By Andreas Rinke and Denis Pinchuk | SOCHI, Russia SOCHI, Russia German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on a rare visit to Russia, said that Berlin and Moscow had to keep talking despite their disagreements, but those same differences overshadowed her talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. At a news conference following a meeting in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, diverging positions were aired over […]
By Ahmed Aboulenein | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq Ahmed Abdelsattar was 14 when Islamic State swept into Mosul and declared a caliphate in 2014. Fearing he would be indoctrinated and sent to fight by the militants, his parents took him out of school. Three years later, he sells ice cream at a refugee camp for internally displaced Iraqis. His family have lost their home and his father […]
PANAMA CITY (AFP) – The co-founder of the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal says the fallout has set off a “thriving” boom in the creation of tax shelters in the United States. Juergen Mossack, who partnered with Ramon Fonseca to create the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca, said in a document obtained on Thursday (April 21) by AFP that after the Panama Papers […]
Finding new drugs that can more effectively kill cancer cells or disrupt the growth of tumors is one way to improve survival rates for ailing patients. Researchers are using supercomputers to find new chemotherapy drugs and to test known compounds to determine if they can fight different types of cancer. Recent efforts have yielded promising drug candidates, potential plant-derived compounds and insights into how to design more […]
Leaders of Nahdlatul Ulama’s youth wing, known as Ansor, say that elements of Shariah, which Muslims consider divine law, are being manipulated by groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda to justify terrorist attacks around the world, invoked to rally fighters to battle in the Middle East and elsewhere, and distorted by movements that seek to turn Islam into a political weapon. Continue reading the main […]
WASHINGTON The U.S. military received a record number of sexual assault reports in 2016, the Pentagon said on Monday, calling it a sign of service members’ trust in the system. Sexual assault and harassment in the U.S. military has come under scrutiny after a scandal involving some Marines sharing nude photos of women online came to light. The U.S. military has opened an inquiry and senior lawmakers […]
A new type of cancer-fighting nanoparticle has been created by researchers, aimed at shrinking breast cancer tumors, while also preventing recurrence of the disease. (via WSJ)
By Michel Rose and Sudip Kar-Gupta | PARIS PARIS Centrist presidential frontrunner Emmanuel Macron and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen attacked each other’s visions of France and the role it should play in Europe on Monday against a background of May Day rallies and protests. Macron sought for a third successive day to paint National Front (FN) candidate Le Pen as an extremist, while she portrayed […]
LONDON Europeans took to the streets on Monday, celebrating the international workers’ holiday of May Day with an assortment of rallies and demonstrations, which in France turned violent as protesters threw petrol bombs at police. One Paris police officer was seriously burnt and two others injured in confrontations with protesters. In Turkey, police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to break up demonstrations and arrested hundreds. A […]
France’s presidential candidates battled for the working-class vote in a day of sometimes violent protests ahead of next Sunday’s election. As May Day workers’ rights marches were being held across the country, the National Front’s Marine Le Pen attacked her rival Emmanuel Macron as an “enemy of the people” who represented finance and “savage globalisation”. The rancour and confusion of the campaign spilled on to the streets, […]
Mr. Abbas was scheduled to meet with Mr. Trump in Washington on Wednesday as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. He has sought in recent weeks to rein in Hamas, cutting salaries and refusing to pay for electricity, in a bid to undermine the group’s authority. Gazans now have only a few hours of power a day. Continue reading the main story “Whether it’s a coincidence […]
SHARJAH // Firefighters have been known to rescue cats stuck up trees but crews in Sharjah added a new string to their bow when they rescued ducks, chickens and pigeons being engulfed in flames. The birds had a lucky escape when they were spotted locked up in cages in a building on three plots of land that were on fire on Monday. “They were locked up in […]
Hanging over discussion of Federal Reserve tightening has been a potentially market-shaking question: how to safely unwind the crisis-era asset purchases that bloated the central bank’s balance sheet. Policymakers led by Janet Yellen, the Fed chair, have approached the topic gingerly, acutely aware of the potential to repeat the so-called taper tantrum of 2013, where ill-timed talk of slowing bond purchases roiled global markets. Yet for all the […]
By Matt Spetalnick | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The White House on Sunday defended President Donald Trump’s decision to invite Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to Washington, saying his cooperation was needed to counter North Korea, even as the administration faced human rights criticism for its overture to Manila. Trump issued the invitation on Saturday night in what the White House said was a “very friendly” phone conversation with Duterte, […]
MEXICO CITY Mexican soldiers killed seven suspected gang members in a weekend gun battle in the north of the country, the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office said on Sunday. According to a statement on the attorney general’s website, a convoy of 15 soldiers was passing near the town of La Grulla in Chihuahua state around 2 p.m. local time (1900 GMT) on Saturday when a group of […]
When North Korea deployed hundreds of artillery units, submarines and soldiers to take part in its largest live-fire drill, it was intended as a chilling display of the reclusive regime’s military might. The country boasts the world’s fourth-largest standing army, with more than 1m troops as well as 7m reserves, and last week’s military exercise came as US President Donald Trump ramped up the pressure on Pyongyang […]
World sport power broker Sheikh Ahmad al Fahad al Sabah announced his resignation Sunday from the FIFA council, saying did not want to be a distraction while fighting corruption allegations. Aside from serving on FIFA’s top body, the Kuwaiti is also president of the Olympic Council of Asia and holds other senior roles in sport administration, including with the Asian Football Confederation (FIFA). Sheikh Ahmad has been […]
President Donald Trump was a distracting entertainment from the moment he launched his campaign in June of 2015 — until he wasn’t. His opening speech, in which he called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and told the world he would be the best jobs president “God ever created,” was looked at as the ravings of a man whose outsized ego was too big to be anything but hilarious. News […]
Before comedian Hasan Minhaj got up to poke fun at the assembled White House press corps last night, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein got up to celebrate it. The legendary Watergate duo gave a speech evoking their investigative reporting of the Nixon administration and calling on the current generation of journalists to practice careful, thorough and relentless reporting on the current White House. Below are their remarks, […]
Google Australia has confirmed that the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is chasing it for a debt relating to unpaid tax, noting it will “lodge an objection” against the amended income tax assessments it was issued at year-end. “Such contingencies relate to reviews for open tax years as well as certain transactions and computations for which the ultimate tax determination is uncertain during the ordinary course of business,” […]
ABU DHABI // The Sawab Centre, a joint UAE-US initiative combating online propaganda by ISIL and other extremist groups and promoting positive alternatives, has announced the launch of a new anti-youth recruitment campaign on social media. Using the hashtag #DeludedFollowers, the four-day campaign will run until May 3 in Arabic and English on Sawab’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube sites. Even as its territory in Iraq and […]
Ibn Arabi, undoubtedly one of the world’s great spiritual teachers, provokes mixed reactions. There are those that consider the 12th century mystic, philosopher, Islamic scholar, poet and sage to be the foremost spiritual leader and Sufi master in Muslim history. Others regard him as a heretic or even an apostate. There is rarely much middle ground. Ibn Arabi – known as Muhyiddin (the Revivifier of Religion) and […]
Late on Friday afternoon, the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police waltzed out in front of the microphones and admitted that his agency had misused the metadata that the nation’s telecommunication companies are forced to store. It was a stunning admission. The nation had barely made it a fortnight since the deadline for telcos to have their data retention systems in place had passed, yet here was […]
Authored by EconomicPrism’s MN Gordon, annotated by Acting-Man’s Pater Tenebrarum, Seeing the Light It has been said that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” No one quite knows who first uttered this remark; it has been attributed to Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, and has even been said to be an Ancient Chinese Proverb. What […]
