The second phase of registration for the housing and commercial units in Barwa Village under construction in Wakra will begin today.

Salam Stores, the luxury retail chain with stores across Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, is having a huge seasonal promotion at its Salam Plaza and The Mall outlets.

A South African businessman accused of orchestrating a 15bn rand ($1.93bn) fraud has admitted to forging documents to deceive Qatar’s Barwa Real Estate, a source close to the matter said yesterday.

The National Human Rights Committee has laid emphasis on employers and sponsors strictly adhering to Law No.14/2004, which regulates the working hours of labourers during peak summer.

Bank lending in Qatar fell by QR15.5bn during the first quarter of this year, a seven percent decline from the end of December 2008.

The unique Sidra tree-themed Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC) is slated to come up according to schedule with groundwork for the second stage of construction starting and the QNCC team hiring executives for the operations of the meeting hub.

The joint search team struggling to retrieve bodies from Tuesday’s ship tragedy, is planning to tow the sunken ship to shallow waters. The services of two tugs have been sought to make their job easier, sources said.

The Qatar Investment Promotion Department (IPD) is planning to set up an office in the Chinese capital Beijing next year to facilitate mutual investments between the two countries, state-run newspaper China Daily reported yesterday. The Chinese office will help Qatari investors, including Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, to seek investment opportunities. http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Local_News&subsection=Qatar+News&month=July2009&file=Local_News2009070463416.xml

For children, students and adults who want to spend their summer mostly at home, books can be the best way to make the most of their free time and enrich their knowledge by exploring the world through the printed word.

Qatar saw its population fall by more than 40,000 people in June from May, after witnessing growth for the first five months of the year, official data showed yesterday. As of June 30, the country’s population stood at 1.61 million people, compared with 1.65 million in May, data released by the Qatar Statistics Authority showed.