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. A few months ago Vice founder Shane Smith fronted a superior Vice-HBO documentary, “A House Divided,” that detailed the issues, tactics and rancor that dominated Barack Obama’s relations with a Republican-dominated Congress. Now he sees “a perfect storm” that involves […]
By Mubashir Bukhari | LAHORE, Pakistan LAHORE, Pakistan A blast at a market in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore killed at least five people on Thursday and wounded 21, a rescue official told Reuters. The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear. Security forces cordoned off the area and people were not being allowed to leave or enter. “Forensic teams have arrived on the scene and […]
KUALA LUMPUR Malaysia has requested Interpol to put an alert out to apprehend four North Korean suspects in the murder of Kim Jong Nam, Malaysia’s police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said on Thursday. The estranged half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was killed in Kuala Lumpur’s main airport last week, in what South Korean and U.S. officials say was an assassination carried out by […]
By Naomi Tajitsu and Chang-Ran Kim | TOKYO TOKYO Nissan Motor Co (7201.T) said Carlos Ghosn will step aside as CEO after leading the firm for 16 years, allowing him to concentrate on deploying his cost-cutting expertise across its alliance with Renault SA (RENA.PA) and newly added Mitsubishi Motors Corp (7211.T). In handing over the helm to Hiroto Saikawa, a company veteran of 40 years, Ghosn ends […]
AMD is giving what the people want, and it’s none other than Ryzen. That said, the company has finally disclosed the details everybody has been waiting for, from the release date and performance to the pricing and preorder info. Not 1 But 3 Ryzen 7 CPUs Unveiled To start things off, AMD is launching three Ryzen 7 CPUs, with each one sporting eight cores and 16 threads […]
Rob Garratt Hidden Figures Director: Theodore Melfi Stars: Taraji P Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst Three stars Hidden Figures is engaging, entertaining and enlightening – but by playing fast and loose with historical fact, it risks blunting some of the story’s eye-opening emotional force. This Oscar-nominated feel-good ensemble drama is already the highest-grossing film fronted by African-American actresses, with an international haul of […]
Russia is pressing world powers to provide Syria with billions of dollars for reconstruction to bolster its faltering efforts to resolve the Arab state’s six-year conflict. But European and Gulf states, angered by Russia’s military intervention that tilted the war in favour of President Bashar al-Assad, will only contribute if Moscow secures a peace settlement that sets the terms for an eventual political transition, western diplomats say. […]
The documents’ detailed account of Mr. Awlaki, who stars in Mr. Abdulmutallab’s story as both a religious hero and a practical adviser on carrying out mayhem, is particularly important. The government allegation that Mr. Awlaki was behind the underwear bomb plot — never tested in a court of law — became the central justification that President Barack Obama cited for ordering the cleric’s killing in a drone […]
BANGKOK Thailand’s Supreme Court on Thursday reduced the sentence of a prominent former magazine editor who had been jailed for 10 years for insulting the country’s monarchy, a legal group said. Somyot Prueksakasemsuk was found guilty of publishing two satirical articles defaming the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej in 2010 when he was editor of an anti-establishment magazine. The royal insult law, also known as lese-majeste, is punishable […]
Qantas has announced it successfully tested its on-board Wi-Fi system and expects to operate its first commercial service with free Wi-Fi in the next few weeks. Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce told shareholders on Thursday that the airline’s Wi-Fi offering will ultimately be rolled out to around 80 domestic aircraft, and later to Qantas’ international and regional fleets, noting that on-board Wi-Fi is the first item on […]
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysian authorities want to speak with a North Korean embassy official and airline employee as part of their investigation into the murder of Kim Jong Nam. The two being sought are Hyon Kwang Song, who worked at the North Korean embassy in Malaysia, and Kim Uk Il, a staff member of the North Korean carrier Air Koryo, Malaysian Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar […]
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water. (via WSJ)
By Sarah Marsh and Nelson Acosta | HAVANA HAVANA Communist-ruled Cuba on Wednesday said it had foiled a serious plot aiming to destabilize the country by preventing the chief of the Organization of American States traveling to the island to attend an award ceremony organized by dissidents. The opposition group, which the government called “anti-Cuban and illegal,” had invited OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro to Havana to […]
By Brenda Goh | DANDONG, China DANDONG, China As Beijing tightens its grip on trade with North Korea, the economies of Chinese towns along the 1,400-km border the two countries share are floundering. On Saturday, China said it would ban all coal imports from North Korea, the latest move to enforce United Nations sanctions aimed at depriving Pyongyang of hard currency for its nuclear weapons and ballistic […]
SEOUL North Korea blamed Malaysia on Thursday for the death of one of its citizens there last week and accused it of an “unfriendly attitude” in a scenario drawn up by South Korea, which has said Pyongyang agents assassinated the North Korean leader’s half-brother. Malaysia had initially told North Korea that the person bearing a diplomatic passport had died after suffering a heart attack at Kuala Lumpur […]
By Nichola Saminather | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE Asian stocks pulled back from a 19-month high on Thursday, while the dollar tried to steady from losses suffered in the wake of the U.S. Federal Reserve minutes indicating a cautious approach to more interest rate increases. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was fractionally lower. Japan’s Nikkei slid 0.1 percent, while Australian shares retreated 0.3 percent. Overnight on […]
The first exhibition to be hosted at Dubai’s Etihad Museum will feature the country’s postal history from 1909 until its unification. Organisers pledge that it will be a virtual tour back in time, as each stamp marks a key event. Visitors under the age of 15 have a lot of questions about the first item at an exhibition dedicated to the history of Emirates Post. Although it […]
Tesla is likely to turn to Wall Street for another big cash infusion as it gears up to launch its first mass-market electric vehicle later this year, chief executive Elon Musk indicated on Wednesday. His comments came as the US electric carmaker disclosed that chief financial officer Jason Wheeler would leave the company after little more than a year. Mr Musk said only that Mr Wheeler was […]
Photo Nigerians displaced by Boko Haram insurgents last February at Dikwa camp in northeastern Nigeria. The United Nations raised the alarm on Wednesday about the risk of famine in northern Nigeria. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images UNITED NATIONS — In a world filled with excess food, 20 million people are on the brink of famine, including 1.4 million children at imminent risk of death. In the […]
Goldman Sachs, the last bank on Wall Street to handle significant physical volumes of oil and gas, has pushed back against a planned crackdown on combining finance with commodities trading. The institution warned the Federal Reserve to carefully weigh the effects on markets and companies as it sought to levy steep capital charges against a bank’s holdings of bulk materials. In its letter to the Fed dated […]
By Gina Cherelus | NEW YORK NEW YORK It cost New York City about $24 million to provide security at Trump Tower, President Donald Trump’s skyscraper home in Manhattan, from Election Day to Inauguration Day, or $308,000 per day, New York’s police commissioner said on Wednesday. The revelation prompted renewed calls for Congress to reimburse the city for the cost of protecting Trump’s private residence on Manhattan’s […]
For the first time, a single multifunction flexible fiber no bigger than a human hair, has successfully delivered a combination of optical, electrical and chemical signals back and forth into the brain. (via WSJ)
By Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay | GENEVA GENEVA U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said on Wednesday he did not expect an immediate breakthrough when Syria peace talks restart on Thursday but wanted productive talks that relaunch the process towards a political solution to end the six-year war. They will be the first U.N.-mediated negotiations on Syria in almost a year, during which time the military and […]
Credit: George Hodan/Public Domain Researchers at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) Cyber Security Research Center have demonstrated that data can be stolen from an isolated “air-gapped” computer’s hard drive reading the pulses of light on the LED drive using various types of cameras and light sensors. In the new paper, the researchers demonstrated how data can be received by a Quadcopter drone flight, even outside […]
