KUALA LUMPUR Malaysia has arrested six foreigners and one Malaysian for suspected links to militant groups including Islamic State, the police chief said on Sunday. The Southeast Asian nation has been on high alert since suicide bombers and gunmen linked to Islamic State launched multiple attacks in Jakarta, the capital of neighbouring Indonesia, in January 2016. A grenade attack on a bar on the outskirts of the […]
ISTANBUL A Syrian air force pilot who bailed out as his warplane crashed on Turkish territory has been found by a Turkish rescue team and is being treated at a hospital in the Hatay region, a hospital spokeswoman said on Sunday. Dogan news agency said the pilot, who crashed his plane on Sunday, had been found around 40 km (25 miles) from the wreckage. He was first […]
By Ernest Scheyder | HOUSTON HOUSTON The biggest names in the oil world come together this week for the largest industry gathering since the end of a two-year price war that pitted Middle East exporters against the firms that drove the shale energy revolution in the United States. When OPEC in November joined with several non-OPEC producers to agree to a historic cut in output, the group […]
China has lowered its annual economic growth target to “around” 6.5 per cent, as Beijing plans to focus on risk control in the final year of President Xi Jinping’s first term. The figure, down from the government’s target growth range of 6.5 to 7 per cent for 2016, was revealed on Sunday morning by Premier Li Keqiang in his annual “work report” to China’s parliament, the National […]
Photo American armored forces patrol on Friday near Manbij in northern Syria. Credit Delil Souleiman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images WASHINGTON — The United States has increased its forces near the northern Syrian town of Manbij as concerns have grown that fighting could erupt among the complex array of militias and Syrian and Turkish troops who are operating on the crowded battlefield near there. Photographs of American troops […]
White House reporters are trashed with regularity by President Trump, but at least they can get a good cup of joe courtesy Tom Hanks. Hanks, the star of “You’ve Got Mail,” “Turner and Hooch,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Castaway” and “Catch Me If You Can” on Thursday sent an espresso machine to the break room for the White House press corps: The White House press corps is grateful […]
WASHINGTON Twenty-one civilians were killed in nine separate strikes by the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria between November and January, the U.S. military said on Saturday. That brings the total number of civilians unintentionally killed by the coalition since the start of operations against the militant group in 2014 to 220, the military said in a statement. “Although the Coalition takes extraordinary efforts […]
Mustafa Sanalla, the chairman of Libya’s National Oil Corporation, has called for “concrete steps” to protect the country’s oil assets as fresh fighting that has erupted near crucial oil facilities threatened to reverse recent increases in the Opec member’s output. Forces from eastern Libya carried out on Saturday air strikes around the oil ports of Es Sider and Ras Lanuf on the country’s Mediterranean coast in order […]
AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan on Saturday executed 10 prisoners with ties to Islamist extremism who had carried out five shootings and a bombing since 2003, a government spokesman said. Among those killed in the attacks were a British tourist, an outspoken Jordanian critic of Islamist extremism and members of the Jordanian security forces. The executions on Saturday were the first since Jordan began a crackdown on Islamist […]
By Sophie Louet and John Irish | AUBERVILLIERS, France AUBERVILLIERS, France Embattled French presidential candidate Francois Fillon defended his political plans on Saturday as the only credible future for the country and vowed to stay in the race, a day before a Paris rally called to demonstrate the strength of his support. Once the frontrunner, conservative Fillon is mired in a scandal over his wife’s pay, and […]
By Ayman al-Warfalli | BENGHAZI, Libya BENGHAZI, Libya East Libyan forces carried out air strikes around major oil ports on Saturday as they sought to regain control of the area from a rival faction, a military spokesman said. The eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA) and allied forces retreated on Friday from Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, two of Libya’s largest export terminals, as a faction known as […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. So what have you heard more often: “Fox & Friends” shilling for President Trump or sophisticated people confiding their real reason for reading The New Yorker is the cartoons? Ah, if only Bob Mankoff had long ago negotiated some piece […]
GENEVA Syria’s chief negotiator said on Saturday that the “only thing” achieved at 10-day talks in Geneva was an agreed agenda and that the government wanted a unified opposition delegation as its negotiating partner. In his first remarks since talks ended on Friday, Bashar al-Ja’afari, Syria’s ambassador to the UN in New York said that all four subjects in the agreed agenda reached through U.N. mediator Staffan […]
Tyrese Gibson’s best kept secret — the identity of his new wife — has been revealed just days after he announced he had married. Gibson, 38, married Samantha Lee in a secret ceremony on Valentine’s Day, but managed to keep the nuptials quiet until his marital status got out last week. According to a TMZ media report, the details of which have since been verified by the […]
Earlier this week, Japanese TV audiences glimpsed a potentially revolutionary contraption from the Matsue College of Technology that rapidly separates closed shijimi clamshells into those with a live mollusc inside and those without. Cut to footage of a human sorter, expertly performing the same function at a rate of just 90 kgs of shijimi per day and whose job this machine seems destined to replace. In other […]
BAGHDAD Twelve people, including women and children, are being treated for possible exposure to chemical weapons agents in Mosul, where Islamic State is fighting off an offensive by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces, the United Nations said on Saturday. The U.N.’s World Health Organization has activated with partners and local health authorities “an emergency response plan to safely treat men, women and children who may be exposed to the […]
Uber on Friday confirmed the existence of a controversial programme that used a fake version of its app to confuse unwitting regulators and competitors trying to order cars. The secret weapon — codenamed Greyball — has been used during the ride-hailing company’s battles with regulatory authorities and rivals around the world over several years. It operates by displaying car icons in random locations and automatically cancelling rides […]
Photo Syrians in the rebel-held town of Douma, on the eastern outskirts of the capital, Damascus, last week. Credit Abd Doumany/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The top United Nations diplomat working to resolve the civil war in Syria reported some progress Friday after nearly 10 days of talks, saying both sides finally had agreed on what he described as a “clear agenda” for further negotiations. The diplomat, […]
By Benjamin Kang Lim and Philip Wen | BEIJING BEIJING China’s sweeping overhaul of its anti-corruption architecture could enable President Xi Jinping to justify retaining his key ally and top graft buster Wang Qishan beyond retirement age, sources with ties to the leadership say. Breaking the unwritten retirement rule could also set a precedent for Xi, 63, to defy current expectations that he will step down as […]
(Image: file photo) The clock is ticking for a controversial surveillance provision, which is is set to expire at midnight at the end of the year. But the Trump administration has signaled that it will support its clean reauthorization. Passing a clean version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, is “necessary to protect the security of the nation,” according to a White House official speaking […]
Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world, has been convulsed by civil strife for more than two years. In the west, Houthi rebels ousted the government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the United States’ main counterterrorism partner in the country, and have been fighting a Saudi-led coalition of mostly Sunni Arab countries that back Mr. Hadi. Continue reading the main story In the […]
JUBA South Sudan has arrested four soldiers after residents accused the army of beating and raping civilians in a small village near the capital last month, a military spokesman said on Friday, in a case that became a symbol of spiralling military abuses. The military launched an investigation after a local bishop brought five victims, including young girls, from Kubi village for medical treatment in the capital. […]
YEMEN: US fighter jets pounded Al-Qaeda targets in Yemen for a second straight day on Friday, security and tribal sources said, as Washington steps up its air war against the jihadists.The Pentagon said it had carried out more than 20 strikes on Thursday targeting Al-Qaeda positions in the southern provinces of Shabwa and Abyan and the central province of Baida.Yemeni officials said at least 12 suspected militants […]
GENEVA Syrian peace talks are expected to conclude later on Friday with an “agreed agenda” and a plan to resume negotiations later this month in Geneva, Western diplomats said. It was not immediately clear whether the issue of fighting terrorism would be part of the terms, as sought by the Damascus delegation led by Syrian Ambassador Bashar al-Ja’afari. A third Western diplomat said there had been movement […]
