BEIRUT Lebanese Hezbollah said on Friday a “promised” victory was imminent for Syrian government forces and their allies in the city of Aleppo. “There are great events taking place now in our region … (such as) what is happening in Aleppo, and the ramifications of the promised and coming victory for the whole battle in Syria and the region,” Hezbollah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a […]
By Gabriela Baczynska | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS Eastern European Union states remain at loggerheads with “frontline” countries such as Greece and Italy over sharing the burden of caring for asylum-seekers reaching EU frontiers, officials said on Friday. Largely uncontrolled arrival of some 1.4 million people from the Middle East and Africa in the past two years, many fleeing Syria’s civil war, has triggered bitter EU infighting. Dispute centres […]
Japanese electronic parts maker TDK Corp is in talks to acquire InvenSense Inc, a U.S. chip maker that produces motion sensors for Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The deal would allow TDK, already a major smartphone components supplier, to boost its sensor technology offerings. InvenSense designs gyroscopes which help smartphones calculate motion, enabling augmented reality games such as […]
Pulp Fiction and Star Wars star Samuel L Jackson, who picked up his lifetime achievement award at the Dubai International Film Festival on Wednesday, is renowned for speaking honestly on issues from race relations to gender equality and American politics, so when The National sat down with him Friday morning, we couldn’t avoid checking whether his yearning for Diff was heartfelt or the result of an unexpected […]
JOHANNESBURG A South African motorcyclist declared dead at the scene of an accident was found alive in a morgue fridge the next day when his family went to identify his body, but he died later in hospital. The victim, who was not identified, was injured in a smash on Monday evening on a road in the southeastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, and was transferred to the morgue in […]
By Julie Steenhuysen | CHICAGO CHICAGO Cases of microcephaly in Colombia were four times higher this year than last, an increase that coincides with a widespread outbreak of Zika virus in the country, a report released on Friday said. At its peak in July, microcephaly cases in Colombia were nine times higher than in the same month in 2015, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control […]
Electronic storage detection canine Iris of the New Jersey FBI helps investigators search the home of New York City terror suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami, who set off bombs in Manhattan and on the Jersey Shore, in September 2016. Image: Connecticut State Police This article originally appeared on TechRepublic. The call came at 5:30 am on a hot July morning in 2015. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department told […]
AMSTERDAM Police acting on a tip-off from the Dutch intelligence agency arrested a 30-year-old “terrorist” suspect and seized an arsenal of weapons in the port city of Rotterdam on Friday afternoon, prosecutors said. Detectives found a Kalashnikov AK-47 rifle, four boxes of illegal highly explosive fireworks, a large depiction of the Islamic State flag, several mobile phones and 1,600 euros in cash when they searched the suspect’s […]
Google Home is now fair game after Google officially unlocks it for developers last Dec. 8. The developer community has now been given the go ahead to develop what the company touts as “conversation actions.” Google Home vs. Amazon’s Alexa The move is widely seen as a direct challenge to Amazon’s smart speakers, which now have a comprehensive list of third-party integrations. Conversation actions are analogous to […]
The European Central Bank’s supervisory arm has rejected a request from Rome to delay a private sector-led rescue for Monte dei Paschi di Siena, leaving Italy little option but to inject state funds and impose losses on creditors. MPS asked the ECB for an extra five weeks to pull off a last-ditch €5bn equity injection for the lender, which emerged as the weakest in the European bank […]
YOLA, Nigeria Several people were feared killed on Friday by suicide bombings in the northeastern Nigerian city of Madagali, residents and army sources said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The bombings, in Adamawa state, bore the hallmark of Boko Haram, which has been waging an insurgency to set up an Islamic state in the northeast. (Reporting by Emmanuel Anda and Ardo Hazzad; Writing Ulf Laessing) […]
Oman Air has announced that it intends to make its first foray into China on Friday, as part of plans to expand its global network and fleet. The national carrier said in a statement that it plans to start operating flights from its hub in Muscat to Guangzhou, China, from December 9. The airline said the launch of the new route is in response to “significant customer […]
BEIRUT The Syrian government on Friday said it was ready to resume dialogue with the Syrian opposition, but without external intervention or preconditions, a statement carried by state news agency SANA said, citing a foreign ministry source. The statement said Syria was responding to comments by United Nations Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura on Thursday that it was time to look again at political discussions, and said […]
American Airlines Group Inc (AAL.O) raised its current-quarter forecasts for pre-tax margin and a key profitability metric, citing an improvement in average fares. The company said it now expects fourth-quarter unit revenue to range between a decline of 1 percent and an increase of 1 percent, compared with its previous forecast of a decline of 2.5-0.5 percent. Unit revenue compares sales to how many seats an airline […]
Alaa Najd is the inaugural winner of Project Runway Middle East. The aspiring Lebanese designer won the debut season of the talent quest, in a star-studded finale held on December 8 at the Dubai Design District. Broadcast on MBC, Project Runway Middle East is one 26 international versions of the programme that have been launched since the US original began in 2004. Some of the big regional […]
By Luiza Ilie | BUCHAREST BUCHAREST When Romania’s leftist government collapsed a year ago amid outrage over a deadly nightclub fire, many people spied an opportunity for sweeping change in a country plagued by corruption and inept public services. But after the upswelling of public anger over the deaths of 64 people in the Club Colectiv, which lacked emergency exits and fire safety permits, the clamour for […]
Good morning. Regrets laced with irony Glenn Beck is sorry. He really is. He swears. He’s sort of like Miss Otis in Cole Porter’s oft-recorded 1934 “Miss Otis Regrets” (I’ll take Bette Midler’s version). She “woke up and found that her dream of love was gone, madam.” And, them, “from under her velvet gown, she drew a gun and shot her lover down, madam.” In this case, […]
By Gavin Jones | ROME ROME President Sergio Mattarella is consulting a total of 23 parties to help him find a successor to outgoing Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, showing how little progress Italy has made in reducing its political fragmentation. On Friday and Saturday Mattarella will meet separately with groups that few Italians have even heard of, such as the Thought and Action Party, the Civic Innovators […]
Microsoft now officially owns LinkedIn, a popular social networking platform geared toward employers and professionals. The multi-billion acquisition first made headlines in June, and the European Commission has given the acquisition a go-ahead earlier this week, joining the approval of other regulators around the globe, including those in the United States, Canada, Brazil, and South Africa. “This deal will allow us to keep growing, investing in and innovating […]
Investors made the biggest shift in more than three years into funds that help provide protection against rising interest rates ahead of next week’s meeting of Federal Reserve policymakers who are expected to increase overnight borrowing costs for the first time this year. Funds invested in leveraged loans attracted $1.7bn of inflows in the week to December 7 — the greatest weekly haul since 2013 — figures […]
What are Australia’s policy options for responding to the internet threats of 2022? This question was explored in the 360° Cyber Game conducted jointly by RAND Corporation and the National Security College (NSC) at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra on Thursday. RAND has conducted two of these games before, in Washington DC and in Silicon Valley, and has written up the methodology and results in […]
GENEVA Hundreds of men from eastern Aleppo have gone missing after leaving rebel-held areas, the United Nations’ human rights office said on Friday, voicing deep concern over their fate at the hands of government forces. U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a news briefing the office had heard “worrying allegations that hundreds of men have gone missing after crossing into government-controlled areas” of Aleppo. “Given the […]
TUNIS Libyan forces are trying to secure the city of Sirte after ousting Islamic State from its former North African stronghold in a battle that lasted nearly seven months. Here are some facts about Islamic State in Libya: ORIGINS Islamic State drew on existing pockets of militancy in Libya, establishing its first major presence in Derna, an eastern city with a strong Islamist tradition. It also profited […]
FRANKFURT German semiconductor chipmaking machinery company Aixtron (AIXGn.DE) is considering reducing the size of the business with a partial sale, its chief executive said in an interview published on Friday, opening the door for bidders after a deal with a Chinese firm collapsed. “There are two options: First, we could hope that the markets for our products recover and continue investing high sums in new equipment. But […]
