WASHINGTON — President Obama has authorized the deployment of up to 450 more American troops to Iraq to train and assist the Iraqi forces battling the Islamic State, the White House announced on Wednesday, signaling a major shift of focus in the fight against the Sunni militant group. The United States forces will use Al Taqqadum, an Iraqi base near the town of Habbaniya in eastern Anbar […]
Video | U.S. General Affirms Support for Israel Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accepted an award from his Israeli counterpart and emphasized the American military’s strong relationship with Israel. By HELENE COOPER June 9, 2015 TEL AVIV — The Obama administration on Tuesday ramped up efforts to ease Israel’s opposition to a possible nuclear deal with Iran, as the top American military leader […]
|TAP Special| Are Saudi Arabia and Iran heading towards a direct war? An opinion piece by influential Saudi commentator, carried by Al Arabia News, argues that the Saudi military operation against the Houthis is part of a Saudi policy combining diplomacy and war to stop Iranian influence and ultimately push it out of Syria and Yemen. The veteran commentator, Jamal Khashoggi, quotes Qassem Soleimani, commander of the […]
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIM June 9, 2015 CAIRO — Islamic State militants staged attacks near Baghdad and the Libyan city of Surt on Tuesday, underscoring the group’s persistent strength on both fronts despite a monthslong American-led air campaign against it in Syria and Iraq. In Libya, the Islamic State captured a critical power plant along the coastal road westward from its stronghold in Surt toward Misurata, a commercial center […]
Renovations have started at a 9.5-acre compound in the West Bank that started as a church-run hospital in the 1950s and later became a hostel for travelers. By JODI RUDOREN June 9, 2015 NEAR EL AROUB REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — The old stone compound set amid Palestinian farmland between the cities of Bethlehem and Hebron has a relatively new fence. The compound, with eight buildings spread over 9.5 […]
In an image taken from a video on a militant website, the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, addressed followers last year in Mosul, Iraq. New insights yielded by a seized trove of materials in Syria include how he operates and tries to avoid being tracked by coalition forces. By ERIC SCHMITT June 8, 2015 WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have extracted valuable information about the Islamic State’s leadership structure, financial […]
Video | Bahrain: Our Oath Dr. Nada Dhaif helped create a medical tent to treat injured protesters in Bahrain’s Pearl Roundabout — and was sentenced to 15 years in jail. By KAREEM FAHIM June 7, 2015 The roundup of health workers who treated injured protesters set the tone for the furious and uncompromising reaction by Bahrain’s government to a popular uprising in 2011. The authorities arrested doctors, nurses and […]
Plastic caution tape marks a small construction area on the exterior of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Washington May 27, 2015. Reuters/Jonathan Ernst WASHINGTON A massive breach of U.S. federal computer networks disclosed this week is the latest in a flood of attacks by suspected Chinese hackers aimed at grabbing personal data, industrial secrets and weapons plans from government and private computers. The Obama […]
|By Rashidul Bari|One may expect the title “Grameen and Muhammad Yunus” to reflect Yunus’ founding of the Grameen Bank (which won the Nobel Prize in 2006) in 1983 to provide miniature loans to the poor—especially women who were trapped in an endless cycle of poverty. Why then does the title involve John Nash, a math genius who won the Nobel Prize in 1994, instead of Yunus? Does […]
June 4, 2015 Open Source By ROBERT MACKEY While many Israelis were enraged by comments from the chief executive of the French telecommunications company Orange, who told journalists in Egypt that he would like to cut ties to an Israeli cellphone service provider that operates in the occupied West Bank, pro-Palestinian activists working to isolate Israel argued that the statement was insufficient. The Orange chief executive, Stéphane […]
President Obama met with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq in April at the White House. By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS June 4, 2015 WASHINGTON — President Obama will meet on Monday with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq to discuss the military campaign against the Islamic State, White House officials said on Thursday, as the militant group continues to make gains despite an American-led counteroffensive. The two men met at the […]
By ISABEL KERSHNER June 4, 2015 JERUSALEM — A growing global pro-Palestinian movement to boycott Israel instantly created a national furor on Thursday after the top executive of Orange, a leading French telecommunications company, said he would withdraw from the Israeli market if he could. The Facebook page of an Israeli company, Partner Communications, which has a license to use the Orange brand, was filled with customer complaints demanding […]
By MERNA THOMAS and ALISON SMALE June 3, 2015 CAIRO — In an unusual daytime attack near Egypt’s most visible tourist attraction, gunmen shot and killed two police officers on Wednesday, a few hundred yards from the pyramids of Giza, security officials said. Tourism is a vital source of foreign currency for the government, and a pillar of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s plan to revive Egypt’s battered economy. The years of […]
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a town hall meeting with Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Fellows (YSEALI) at the White House in Washington June 1, 2015. Reuters/Kevin Lamarque WASHINGTON President Barack Obama signed into law on Tuesday legislation passed by Congress earlier in the day reforming a government surveillance program that swept up millions of Americans’ telephone records. Reversing security policy in place since shortly after […]
By SHUAIB ALMOSAWA June 2, 2015 SANA, Yemen — Warplanes from a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia carried out airstrikes Tuesday in Yemen that killed at least 16 fighters allied with the Saudi-led group, witnesses said. The victims were fighters supporting President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was forced into exile by Yemen’s Houthi rebels this year. Saudi Arabia launched a military offensive against the Houthis in late […]
|By TAP Staff| Etihad has formally submitted a document to the United States government rebutting allegations by U.S. carriers that it receives unfair subsidies. The airline announced the filing Tuesday. It is the airline’s most comprehensive response yet to American carriers’ effort to pressure Washington to renegotiate agreements that allow airlines from Qatar and the UAE to fly to the U.S. U.S. airlines have criticized Etihad and […]
By ANNE BARNARD June 2, 2015 ISTANBUL, Turkey — Syrian insurgents rushed reinforcements into combat on Tuesday against rival Islamic State militants who have seized crucial territory near the northern city of Aleppo in recent days, building on the momentum the group has achieved in other battlefield successes in Syria and Iraq. Amid increased fears that Aleppo could be the next big prize to fall to the Islamic State […]
FUJAIRAH // Devastated shop owners are counting the cost of a fire that tore through Masafi’s Friday Market at the weekend. The blaze, which destroyed 13 carpet and furniture shops and 16 fruit and vegetable outlets, broke out about 5pm on Saturday. No injuries were reported. But business owners say they face ruin because insurers do not recognise them as shops Carpet shop owner Bustan Jalil, 68, […]
|By K Raveendran| Qatar has maintained complete silence over any possible connections with the indictment of FIFA officials on various charges, including acceptance of gratification in awarding World Cup editions. The situation continues to hold suspense amidst reports coming from the US that criminal charges are to be brought against more people. Bloomberg reports quoting Internal Revenue Service’s chief investigator that the U.S. investigation of corruption in […]
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS May 30, 2015 BEIRUT — Syrian Army airstrikes killed at least 70 people, most of them civilians, and wounded scores in attacks on Saturday in the northern province of Aleppo. Activists said that civilian areas, including a packed market in a town held by the Islamic State group, were hit. The deaths occurred in two separate strikes when helicopters dropped explosives-filled barrels. One barrel hit the […]
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has ramped up its activities in Southeast Asia so effectively that there is now an entire military unit of terrorists recruited from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, according to Singapore’s prime minister. “Southeast Asia is a key recruitment center for ISIS,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said at the Shangri-La Dialogue here in Singapore Friday. He noted that this included more than 500 Indonesians and dozens of Malaysians. “ISIS has […]
My wedding day was the first best day of my life. I could not have ordered a more perfect day if I had had a menu of choices in front of me. The marriage to my best friend was what I was really looking forward to. I wanted to settle down and start a family and that’s what we did. Our ideal world was lost on Sept. […]
A logo is pictured at Google’s European Engineering Center in Zurich April16, 2015. Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann WASHINGTON The Obama administration on Tuesday sided against Google Inc (GOOGL.O) and said the U.S. Supreme Court should not hear the company’s appeal in a case against Oracle Corp (ORCL.N) with wide implications for the technology industry, according to a court filing. The case involves how much copyright protection should extend to […]
The Cisco Systems logo is seen as part of a display at the Microsoft Ignite technology conference in Chicago, Illinois, May 4, 2015. Reuters/Jim Young/Files WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against Cisco Systems Inc(CSCO.O) over a patent infringement claim the tech giant is fighting. On a 6-2 vote, with Justice Stephen Breyer recused from the case, the court threw out a ruling by the […]
