THE Ministry of Interior has signed a memorandum of co-operation with the National Policing Improvement Agency, UK, to organise training courses for its personnel at all levels, a spokesman said yesterday.

A MAJOR retailer has urged the Qatar Tourism and Exhibitions Authority to hold longer festivals and at least twice a year.

The Doha Summer Festival 2008 did not offer anything new, according to some longtime residents of Qatar.

The number of road accidents in the Matar Kadeem area has come down considerably after the implementation of the new traffic law, a senior official attached to the Traffic Department said yesterday.

As the curtain came down on the Doha Summer Festival, a rush of last-minute shoppers was seen in the major shopping centres of the city. All the big outlets in Doha witnessed a big turnout of people yesterday.

DOHA: Mixed performances still dominate the seven Gulf stock markets. While the two small markets of Bahrain and Muscat have not passed through the correction movement of the other five, they have sustained their positive growth until now. Three out of five markets – Doha, Kuwait, and Abu Dhabi – have overcome their problems and kept their positive performance so far. The Doha Securities Market achieved the best performance compared to end of 2007 and gained 21.43% (The Alshall Qatar Index

AN INCREASING number of residents in Qatar are buying surveillance equipment for private use as worries about crime grow, according to industry sources.

When Virgin Galactic unveiled its commercial space travel mothership WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) in the Mojave desert in the US this week, Debbie Samoody became the latest resident of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to sign up for Richard Branson's flight to the stars.

Qatar's telecommunications industry is in the midst of a shake-up, with domestic operator Qatar Telecom (Qtel) likely to lose both its mobile and landline monopolies while at the same time pursuing new markets abroad.

The increase in humidity and high temperature have made weather conditions more stressful across the country. The bad news is the weathermen see no respite from these conditions over the next several days.