Dubai saw the steepest house price growth globally over the past year despite government cooling measures, Knight Frank’s Global House Price Index shows. House prices grew 27.7 percent over the 12 months to March 2014, the fastest pace among the 54 countries tracked on the index. However, house prices only climbed 3.4 percent in the first quarter, much slower than 9.2 percent growth in the same period […]
NATO defence ministers have agreed to bolster protection in eastern Europe after the Ukraine crisis, but have insisted they are acting within the limits of a key post-Cold War treaty with Moscow. NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said ministers had agreed to develop a “readiness action plan… to respond to the changed security environment” created by the escalating conflict in Ukraine. This will include measures such as […]
WASHINGTON — The White House argued on Tuesday that the “unique circumstances” presented by the opportunity to return Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl gave President Obama the authority to lawfully bypass a federal statute requiring the Pentagon to notify Congress a month before he transferred the five Taliban detainees necessary to complete the deal. But the White House was forced by turns to defend its decision not to notify Congress […]
PARIS — The three young Frenchmen were arrested as they tried to make their way to Syria to wage jihad. They had not harmed anyone in France or made plans to do so, according to the evidence at their trial in January, but in France these days, seeking to fight in Syria is enough to bring a charge of plotting terrorism — and in this case sentences […]
Photo: AFP/GETTY As the Newark by-election approaches, the Prime Minister is reported to have said in a private – inevitably leaked – conversation that if the wrong candidate becomes president of the European commission it will trigger an early referendum and a likely Brexit. That’s some tough talk from a Tory leader who has previously insisted that he wants to stay in the EU. Labour says he’s […]
JERUSALEM — President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority swore in a transitional government on Monday intended to unify the West Bank and Gaza after seven years of division, though the run-up was marred by last-minute disputes over its composition. The move is likely to complicate further the Palestinians’ already fraught relations with Israel and put them under international scrutiny because the new government is supported by […]
A new Palestinian government is scheduled to be sworn in on Monday in an effort to unite warring Palestinian factions for the first time in seven years. The move would bring together the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is dominated by the mainstream Fatah faction, and its rival Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, under the terms of a unity pact reached last month. The development […]
The new Palestinian government, scheduled to be sworn in on Monday at 1 p.m. (6 a.m. Eastern time) in the West Bank city of Ramallah, will be led by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and is to consist of 16 other ministers, some handling more than one portfolio. Three ministers are to be from the Gaza Strip following a reconciliation pact signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization, dominated […]
Qatar Airways has delayed taking delivery of its first Airbus A380 by “several weeks” while the planemaker tackles last-minute problems with the cabin, the airline’s chief executive told Reuters. The airline has asked Airbus to address requests it made after the usual pre-delivery customer inspection, Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker said on Friday. Al Baker was responding to a Reuters query after delegates gathering for the […]
World travelers looking for a cheap place to stay may want to avoid Geneva, Dubai and Miami. The three cities rank among the most expensive markets for hotel rooms, according to an index compiled by Bloomberg. In Geneva, the average cost for a night is $308, followed by Dubai at $273, Kuwait City at $253 and Zurich at $250. Miami is next as the costliest place for […]
David Cameron could place himself at the head of a movement to halt the European Union steam-roller and turn it around Photo: EPA Earthquake or not, British politics has certainly undergone a seismic change over the past few weeks. Familiar landmarks have vanished, fresh features emerged, and the outlook has fundamentally changed. Let’s start with an intrusion into private grief, and take a long look at the […]
CAIRO — The Benghazi militant group Ansar al-Shariah is under attack by a renegade former general trying to rid Libya of political Islam. But in response, the militia has taken aim squarely at Washington. “We remind America of their defeats in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia,” Mohammed Ali al-Zahawi, the leader of Ansar al-Shariah, declared this week in a videotaped statement, warning that the United States would face […]
DUBAI // Two Mediterranean olive trees each more than a millennium old have found a new home on The World islands. The trees, dated between 1,300 and 1,400 years old, are being planted on the Heart of Europe chain of man-made islands off the Dubai coast by the UAE-based real estate developer Kleindienst Group. In all, 58 trees comprised of more than 10 varieties native to the […]
Expedition 40 Launches to the International Space Station | NASA Expedition 40 Launches to the International Space Station The Soyuz TMA-13M rocket is launched with Expedition 40 Soyuz Commander Maxim Suraev, of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst, of the European Space Agency, ESA, and Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman of NASA in the early hours of Thursday, May 29, 2014 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in […]
Expedition 40 Preflight: Soyuz Rocket Rolls Out | NASA Expedition 40 Preflight: Soyuz Rocket Rolls Out The Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft is rolled out to the launch pad by train on Monday, May 26, 2014, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Launch of the Soyuz rocket is scheduled for May 29 and will send Expedition 40 Soyuz Commander Maxim Suraev, of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, Flight […]
Low voter turnout has been reported on the second and final day of Egyptian presidential elections, as former army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is expected to emerge as the country’s next president. While the Egyptian government declared a national holiday for Tuesday in an effort to get voters to cast their ballots, an official with international monitoring group Global Network for Rights and Development reported that voter turnout […]
French President Francois Hollande has called for the European Union to reduce its role “where it is not necessary” after Eurosceptic parties made sweeping electoral gains across the bloc. Reacting to the spectacular success of parties like France’s own National Front and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in Sunday’s European Parliament elections, Hollande acknowledged that the EU had become “remote and incomprehensible” for many of its citizens. […]
Alex Salmond’s miscalculation gave No voters a perfect excuse to vote Ukip Photo: Christopher Pledger/Telegraph Has Alex Salmond lost it? The question becomes especially pertinent in the light of the SNP leader’s extraordinary reaction to his party’s decidedly underwhelming result in the Euro-elections. It is one thing for party bosses to be disappointed when their charges perform less well than anticipated. However, it is entirely another when they […]
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Cameron. Photo: AFP Tory MPs may have agreed not to panic in the light of Ukip’s big win, but that doesn’t mean David Cameron isn’t going to come under a huge amount of pressure from them in the coming days and weeks to do something, anything, to show he’s got the message. One of their demands is bound to be that the […]
Far-right and anti-EU parties in France and the UK have made sweeping gains in the European Parliament elections. The majority of almost 388m eligible voters across 21 of the 28 member states, including Germany, France and Spain, cast their ballots on Sunday at polling stations across the EU. The other seven countries, including the UK and the Netherlands, in the bloc had already voted. The European Parliament’s […]
CAIRO — Helicopters hovered over parts of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, early Monday as voting in the two-day presidential election began. Security was tight in many neighborhoods. Police blocked off streets and parts of city blocks to protect voters at polling stations. More than 400,000 Egyptian police and army soldiers were deployed Monday for the election, and more than 14,000 judges are overseeing the vote at polling stations across […]
Far-right and anti-European Union parties have made sweeping gains in the European Parliament elections held over the 28 member states. Voters in 21 of the EU’s states went to the polls on Sunday, choosing members for the bloc’s 751-seat legislature. The other seven countries in the bloc had already voted in a sprawling exercise of democracy that began on Thursday in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. […]
Asian shares hit one-year high on Monday thanks to a strong session on Wall Street and a decisive win for billionaire Petro Poroshenko in Ukraine’s presidential election. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.15 percent while Japan’s Nikkei share average gained 0.7 percent to hit one-month high. Investors took their cue from upbeat U.S. hosing data on Friday, with sales of new single-family homes […]
The referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country will take place on September 18, 2014 Photo: Getty Images Alex Salmond has based his campaign to break up the Union on the idea that the creation of an independent Scotland will be as cost-free and friction-free as possible. But as the referendum approaches, that idea grows less tenable by the day. This week, for example, the Treasury […]
