By Rozanna Latiff and Liz Lee | KUALA LUMPUR KUALA LUMPUR Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak struck a softer tone with North Korea on Wednesday, a day after accusing it of treating Malaysians as “hostages” amid a diplomatic meltdown over the murder of the estranged half-brother of the North’s leader. Malaysian police have identified eight North Koreans wanted for questioning in connection with the killing of Kim […]
SEOUL A man claiming to be the son of the slain, estranged half brother of North Korea’s leader said he was lying low with his mother and sister, in a video posted online by a group that said it helped rescue them following the murder a month ago. The governments of Netherlands, China, the United States, and a fourth unnamed country provided emergency humanitarian assistance to protect […]
The Chinese government has long resented accusations that, as US President Donald Trump put it in a tweet in early January, it “won’t help with North Korea”. On Wednesday China’s foreign minister used a colourful metaphor to describe his government’s position on the crisis-prone Korean peninsula, likening Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington to “runaway trains” that Beijing was doing its best to stop. The press conference by Wang […]
Here are the big questions set to frame a new trading week for markets. How frothy are equity and junk bond valuations looking?Another record-breaking week for equities and a red hot reception for the Snap initial public offering is not the only sign of investor optimism running wild. Junk bond spreads — the premium investors demand to hold the bonds over Treasury yields — are heading towards […]
By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Teppei Kasai | NAMIE, Fukushima NAMIE, Fukushima A truck occasionally whizzes past the darkened shops with cracked walls and fallen signs that line the main street of Japan’s mostly deserted seaside town of Namie. Workers repair a damaged home nearby, and about 60 employees busily prepare for the return of former residents in the largely untouched town hall. Not far away, two wild […]
By Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Faced with a growing test of resolve for a new U.S. president who vowed while campaigning to get tough on North Korea, Donald Trump’s aides are pressing to complete a strategy review on how to counter Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear threats. Pyongyang’s latest missile launches and the assassination in Malaysia of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s estranged […]
Saudi Arabia has promised to launch major development projects towards the end of 2017 to re-energise an economy which has been hit by austerity measures, industry sources told Reuters. Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s top economic official, made the commitment at a recent meeting with a delegation representing the Saudi private sector, the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. While they pledged […]
As Abdelmonem Alserkal tours his latest architectural commission, his pristine white kandura stands in contrast to the monochrome building that broods in Alserkal Avenue – the warehouse creative community he has brought to life in Dubai’s industrial neighbourhood of Al Quoz. A muted study in steel, small mirrors, translucent polycarbonate and sprayed, shot-blast and polished concrete, the new venue is the latest milestone in Alserkal Avenue’s decade-long […]
By Isabel Coles and John Davison | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq Iraqi forces on Tuesday recaptured the main government building in Mosul, the central bank branch and the museum where three years ago the militants filmed themselves destroying priceless statues. A Rapid Response team stormed the Nineveh governorate complex in an overnight raid that lasted more than an hour, killing dozens of Islamic State fighters, spokesman Lieutenant […]
BEIRUT Fawaz Atmeh and Mohammed Musa’s families were among the first to flee Russia’s intervention in the Syrian conflict, sheltering in tents on boggy ground near the Turkish border as jets bombed their villages further east. As Syria’s battle lines have shifted in nearly 18 months since, the two young men have watched their camp swell with families and fighters escaping government territorial gains, insurgent infighting and […]
The Metropolitan Hotel Dubai, one of city’s oldest hotel brands, has reopened in a new location on Sheikh Zayed Road, after a three-and-a-half-year hiatus. The original Metropolitan Hotel, which was built in 1979, was demolished in May 2013 to make way for Al Habtoor City, an urban resort incorporating three hotels and luxury residential towers on The Dubai Water Canal. Mohammad Al Habtoor, vice-chairman and CEO of […]
A new system from CSAIL uses EEG brain signals to detect if a person notices robots making a mistake. Credit: Jason Dorfman/MIT CSAIL For robots to do what we want, they need to understand us. Too often, this means having to meet them halfway: teaching them the intricacies of human language, for example, or giving them explicit commands for very specific tasks. But what if we could […]
North Korea barred Malaysians from leaving the country on Tuesday, sparking tit-for-tat action by Malaysia, as police investigating the murder of Kim Jong Nam in Kuala Lumpur sought to question three men hiding in the North Korean embassy. Following is a chronology of ties between the two countries. 1973 – Malaysia and North Korea establish diplomatic ties. 1995 – Malaysia hosts talks between the United States and […]
By Rozanna Latiff and Ju-min Park | KUALA LUMPUR/SEOUL KUALA LUMPUR/SEOUL North Korea barred Malaysians from leaving the country on Tuesday, sparking tit-for-tat action by Malaysia, as police investigating the murder of Kim Jong Nam in Kuala Lumpur sought to question three men hiding in the North Korean embassy. Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak accused North Korea of “effectively holding our citizens hostage” and scheduled an emergency […]
IT services provider Empired has been awarded a contract worth AU$15 million to provide the Western Australian government with cloud services as part of the state’s GovNext-ICT project. Perth-based Empired will provide the WA government with centralised directory services, centralised identity services, and certificate authority under a consumption-based model, with the potential to scale beyond 140,000 government users based on agency take-up of the GovNext-ICT platform. The […]
PENANG,MALAYSIA Two North Koreans wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of the North Korean leader’s estranged half brother, Kim Jong Nam, are hiding in the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s police chief said on Tuesday. “How much longer do they want to hide in the embassy…it is a matter of time before they come out,” police chief Khalid Abu Bakar told reporters at […]
We aren’t the world. The most talked-about brands of Mobile World Congress are almost entirely irrelevant to Americans. Some of that doesn’t matter, but the reasons for it are worth talking about. During the world’s biggest mobile conference, everybody was super excited about the Nokia 3310. I found the whole hullaballoo perplexing. But circa 2000, everybody in the UK owned this phone, and they have […]
The CEO of Assurant appeared on Bloomberg TV to explain why demand for his services is likely to increase: the chief executive of the mobile phone insurer said he expects a surge in demand as carriers charge customers more to replace their devices. “If you think back five years ago, you as a consumer didn’t know how much that phone cost, you thought it was free or […]
Drastic cuts in oil industry investment risk creating a shortfall in supply that by 2020 will expose the market to a surge in prices, the International Energy Agency has warned. Despite a chorus of analysts predicting a decline in oil consumption in the coming years, as governments push for energy efficiencies, cleaner fuel usage and electric cars, the IEA cautioned in its five-year outlook: “We see no […]
· Initiative co-founded by Facebook, Intel, Nokia, SK Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and others · Collaboration across the industry in driving and innovating the development of high-quality, scalable and more affordable telecom infrastructure to bridge the digital divide 06 March 2017 Barcelona, Kuwait City – During last week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Zain Group, the leading mobile telecom innovator in eight markets across the Middle East […]
Most entrepreneurs occasionally face unfavourable circumstances, from underperforming staff or chronic complaining customers to difficult economic conditions, mounting fees, and other often unforeseen hassles. However, there are outlier entrepreneurs, those whose decisions to persevere greatly outnumber the impediments they encounter. “I was stubborn. I had been dreaming about that project forever. I didn’t want to give up,” says Ziad Kamel, founder of Couqley UAE, a French bistro […]
· Initiative co-founded by Facebook, Intel, Nokia, SK Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and others · Collaboration across the industry in driving and innovating the development of high-quality, scalable and more affordable telecom infrastructure to bridge the digital divide 06 March 2017 Barcelona, Kuwait City – During last week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Zain Group, the leading mobile telecom innovator in eight markets across the Middle East […]
By Liz Lee and Rozanna Latiff | KUALA LUMPUR KUALA LUMPUR Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak rebuked North Korea on Monday as his government expelled its envoy for casting doubt over the impartiality of the investigation into the bizarre murder of the North Korean leader’s estranged half brother. If North Korean agents did kill Kim Jong Nam, as U.S. officials and South Korean intelligence suspect, the decision […]
March 6, 2017 by: Bryan Harris in Seoul, Kana Inagaki in Tokyo and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington North Korea fired four missiles into the Sea of Japan on Monday, according to officials in Seoul and Tokyo, in a move likely to escalate tensions that are already running high in the region. One of the currently unidentified projectiles could be an intercontinental ballistic missile, said a South Korean […]
