By Laila Bassam and Angus McDowall | ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT Syrian rebels prepared to withdraw from Aleppo on Wednesday after a ceasefire agreement that ended years of fighting in the city and gave President Bashar al-Assad his biggest victory yet after more than five years of war. The agreement was a result of talks between Russia, Assad’s main ally, and Turkey, a leading backer of the […]
ERBIL, Iraq — The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that a United States airstrike had killed three Islamic State operatives who were involved in mounting terrorist attacks in Europe, including the deadly assault in Paris in November 2015. The three men were killed on Dec. 4 in an airstrike in Raqqa, Syria, the Islamic State’s declared capital, said Peter Cook, the Pentagon press secretary. He described the men […]
By Steve Holland | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump named the head of Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N), Rex Tillerson, as his choice for U.S. secretary of state on Tuesday and won backing from some Republican foreign policy figures ahead of a possible Senate fight over the oilman’s ties to Russia. The Exxon CEO potentially faces difficulties getting confirmed in the Republican-controlled Senate. Some lawmakers worry about his […]
Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and a number of other prominent figures among the world’s richest people are pledging a $1 billion investment fund for clean energy efforts. The new investment fund aims to help advance clean energy production, which in turn would help fight climate change and the negative impact it has on the environment. Breakthrough Energy Innovations The effort is a multiyear fund called Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which […]
By Laila Bassam | ALEPPO, Syria ALEPPO, Syria The remains of the medieval Umayyad Mosque’s felled minaret lie in its once-elegant courtyard along with discarded mattresses, fragments of rockets and antique doors, but, after years of fighting, Aleppo’s holiest monument endures. The minaret and the covered markets that surrounded the mosque may have been destroyed in battles between the Syrian army and rebel fighters in 2012 and […]
When I first moved to Mexico, I started working with a really cool organization called Palabra Radio, which is a community radio organization here in Oaxaca. I was really impressed with how communities were operating, owning, and sort of dealing with everything that comes with operating their own low power FM radio station. That gave me the idea to try and do something similar with mobile communication, […]
By Laila Bassam and Stephanie Nebehay | ALEPPO, Syria/GENEVA ALEPPO, Syria/GENEVA The United Nations said on Tuesday it had reports that Syrian soldiers and allied Iraqi fighters had summarily shot dead 82 children, women and men in recaptured east Aleppo and a military source said the last rebel pocket could fall “at any moment”. The Syrian army has denied carrying out killings or torture among those captured, […]
ANKARA: Turkish warplanes pounded 28 Daesh targets in northern Syria while another 157 targets were hit by artillery and other weaponry in the latest attacks, the army said on Tuesday. The jets hit shelters, vehicles mounted with guns, ammunition depots and other targets in the strikes on Monday in the Al-Bab and Bzagah regions of northern Syria, the military said in a statement.The strikes in northern Syria are […]
Photo Families that fled violence in the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood of Aleppo on Tuesday arriving in the Fardous area, where shooting was also reported. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images GENEVA — Pro-government forces retaking the eastern neighborhoods of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo killed at least 82 civilians on Monday, the United Nations estimated, in what one official called “a complete meltdown of humanity.” Zeid […]
DUBAI // Experts are trying to determine the cause of a fire that swept through a Palm Jumeirah apartment block, leaving residents stranded and waiting to get back into their homes. Pictures of the blaze in the Adriatic building, which is part of the upscale Oceana complex, flooded social media on Monday night, and Dubai Media Office said the building was safely evacuated and no major injuries […]
DUBAI Many disasters loom over one of the poorest countries in the Middle East as it suffers through nearly two years of war, among them a colossal pile of waste outside Yemen’s capital leeching toxic waste into its diminishing water supply. Hardly a paragon of waste management before the war, Sanaa was at least able to separate out the most dangerous materials from the 10-million-ton hill thanks […]
An untold number of Syrians trapped in an ever tightening patch of rebel territory in Aleppo are desperately seeking a way to safety as the opposition’s final foothold in a major city looked on the verge of collapse. The International Committee of the Red Cross called for all sides to urgently agree a deal to evacuate people as it warned that time was running out for trapped […]
The battle for eastern Aleppo will be over soon, but tens of thousands of Syrians there will find little peace. The victory for the government of President Bashar al-Assad will open another violent, disorienting chapter in their lives, and a dangerous one for the opposition. Soon, civilians and rebel fighters alike will either be punished or have to flee the city and join the many thousands of […]
By Laila Bassam | ALEPPO, Syria ALEPPO, Syria The Syrian army and its allies have taken full control over all the Aleppo districts abandoned by rebels during their retreat in the city, a Syrian military source said on Tuesday. Rebel defences collapsed on Monday, leading to a broad army advance across more than half of the remaining insurgent pocket in Aleppo and a retreat of opposition fighters […]
By Steve Holland | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump will announce Exxon-Mobil Corp’s Rex Tillerson as his choice for secretary of state on Tuesday, a senior transition official said, confident that the oil executive can get past questions about his ties to Russia. Trump is to make the announcement on Tuesday morning, going with a business leader whose experience in diplomacy is from making deals with foreign […]
Photo Kayla Harrison plans to take up mixed martial arts in the World Series of Fighting, and hopes “to see it go more toward the professional route.” Credit Earl Wilson/The New York Times Only one American has ever won an Olympic gold medal in judo: Kayla Harrison. And she has won two, in London in 2012 and in Rio this year. Yet despite her achievements, Harrison is […]
SHANGHAI China will appoint “river chiefs” to prevent pollution in the nation’s waterways, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Monday, in the latest step taken by Beijing to rein in environmental damage. With the evolution of China from an agricultural nation to an industrial one, toxic pollutants from factories have increasingly seeped into the environment, leading to health problems among the population. A detailed system for […]
MANAMA, Bahrain — The political shock waves from the American presidential election are being felt here in the Persian Gulf, where diplomats, military commanders and other senior leaders say they are both fearful and excited about which Donald J. Trump shows up after he is sworn in as president on Jan. 20. Will it be, they ask, the President Trump who has vowed to cut off American […]
By Alwyn Scott | SEATTLE SEATTLE Donald Trump on Monday widened his attack on defence contractors, slamming Lockheed Martin Corp’s (LMT.N) F-35 fighter jet program as too expensive as aides to the president-elect said he intends to keep pushing to cut the costs of military hardware. Trump’s latest Twitter broadside sent defence shares tumbling and fanned concerns that the incoming administration will reduce defence contractors’ profit margins […]
WASHINGTON Donald Trump on Monday criticized Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet program as too expensive, the latest attack by the U.S. President-elect on large defense contractors. Lockheed shares dropped 5.1 percent and shares of several other defense contractors also tumbled. “The F-35 program and cost is out of control,” Trump said on Twitter, echoing campaign promises to cut waste in federal spending. “Billions of dollars can and […]
ALEPPO, SYRIA: The Syrian army recaptured a major district of Aleppo on Monday, leaving opposition fighters cornered in a small pocket as the battle for the city entered its “final phase.”President Bashar Assad’s forces held more than 90 percent of the onetime opposition stronghold of east Aleppo, a monitor and military official said, and appeared on the verge of retaking the entire city.A Syrian military official in […]
More than two million people lived in Mosul when it fell to the Islamic State on June 10, 2014. It was a conservative city where most women already covered their hair with a scarf and their arms with long sleeves. But as in other places where the militants imposed their creed, the new rules took enforced modesty to such an extreme that it riled families in Mosul, […]
By Ahmed Rasheed | BAGHDAD BAGHDAD Several thousand Iraqi federal police are ready to join the assault against Islamic State in east Mosul, a spokesman said on Monday, reinforcing troops who have faced weeks of fierce counter-attacks from the militants. The extra forces are being deployed as the gruelling U.S.-backed campaign to crush Islamic State in its Iraqi stronghold enters its ninth week. Elite army troops have […]
Photo Credit Angie Wang More than 25 years ago, at the height of the effort to pass hate speech codes on college campuses, I wrote a monograph about how to do it without censorship. It began with a quotation from a student who had been bullied because he was Asian-American: “I wish they had hit me.” If he had been beaten, he said, the damage would have […]
