DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Hotels in Dubai are scrambling to rework New Year’s plans after the ritzy Mideast tourist spot’s ruler announced the cancellation of all celebrations late Tuesday due to the violence in Gaza.
The manager of the 4-star Arabian Courtyard says there will be no music or dancing to ring in the New Year, though the hotel’s restaurants and bars will stay open.

Somali pirates have “stunned” the United States’ top military leader by seizing a supertanker three times as big as an aircraft carrier hundreds of nautical miles off the Kenya coast.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Monday that he was surprised both by the size of the vessel the pirates had hijacked and by its distance from the shore.

The Indian navy has said that one of its warships in the Gulf of Aden has destroyed a ship belonging to pirates operating off the coast of Somalia.
The INS Tabar opened fire on a pirate “mother ship” after it came under attack, a government statement said.
There has been a surge in piracy incidents off Somalia.
The Saudi-owned Sirius Star supertanker is currently anchored off the Somali coast after the vessel and its 25 crew were seized by pirates.

Dubai – Syria has frozen its ties with Iraq following a cross-border attack by US forces on a Syrian village, the Dubai-based al-Arabiya news network reported Friday.
It said the Iraqi charge d’affaires had been summoned to the Syrian Foreign Ministry in Damascus and told that economic cooperation was being frozen, as was cooperation between security services.