LAGOS Two people were killed when part of a two-storey building in a police training college collapsed in Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos on Sunday, the police and the emergency agency said. The collapse happened at about 04:00 a.m. (0300 GMT) in the densely populated Ikeja district of the city, an official from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said. “Two people lost their lives. Nobody is inside […]
The UAE is set to be one of the world’s main centres for New Year’s Eve concerts on Saturday, with a variety of gigs in genres ranging from stadium rock and EDM to Arab pop and hip-hop. The locations are as eclectic as the sounds on offer, with mammoth venues such as Abu Dhabi’s du Arena and Dubai’s Meydan Racecourse hosting events along with resorts, restaurants and […]
By Philip Pullella | VATICAN CITY VATICAN CITY Pope Francis on Sunday offered a Christmas hope for peace in a world lacerated by war and terrorism, urging people to remember migrants, refugees and those hit by economic instability caused by “idolatry of money”. Francis, marking the fourth Christmas season since his election in 2013, also urged Palestinians and Israelis, facing renewed tension after a U.N. resolution condemning […]
Mohammed bin Zayed Falconry and Desert Physiognomy School, the first institution in the world to teach original Arab falconry traditions, rules and ethics, has been officially inaugurated in Al Ain City. Named after Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, the project was launched in 2014 to educate future generations about deep-rooted heritage and history of the UAE and the wider Arabian Peninsula. […]
Dubai, UAE, 25 December 2016HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), has received HE Mattar Al Tayer, Director-General and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), at DEWA’s Main Office. HE Mattar Al Tayer was accompanied by a high-level delegation from RTA comprising Maitha bin Udai, CEO of the Traffic and Roads […]
Fare collection gates have more than doubled at the Business Bay Metro Station on Dubai’s Red Line in response to growing passenger number. The Road and Transport Authority’s Rail Agency said it has added six fare collection gates, raising the number of entry gates at the station to 10. It said the step has been taken in response to the growing footfall at the station, which is […]
TEHRAN: Iran’s capital might not seem like the most obvious pitstop for Santa Claus, but Iranians love the chintzy side of Christmas and it is also one of the safest places in the Middle East for Christians.The past month has seen shoppers flocking to the Armenian district of Somayeh — the biggest Christian area in the city — to pick up fake trees, and stock up on […]
In 300 B.C., Carthage was one of the world’s largest cities with up to 700,000 people living within its walls. The Carthaginian republic was a force to be reckoned with, controlling inconceivable amounts of wealth and land all around the Mediterranean. However, just over a century later in 146 B.C., Carthage was burnt to the ground by the Romans. The destruction of Carthage was so thorough that […]
By Philip Pullella | VATICAN CITY VATICAN CITY Pope Francis said on Saturday that Christmas had been “taken hostage” by dazzling materialism that puts God in the shadows and blinds many to the needs of the hungry, the migrants and the war weary. Francis, leading the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics into Christmas for the fourth time since his election in 2013, said in his Christmas Eve […]
MANILA, Philippines — A powerful typhoon is on its way to slam into the eastern Philippines on Christmas Day as officials struggled to divert people’s attention from family celebrations and travel. A provincial governor offered roasted pigs to entice villagers to move to emergency shelters. Typhoon Nock-Ten packed maximum sustained winds of 114 miles per hour (185 kilometers per hour) and gusts of up to 158 mph […]
Photo Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, at a ceremony on Saturday marking the beginning of Hanukkah, described a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli construction in the West Bank as “delusional” and “absurd.” Credit Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images JERUSALEM — In a furious riposte a day after the United Nations Security Council’s adoption of a resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on […]
Russian jets stepped up strikes on several towns in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province and rural Aleppo two days after the evacuation of rebels from their last pocket in the northern city of Aleppo, rebels and residents said on Saturday. They said at least eight strikes targeted Binish, Saraqeb and Jisr al Shaqour – main towns in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib. There were reports of several […]
Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com, The window is closing on freedom in the Golden State, as liberal government leaders and increasingly bureaucratic laws are being used to strip away the rights of the people. Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a slew of new laws, seen by many as unconstitutional, that will make it incrementally more difficult for Californians to keep and bear arms. But in response […]
More than a month after the election, the following sentence has become a cable news cliché: Journalists in New York and Washington, D.C. are out of touch with the rest of the country. It’s true. There’s a lot of local nuance that doesn’t make the national news. And it’s even true within cities like New York — growing up in the Bronx often meant watching reporters based […]
Australia’s cybersecurity capabilities and researchers will be showcased to global players in the United States in February, in a delegation sent to the RSA Conference in San Francisco led by Special Adviser to the Prime Minister on Cyber Security Alastair MacGibbon and recently appointed CEO of the Australian Cyber Security Growth Network Craig Davies. According to Nicola Watkinson, Austrade’s senior trade and investment commissioner for North America, […]
A man wearing a Santa Claus costume walks atop Jerusalem’s Old City walls on December 23, 2016 An online Santa tracker run by a Canadian and American defense agency mapped the jolly old gift-giver’s path around the globe Saturday, in what has become a Yuletide tradition. Every Christmas Eve since 1955, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been tracking Saint Nicholas’s annual voyage to deliver […]
MANILA, Philippines – A powerful typhoon was heading for a Christmas Day collision with the central Philippines. The U.S. military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said Nock-Ten was a super typhoon with winds of up to 240 kph (150 mph) late Christmas Eve local time (1200 GMT), though it was expected to weaken before landfall. The Philippines’ own weather bureau said the province of Catanduanes was likely to […]
When you first meet Abeer Al Otaiba you wouldn’t guess she’s a mother of two, and the founder of the philanthropic fashion brand SemSem that’s going global. The glamorous Egyptian fashionista wears high-waisted red trousers with a matching red high-low top, and new-season Gucci heels with pink lip appliqués. Look further and you’ll see glimpses of Al Otaiba’s love of motherhood. Her wallet and phone case are […]
The Turkish Army and police won, but victory brought an Aleppo-like landscape. Two dozen acres of the old city have been cleared of the rubble so far, leaving a featureless circular gash on aerial maps. The damage is mostly invisible from street level though, because alleyways leading up to the most devastated areas have been walled up where they intersect with streets that have reopened for business. […]
Researchers have developed a method that irradiates biological enzymes with light to expand their highly efficient and selective capacity for catalysis to new chemistry. (via WSJ)
MANILA Sixteen people were wounded in a grenade explosion outside a Catholic church during a Christmas eve mass in the Philippines’ restive southern island of Mindanao, a priest and police said on Saturday. Security forces across Southeast Asia are on alert ahead of the Christmas and New Year holidays, as police in Australia and Indonesia said they had foiled bomb plots and Malaysian security forces arrested suspected […]
ABU DHABI // Five times a day, Sayed Hameed announces prayers from his mosque in International City. After every call, the muezzin says a silent prayer for his son. His eldest son, 11-year-old Yousef, needs corrective surgery on his right leg, which has been deformed since birth. However, his 35-year-old Afghan father cannot afford to pay Dh60,000 for operation. “Yousef didn’t have any accidents and doesn’t suffer […]
Christian Arbeit, a press officer for the club, joked that the renown of Union Berlin’s Christmas party had overshadowed the fame of the team itself. Mr. Arbeit, who served as the M.C. on Friday night (and also played a few songs on the trumpet in an ensemble that featured his mother on the clarinet and his father on the trombone), said the aim was to retain the […]
By Maher Chmaytelli | BARTELLA, Iraq BARTELLA, Iraq Several hundred Iraqi Christians flocked on Saturday to a northern town recently retaken from Islamic State, celebrating Christmas for the first time since 2013, their joy tainted with sadness over the desecration of their church. Once home to thousands of Assyrian Christians, Bartella emptied in August 2014 when it fell to Islamic State’s blitz across large parts of Iraq […]
