News related to
Capital

Photo Tom Brady threw two interceptions against the Texans, equaling his regular-season total, but led the Patriots to their sixth consecutive A.F.C. championship game. Credit Charles Krupa/Associated Press FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — The New England Patriots have accomplished so much under Coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady, but they found something new to achieve on Saturday night at Gillette Stadium. In outlasting the Houston Texans, 34-16, the […]

ADEN: At least 26 Yemeni fighters died in fresh clashes and an air strike as government forces advanced against Shiite Houthi rebels near a key shipping strait, medics and officials said Saturday.A week-long assault by government forces and their allies aims to expel the Iran-backed Houthis from Dhubab region, close to the Bab Al-Mandab strait linking the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.Twelve bodies of Houthi insurgents were […]

Photo President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Saturday. Legislation under debate could possibly allow him to remain in power until 2029. Credit Yasin Bulbul/Presidential Palace, via Reuters The Turkish Parliament began debating legislation on Monday that would effectively rewrite the Constitution, vastly expanding the powers of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and possibly allowing him to remain in power until 2029. Mr. Erdogan, the dominant figure […]

Minister Without Portfolio Konrad Mizzi. Photo: Chris Sant Fournier During the year just ended the Labour government con­tinued to dig itself deeper into a culture of institutionalised corruption with persons occupying high government positions and those close to them partaking of the fruits of a corrupt system. A perfect example was the scandal revealed last year by leaked secret files where then health and energy minister Konrad Mizzi […]

By Philip Pullella | VATICAN CITY VATICAN CITY Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas discussed the Middle East with Pope Francis on Saturday and said prospects for peace there will suffer if U.S. president-elect Donald Trump moves Washington’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. “We are waiting to see if it happens. If it does, it will not help peace and we hope it does not happen,” Abbas told reporters […]

Digital transformation must be one of the most over-hyped, least concrete terms around. Like every such term, it can mean different things to different people. It can also be a huge stress-generating, money-squandering machine for organizations. Because “if you’re not doing it, your company will die and you will lose your CIO or IT leadership job. You’ll be disrupted! Or fail the wrong side of the Innovator’s […]

DHAKA Bangladesh police said on Saturday they had arrested one of the men behind a militant attack on a Dhaka cafe last year that killed 22 people, mostly foreigners. Jahangir Alam was detained late on Friday during a raid in Tangail, about 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital, the head of the counter-terrorism police, Monirul Islam, told reporters. “He was one of the masterminds,” Islam […]

Advertisements

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com, Is there a coup underway, while America is in the transition period, and before Trump swears in as the 45th president of the United States? How real is the clash between the rogue Manhattan billionaire and the intelligence gang behind the throne? Who will win the struggle for power over foreign policy? These are serious times and require serious considerations. The […]

BEIJING Beijing’s air quality target for 2017 is more than double the acceptable standard set by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the mayor announced on Saturday in the wake of weeks of hazardous air pollution in the Chinese capital. “We will work hard to keep PM2.5 at an annual average of around 60 micrograms per cubic metre,” Beijing mayor Cai Qi said during his delivery of the […]

DAMASCUS: The Syrian regime said on Friday that Israeli missile strikes caused a series of explosions at an air base outside Damascus before dawn.The airport southwest of the capital is a major strategic air base used mainly by Syrian elite Republican Guards and had been a base used to fire rockets at former opposition-held areas in the suburbs of Damascus. State television did not give any further […]

Qatar is regaining its appetite for deals. In the past two months alone, the world’s richest country per capita invested in Turkey’s biggest poultry producer, Russian oil giant Rosneft PJSC, and U.K. gas company National Grid Plc. The investments have been made through the Qatar Investment Authority, created in 2005 to handle the country’s windfall from liquefied natural gas sales, of which it is the world’s biggest exporter. […]

“We open a new hotel every 36 hours,” Sébastien Bazin remarks, after outlining the impressive portfolio of French hospitality chain AccorHotels, with 4,100 hotels spread across 95 countries and employing 240,000 people. The significant sum includes properties gained through the recent acquisition of FRHI, a hotel management company formerly owned by Qatar Investment Authority, billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s private investment arm Kingdom Holding and Oxford […]

Rainfall records are being broken in the San Francisco Bay Area: six inches since the start of the year, the most since 1982. Local drivers react by randomly deploying wipers, brakes and lights; it is no surprise that autonomous cars are being developed here. Other Silicon Valley records look equally hazardous. The technology-dominated Nasdaq Composite index has set further highs this week and stands more than 10 […]

President of Nintendo Tatsumi Kimishima reacts after his speech during a presentation event of Nintendo Switch in Tokyo, Friday, Jan. 13, 2017. Nintendo Co. said Friday that its Nintendo Switch video game console will sell for 29,980 yen (about $260) in Japan, starting March 3. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara) Nintendo is trying to Switch it up. The Japanese video-game company revealed details Friday about its hotly anticipated Nintendo […]

WASHINGTON The United States has not received a formal invitation to Syria peace talks being organised by Russia and Turkey to be held in the Kazakh capital of Astana on Jan. 23, the U.S. State Department said on Friday. “To my knowledge we have not received … a formal invitation to the talks,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at a daily briefing. (Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; […]

Deir al-Zour, an oil-rich province that borders Iraq, is largely under Islamic State control and has been the focus of American-led airstrikes and other military action. Continue reading the main story Since early 2015, the jihadists have besieged the provincial capital, also called Deir al-Zour, where about 200,000 people live. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, controls roughly half of the city, while the […]

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, in Beijing, capital of China, Jan. 13, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Tao) BEIJING, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) — Senior Chinese leaders Li Keqiang, Zhang Dejiang and Wang Qishan met with General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong in Beijing on Friday, vowing to […]

Crystal Lagoons, the patented technology developer of giant crystalline lagoons, has announced it has held a series of meetings with prominent Qatari real estate developers as the country looks to capitalise on a growth in tourism numbers and revenues. Designed to be self-cleaning, the lagoons only require topping up in response to evaporation and use up to 100 times less chemicals than traditional pool systems, and only […]

By Jamie McGeever | LONDON LONDON European and U.S. stocks looked to end a sluggish week on a high note on Friday, while the dollar was on track for its biggest weekly fall in two months and U.S. bond yields eyed their longest run of weekly declines since July. Investors largely shrugged off figures that showed Chinese exports fell the most last year since 2009, and will […]

PUTRAJAYA: When stall supervisor Eda Umar first met the late Tan Sri Adenan Satem at the Rasa Alamanda Foodcourt here in 2014, she did not know he was the Chief Minister of Sarawak. What she did come to know was that he loved her sizzling yee mee. “His favourite was the black sauce chicken yee mee with mushrooms,” recollected Eda, a qualified chef who personally attended to […]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. Several months of wet weather have dramatically eased California’s years-long drought, replenishing reservoirs and parched aquifers and forcing state water officials to switch – at least temporarily – from managing shortages to avoiding floods. With rain continuing to fall following a deluge that brought 20 inches (50 cm) of precipitation to some areas this week, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains – crucial for […]

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi | AMMAN AMMAN Syrian army command said on Friday that Israel fired rockets at a major military airport west of Damascus, the capital, and warned Tel Aviv of repercussions of what it called a “flagrant” attack. Syrian state television quoted the army as saying several rockets were fired from an area near Lake Tiberias in northern Israel just after midnight which landed in the […]

Rashid Bin Fahd: ‘Bilateral relations between the UAE and India are witnessing continuous development and strong potential for greater prosperity in the next phase’ Abdullah Al Saleh: ‘India’s largest trading partners.. and UAE is the largest Arab investor in India and tenth globally’ Abu Dhabi, January 12, 2017 A high-level delegation from the UAE is participating in the 8th eighth Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit which kicked […]

National Bank of Oman (NBO), the sultanate’s third-largest lender by assets, posted on Thursday a 19.9 percent fall in fourth-quarter net profit, according to Reuters calculations. The lender made a profit of 13.68 million rials ($35.5 million) in the three months to Dec. 31, Reuters calculated based on previous financial statements in lieu of a quarterly breakdown. This was down from 17.07 million rials in the same […]

VISHNU RAJA
RYO YAMADA
HITORI GOTOH
IKUYO KITA