By Robin Emmott | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS U.S. President Donald Trump sent top U.S. officials to Europe with a familiar warning from Washington that allies must spend more on defence, this time with the ultimatum “or else”. But Europeans have tried to deflect the threats with the argument that a commitment to security is not just about spending targets, which diplomats said that U.S. officials did not challenge, […]
BEIRUT: France’s far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen sparked controversy Tuesday during her brief visit to Lebanon when she refused to wear a headscarf to meet the country’s top Sunni Muslim cleric. On her last day in the small Mediterranean country, Le Pen arrived at Sheikh Abdellatif Deryan’s office in Beirut and was offered a white shawl to cover her blonde hair. The National Front candidate promptly […]
WASHINGTON Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will visit Mexico this week along with the Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to discuss issues including border security with the southern neighbor amid frayed relations under new U.S. President Donald Trump. Tillerson and Kelly will meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and other top Mexican officials during the two-day visit on Wednesday and Thursday, the State Department said in […]
Texas Monthly Editor-in-Chief Tim Taliaferro on Tuesday backed away from comments made during an interview with Columbia Journalism Review that indicated the magazine was retreating from political and longform journalism. In a note published on Texas Monthly, Taliaferro said that he “unfortunately gave the CJR the wrong impression” when he told the journalism review that “Texans don’t care about politics.” “Let me first say that I know […]
By Tom Allard and Liz Lee | KUALA LUMPUR KUALA LUMPUR Ri Jong Chol, a North Korean arrested in the probe into last week’s murder of the half-brother of the isolated state’s leader, lived in Malaysia for more than three years without working at the company registered on his employment permit or receiving a salary. Ri, 47, had a Malaysian work visa that showed he was an […]
By Edward Taylor and Laurence Frost | FRANKFURT/PARIS FRANKFURT/PARIS PSA Group (PEUP.PA) has pledged to respect existing Opel and Vauxhall job guarantees if it buys the European arm of General Motors (GM.N), though some analysts say thousands of jobs are eventually likely to go for the deal to work. As part of a broader charm offensive, PSA Chief Executive Carlos Tavares met with representatives of powerful German […]
There is no sign that the ongoing rumble among carriers are winding down. Verizon underscored this after it announced a new cheaper prepaid plan bundled with its own data bucket, making it simpler for prepaid customers to avail of the Big Red’s services. New Verizon Prepaid Plan The new Verizon prepaid plan costs $40 and comes with 2 GB data cap. This has increased the company’s prepaid offerings […]
Ecuador will have to wait until later this week for the result of Sunday’s presidential election after the country’s electoral council deemed the vote too close to call following a knife-edge poll. It was the first time in recent memory that the winner has not been declared on election night. Lenín Boltaire Moreno, the leftwing protégé of President Rafael Correa, is in touching distance of the 40 […]
At least 180 Chinese listed companies will be forced to cancel or scale back planned rights offerings worth $97bn in response to regulations that target excessive fundraising used for dubious acquisitions and financial speculation. The rules come as Chinese regulators are increasingly concerned about the trend of “exit the real, enter the fake” — a phrase used to denote companies abandoning real economic activity in favour of […]
By Simon Carraud | BEIRUT BEIRUT French far-right National Front presidential candidate Marine Le Pen canceled a meeting on Tuesday with Lebanon’s grand mufti, its top cleric for Sunni Muslims, after refusing to wear a headscarf for the encounter. Le Pen, among the frontrunners for the presidency, is using a two-day visit to Lebanon to bolster her foreign policy credentials nine weeks from the April 23 first […]
By MacDonald Dzirutwe | HARARE HARARE As he celebrated his 93rd birthday on Tuesday, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe brushed aside persistent allegations of corruption against senior officials, saying rumour-mongers were merely targeting “big fish” in his administration. In comments to be aired on state media on Tuesday, the world’s oldest leader said he would act if shown evidence – even though graft scandals involving ministers and even […]
GENEVA Nearly 1.4 million children are at “imminent risk” of death in famines in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said on Tuesday. People are already starving to death in all four countries, and the World Food Programme says more than 20 million lives are at risk in the next six months. “Time is running out for more than a million children,” […]
ZDNet Google and Microsoft have pledged changes to their search engines which will make life harder for users seeking illegal, copyrighted material. Google, Microsoft, and the UK government have worked out their differences and reached a truce over the availability of pirated material online. While removing links to any website which claims to offer copyrighted material smacks of censorship, the tech giants have offered to sign up […]
Using super-resolution microscopy, an international research team has revealed, for the first time, how cadherin-based cell-cell contacts are organized. (via WSJ)
By Stephanie Nebehay | GENEVA GENEVA The trial of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, a son of the ousted Libyan leader sentenced to death in absentia, did not meet international standards and he should face murder charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the United Nations said on Tuesday. Since his father’s toppling in 2011, Saif has been held in Zintan, a mountainous western region, by one of the […]
By Sumeet Chatterjee and Lawrence White | HONG KONG/LONDON HONG KONG/LONDON HSBC Holdings (HSBA.L) reported a 62 percent slump in annual pre-tax profit that fell way short of analysts’ estimates as the British bank took hefty writedowns from restructuring and pointed to brakes on revenue growth. HSBC shares slid more than 6 percent after the company reported revenues fell by a fifth from 2015, underscoring the challenge […]
Horizon Zero Dawn opens to a protracted introduction of its post-apocalyptic machine-festered world. It’s tedious, as regarded by one reviewer, but it’s essential, because the game’s open world, like all open worlds, is massive. The game is Guerrilla Games’s latest handiwork after Killzone Shadow Fall, the flagship Killzone title released in 2013 for the PlayStation 3. Even before release, it has already garnered acclaim, netting Best Original […]
By Jibran Ahmad | PESHAWAR, Pakistan PESHAWAR, Pakistan Suicide bombers attacked a court complex in Pakistan on Tuesday, killing at least four people, officials said, in the latest incident in a new surge of Islamist violence. A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban’s Jamaat-ur-Ahrar faction claimed responsibility for the attack in the northwestern town of Charsadda. The district administration said at least four people were killed. A witness […]
Telstra has confirmed that its enterprise voice and data outage across New South Wales was caused by a faulty piece of hardware. The outage affected only enterprise customers on Tuesday morning until 1pm AEDT, with consumer fixed-line and mobile services not impacted by the hours-long outage. Earlier this month, Telstra also experienced an outage across fixed-line and mobile services due to a fire at its Chatswood exchange […]
PARIS French socialist presidential candidate Benoit Hamon said on Tuesday he was confident about reaching an agreement with green party candidate Yannick Jadot by the end of this week. The two have been discussing a possible alliance under which Jadot would withdraw his candidacy and join forces with Hamon in the April-May election. “I am confident and optimistic that we can reach an agreement by the end […]
Remember Inauguration Day? A month ago, journalists wondered whether the lessons from the Trump campaign would apply to the Trump administration. Would President Trump lay off Twitter? Would his media-bashing continue? And would he keep shutting down disfavored news organizations? So far, the answer to those questions appears to be No, yes and yes, in that order. But the fledgling Trump presidency has also imparted several important […]
BORACAY, Philippines Foreign Ministers of the Association of South East Asian Nations are worried about “recent developments” in the South China Sea and urged restraint and dialogue to prevent any escalation, the Philippine foreign secretary said on Tuesday. “A number of ministers expressed concern over recent developments and escalation of activities in the area which may further raise tensions and erode trust and confidence,” Foreign Secretary Perfecto […]
The second Global Mentoring Walk, held in celebration of International Women’s Day, will give women in the UAE a chance to discuss the opportunities and challenges of entrepreneurship in the region. The event – organised by Mompreneurs Middle East – will be held on March 11, 2017, from 7am to 11am at Dubai Polo and Equestrian Club, Arabian Ranches. The annual Global Mentoring Walk brings together established […]
By Drazen Jorgic | MALAM JABBA, Pakistan MALAM JABBA, Pakistan Atop the piste of Malam Jabba in Pakistan’s once dangerous Swat Valley skiers schuss downhill, a new Chinese-built chairlift ferries tourists to the peak, and a luxury hotel is under construction to replace one torched by the Taliban. The Taliban declared skiing “un-Islamic” during their 2007-2009 reign of terror over Swat, but improved security in recent years […]
