have been accepted through an application process, are given the authority to flag content that violates the terms of service or community guidelines of Google’s websites. Google then reviews the flagged content and determines whether to remove it.

Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara said that, currently, the program was being tested and that he expected it to be launched within the next two to three months.

He said the government would involve several non-governmental organizations such as Wahid Institute, ICT Watch and Anti-Defamation Society of Indonesia (Mafindo) as content moderators.

“With such a transparent panel system that involves the public, there is no room for someone to abuse their authority,” Rudiantara said during a press conference in Jakarta on Friday, adding that the program would increase the response time of removal requests.

“Based on our experience, only 50 percent of the take down requests were responded to quickly. We do not want the rest of the 50 percent to snowball.”

Google policy and government affairs director for Greater China and Southeast Asia Ann Lavin said the Trusted Flagger program was implemented in June in the US and some European countries.

“We have seen this program in the US and a number of European countries but this might be the first time [it is implemented] in Southeast Asia,” Lavin said.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) announced that Huang Jing and his wife Shirley Yang Xiuping, who are United States citizens, will be permanently banned from Singapore, in what is the first publicly known case of its kind in nearly two decades.

The ministry said in a statement that Dr Huang has been identified as “an agent of influence of a foreign country” who worked with intelligence organisations and agents from that country. It did not name the country.

Dr Huang was Director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation and Lee Foundation Professor on US-China relations at the LKY School, which is part of the National University of Singapore (NUS), and his views on China and foreign policy issues were regularly sought by organisations and the media.

“Huang used his senior position in the LKYSPP to deliberately and covertly advance the agenda of a foreign country at Singapore’s expense. He did this in collaboration with foreign intelligence agents,” said the ministry.

“This amounts to subversion and foreign interference in Singapore’s domestic politics. Huang’s continued presence in Singapore, and that of his wife, are therefore undesirable.”

The Controller of Immigration has cancelled the couple’s entry and re-entry permits, the ministry said.

It noted that Ms Yang was aware of her husband using his position to advance a foreign country’s agenda.

Dr Huang had engaged prominent and influential Singaporeans, providing them with what he claimed was “privileged information” about the foreign country to influence their opinions in favour of that country, the ministry said.

It added that he also recruited others to aid his operations.

The ministry cited how Dr Huang gave supposedly “privileged information” to a senior member of the LKY School, so it could be passed on to the Singapore Government.

“The information was duly conveyed by that senior member of the LKYSPP to very senior public officials who were in a position to direct Singapore’s foreign policy,” it said.

“The clear intention was to use the information to cause the Singapore Government to change its foreign policy.”

However, the Government declined to act on the information.

The Government has in the past taken action against individuals who had carried out subversive activities for foreign countries.

In 1998, the Internal Security Department arrested four Singapore citizens. Three of them were agents for a foreign intelligence service, and one of them recruited the fourth person to collect intelligence on and to subvert a local community organisation.

Before he joined the LKY School, Dr Huang taught at several universities in the United States, most recently as a lecturer at Harvard University from 2013 to 2014.

He has published numerous articles, book chapters and columns and opinion pieces – including in The Straits Times and Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao – on Chinese elite politics, China’s development strategy, its military and foreign policy, and US-China relations, among other topics.

He was director of the Asia Studies Program and associate professor of political science at Utah State University from 1994 to 2004, and was granted tenure in 1998.

He was a Shorenstein Fellow at Stanford University from 2002 to 2003, and became Senior Fellow at the John Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution from 2004 to 2008. Various foundations have also awarded him grants and fellowships.

Currently, he serves as a senior overseas economic analyst for Xinhua News Agency, and is an overseas advisor to the China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies.

He also sits on various boards, including Keppel Land, the Steering Committee of the NUS Research Institute in Suzhou, the Fujitsu-JAIMs Foundation Japan, and Chinese energy firm Wasion Group.

He received his Bachelor of Arts in English from Sichuan University, his Masters degree in history from Fudan University, and his doctorate from Harvard University.

A NUS spokesman said it had been informed of the ministry’s findings that Dr Huang used his senior position to advance the agenda of a foreign country at Singapore’s expense.

“This is a matter of serious concern, and LKYSPP is cooperating fully with MHA,” she said.

“NUS does not tolerate such acts of foreign interference, even as we continue to value and uphold the diverse and international character of our University. As this matter relates to national security, the University is unable to comment on the details of the case,” she added.

The spokesman added that in light of the ministry’s findings and actions, Dr Huang has been suspended without pay with immediate effect.

“Prof Huang’s employment at NUS is conditional on the necessary permits for working in Singapore. As these permits have been cancelled, we would not be able to continue with his employment,” she said.

He came up with the call while visiting two Rohingya refugee camps in Ukhiya upazila in Cox’s Bazar, reports our local staff correspondent.

The OIC chief also urged the global community to stand by the most persecuted minority people in the world.

He also appreciated Bangladesh’s roles for providing shelter, food and security to the refugees over the last 25 years.

Read More: Keep helping Dhaka over Rohingya crisis

“Bangladesh selflessly stood by the Rohingya refugees over two decades and she deserves cordial thanks,” he told reporters.

He added, “The OIC is cordially working to bring a permanent solution to resolve the crisis and vows to continue its campaign until a resolution to this end is found.” Yousef reached Cox’s Bazar around noon as part of his four-day official tour to Bangladesh.

Read Also: Rohingya Crisis: Int’l initiative needs to be strengthened

During the nearly one and a half hour-long visit, he talked to the refugees and listened to their needs and complaints with sympathy.

Officials of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Rohingya Refugee Repatriation Action Committee district administration and Rohingya refugee camp management were also present during the visit.

The court in the city of Dessau found that the 21-year-old defendants, named only as Sebastian F. and Xenia I., lured the 25-year-old architecture student to an empty apartment in May last year, DPA news agency reported. They submitted their victim to a horrific ordeal that led to her death.

Presiding judge Uda Schmidt called the case an “incomprehensible crime”, handing down a 15-year sentence to Sebastian F. and a juvenile sentence of five years and six months to his partner at the time, who is the mother of three children.

The two defendants, who sat impassively as the verdict was read out, were also ordered to pay a total of 60,000 euros ($71,300) for the pain and suffering of the victim’s parents, who were co-plaintiffs in the case.

Schmidt said the pair’s sole motive had been to fulfil a sadistic sexual fantasy.

After trapping her in the flat, the pair repeatedly sexually assaulted the woman, leaving her with such severe injuries that they assumed she would die, the court found.

When the couple returned hours later and found the victim, identified in media reports as Li Yangjie, still alive, they carried the severely injured woman away and abandoned her in underbrush.

After friends in Germany and China alerted the authorities that she was missing, police organised a search for the woman, who was from the eastern province of Henan. Her corpse was found two days later.

An autopsy found she had suffered blows to the head, torso and extremities.

After news of the murder spread, hundreds of Chinese students and local residents held a rally in Li’s memory to demand justice.

The couple was arrested two weeks after the crime and went on trial last November.

Xenia I. had admitted in testimony that she had lured the young woman, who was jogging in town, to the empty flat under false pretences and was present while Sebastian F. raped her.

But she denied taking part in the abuse that led to the student’s death.

Beyond the shock at the brutality of the crime, the case also caused controversy in Germany and China because the mother and stepfather of Sebastian F. are both police officers.

Sebastian F. is also accused of at least one further rape committed in the summer of 2013 in Dessau which only came to light in the course of the investigation.

Dessau, 130 kilometres (80 miles) southwest of Berlin, is closely associated with the Bauhaus movement and draws architecture and design students from around the world.

 Nearly 700 employees at the Jakarta International Container Terminal (JICT), the bulk of the workforce, stopped work Thursday for a strike intended to last a week, the company’s labour union said.

“The strike has paralysed the loading and unloading process as well as the terminal’s activity,” Mokhammad Firmansyah, the union’s secretary general, told AFP.

Workers are demanding to be paid last year’s production bonus in full, after it was cut by more than 40 per cent, Firmansyah said.

The Indonesian Logistics Association said the strike would damage the country’s reputation as an export and import hub.

“This uncertainty will hurt Indonesia’s exports as foreign buyers could turn to other countries,” the association’s chairman, Zaldy Masita, told AFP.

Indonesia’s government denied the strike had disrupted the flow of containers and vessels to Tanjung Priok port, which accounts for 70 per cent of the country’s container capacity.

However, incoming vessels have been diverted to four other terminals at the port, said Bay Hasani, a sea traffic and transport official at the transport ministry.

JICT, whose controlling shareholder is Hong Kong’s Hutchison Ports, handles about 40 per cent of the containers at the Jakarta port.

The creation process, however, is decidedly modern.

In northwest Shaanxi province’s capital of Xian, home to such historic sites as the clay Terracotta Army and the 1,000-year-old Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, a small studio and factory uses 3D printing technology to replicate ancient art.

“All the intricate details of the original design are preserved in a 3D mould,” Xi Xin, the president of the Xian Chizi Digital Technology company, told AFP.

“Human workers may not be able to produce everything we want in the design, but the printer can do it all.”

The firm, whose products are sold at museum shops and to personal collectors, is among the businesses taking advantage of China’s foray into 3D printing — a rapidly-growing industry that has been incorporated into the country’s national manufacturing strategy.

“In the last five years, 3D printing in China has grown from a one billion yuan ($149 million) industry to a more than 100 billion yuan ($14.9 billion) industry,” Luo Jun, the head of the China 3D Printing Technology Industry Alliance, told AFP.

– Technological breakthrough –

==============================

3D printing came to China in the 90s, Luo said, after Tsinghua University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology professors brought the technology back from the United States.

Domestic development of the methods were slow at first, but the industry has gained momentum with government support.

The Chinese State Council’s “Made in China 2025” industrial development plan lists the promotion of “new breakthroughs in 3D printing” as a priority for growth into the next decade, while the Ministry of Science and Technology counts 3D printing among its thirteen priority projects for technological innovation.

“Now the scale of China’s 3D printing industry has surpassed those of Europe and the US,” Luo said.

The Xian Chizi Digital Technology company has developed its 3D design technology over the last ten years, using a stereolithography machine to print carefully constructed digital replicas of historic artifacts.

The design process can take between one to three months, while printing requires up to several weeks of time for the more elaborate pieces.

Once the prototype is complete, it will be mass-produced in a factory using the sane material — usually wood or copper — as the relic it was modelled on.

“Our clients don’t buy our products because of the 3D printing aspect, but it does make things easier,” Xi said.

For instance, if a customer decides that she wants an 80-centimetre elephant instead of a 50-centimetre one, it’s a simple matter of programming the 3D printer accordingly.

Xi’s company also makes 3D printed moulds for sculptors who use them as models for their own handcrafted artworks.

The final products — painted miniatures sold for between 20 yuan ($3) and 500 yuan ($74) — are popular among the tourists who flock to Xian, known as the oldest of China’s four great imperial capitals.

The figurines are now being sold at the mausoleum for Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor, and his Terracotta Warriors.

There, at the burial place dating back to 200 B.C., visitors can hold the 3D “artifacts” of China’s future in the palm of their hands.

Authorities said no casualties were reported from the blaze which erupted in the middle to upper floors of The Torch, once the tallest residential development in the world.

The 337-metre (1,105-foot) tower was the scene of a 2015 inferno that caused extensive damage to its luxury flats and triggered an evacuation of nearby blocks in the seafront Marina neighbourhood.

Dubai authorities said firefighters arrived at the scene within four minutes of the blaze erupting at 12:45 am (2045 GMT Thursday).

They said residents were immediately evacuated and the fire put out by 2:58 am without any casualties.

Dubai’s civil defence authority said it started on the 65th floor of the luxury tower block.

In the morning, an AFP correspondent saw torched vehicles in the block’s car park and extensive fire damage to the middle and upper storeys of the left side of the building.

“We thank God that there were no casualties, that because of the efforts of all teams on the ground… the residents were evacuated from this building to another one and there were no injuries,” Dubai police commander Major General Abdullah Khalifa al-Marri said.

In January, Dubai announced tougher rules to minimise fire risks after a series of tower blazes in the emirate mostly due to flammable material used in cladding, a covering or coating used on the side of the buildings.

In November 2015, fire engulfed three residential blocks in central Dubai and led to services on a metro line being suspended, although no one was hurt.

On New Year’s Eve that year, 16 people were injured when a fire broke out in a luxury hotel, hours before a massive fireworks display nearby.

Dubai has established a reputation for building dozens of futuristic skyscrapers, which have transformed its skyline.

The city state boasts the world’s tallest building, Burj al-Khalifa, which stands 828 metres (2,700 feet) tall, as well as iconic palm tree-shaped, man-made luxury residential islands.

Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding is building a tower in Jeddah that is planned to surpass the Burj Khalifa, rising more than a kilometre.

Dubai first became a magnet for property investments when it opened the sector to foreigners in 2002, standing out in a region that largely confines freehold ownership to citizens.

The value of property surged at breakneck speed until the global financial crisis hit the debt-laden emirate in 2009, sending prices into free-fall.

A recovery led by tourism, trade and transportation pushed prices up again between 2012 and 2014.

But Dubai’s real estate sector again slowed down, with residential prices dropping around 12 per cent in 2015 before slowly starting to climb in 2016.

Trusted Flagger is a program in which volunteers, who have been accepted through an application process, are given the authority to flag content that violates the terms of service or community guidelines of Google’s websites. Google then reviews the flagged content and determines whether to remove it.

Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara said that, currently, the program was being tested and that he expected it to be launched within the next two to three months.

He said the government would involve several nongovernmental organizations such as Wahid Institute, ICT Watch and AntiDefamation Society of Indonesia (Mafindo) as content moderators.

“With such a transparent panel system that involves the public, there is no room for someone to abuse their authority,” Rudiantara said during a press conference in Jakarta on Friday, adding that the program would increase the response time of removal requests.

“Based on our experience, only 50 percent of the take down requests were responded to quickly. We do not want the rest of the 50 percent to snowball.”

Google policy and government affairs director for Greater China and Southeast Asia Ann Lavin said the Trusted Flagger program was implemented in June in the US and some European countries.

“We have seen this program in the US and a number of European countries but this might be the first time [it is implemented] in Southeast Asia,” Lavin said.