North Korea tested a ballistic missile on Saturday morning local time, in a provocative move that came just hours after Rex Tillerson, US secretary of state, called on UN member states to impose “painful” sanctions on the regime in Pyongyang. US Pacific Command, which oversees US forces in Asia, said North Korea launched a missile at 5.03am local time on Saturday from a location near Pukchang airfield, […]
BAGHDAD Four Iraqi traffic policemen were killed on Friday when a suicide car bomb blew up outside their station, close to a street where several foreign media have offices in Baghdad, a security spokesman said. Five people were also wounded by the blast on Abu Nawas street, which runs alongside the east bank of the Tigris river, he said. The French embassy is located in the same […]
By Girish Gupta | LOS TEQUES, Venezuela LOS TEQUES, Venezuela Hundreds of activists marched on Friday to the hilltop jail of Venezuela’s best-known detained opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez in the latest of a month of protests against the socialist government. Security forces blocked access to the decrepit-looking penitentiary next to a slum in Los Teques, an hour’s drive from the capital Caracas, as the demonstrators shouted “Leopoldo!” […]
US military casualties abroad are starting to pile up again. Two weeks after the US dropped the MOAB over a cave complex in the Nangarhar region in Afghanistan, reportedly in an attempt to flush out ISIS operatives, on Friday the Defense Department reported that on Thursday two Army Rangers died during a raid on the same compound in Afghanistan. Sgt. Joshua P. Rodgers, 22, and Sgt. Cameron […]
Violence erupted in Macedonia’s parliament as tensions between ethnic Albanian minorities and nationalists boiled over, prompting sharp rebukes from Western governments. Protesters supportive of the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party, as well as individuals clad in identity-concealing hoods, stormed parliament on Thursday night local time, violently accosting at least lawmakers and journalists. Police say the violence left 102 inside and outside parliament injured. Parliament had just managed to break […]
That small drama points to the bigger issue confronting Francis as he lands in Cairo against a backdrop of swirling anxiety and turmoil. Christians across the Middle East are under intense pressure. After years of persecution by Islamist militants, half of Iraq’s Christian population has fled, and a lonely beach in Libya was the setting for the 2015 beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians in orange jumpsuits. Continue […]
Drone maker DJI has issued a software update intended to frustrate Isis terrorists who have been using low-cost “quadcopters” to drop improvised bombs in Syria and Iraq. The move to create new “no fly zones” for its products across Iraq and Syria is DJI’s first admission, albeit a tacit one, that its products have been commandeered by terrorists. It is also the latest sign of tension between […]
WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday a major conflict with North Korea is possible in the standoff over its nuclear and missile programs, but he would prefer a diplomatic outcome to the dispute. “There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely,” Trump told Reuters in an Oval Office interview ahead of his 100th day in […]
Just in case someone attempts to fly a drone over Iraq and Syria, DJI has made sure it will not happen. DJI added parts of Iraq and Syria to its No-Fly Zone or NFZ list. It means DJI-made drones will be prevented from flying in and around the war-torn region, which is currently embroiled in a war. Several news reports stated that terrorist organizations like the Islamic State had […]
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reported a 22 per cent surge in sales, despite fears that marketers were withdrawing advertising dollars from its YouTube video site because of worries about ads appearing next to extremist content. The Silicon Valley company’s shares, up 21 per cent in the past year, rose 4 per cent to $928.30 in after-hours trading in New York. Sundar Pichai, Google chief executive, said the […]
Macedonia’s opposition leader was left bloodied and trapped in parliament on Thursday evening after masked men stormed the building and attacked MPs in a bid to halt steps towards forming a new government. Zoran Zaev, leader of the leftwing opposition SDSM party, was pictured bleeding from the head and standing behind supporters in the corner of a parliament conference room shortly after 8pm local time. An adviser […]
JERUSALEM Israel’s Patriot anti-aircraft missile system shot down an aerial target over the Golan Heights on Thursday, the Israeli military said. Israeli media said residents in the northern Israeli town of Safed reported seeing two missiles being launched and of explosions occurring afterwards. It was initially unclear whether the target, which media said was an unmanned drone, was shot down over Syria or Israeli-controlled territory. The incident […]
Betting big on Amazon and selling the shares of traditional retailers has been a blockbuster trade for some time. Now, a small but growing number of hedge funds are wagering that the next leg of the woes afflicting bricks and mortar retailers in the US will unfold dramatically for those shopping mall owners who have largely so far been considered immune. The level of bets against some […]
By Michael Martina and Ju-min Park | BEIJING/SEOUL BEIJING/SEOUL China on Thursday welcomed an apparently softer tone by the United States on the North Korean nuclear and missile crisis but stressed its opposition to a U.S. missile defence system being deployed in South Korea. China has long promoted dialogue to resolve the “Korean nuclear issue” as North Korea has repeatedly threatened to destroy the United States which […]
A Malta magistrate is investigating explosive claims of money laundering and corruption that have put New Zealand in the middle of a global cash trail from the family of Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev. President Aliyev’s daughter, Leyla Aliyeva, is alleged to have channelled more than $1.5 million to senior figures of the Malta government, including Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s wife. These include alleged payments to Panama companies […]
The remarks, in an interview that was recorded Tuesday, came at the end of Ms. Trump’s rocky 24-hour trip this week to Germany, her first official foray since taking a West Wing office last month. Continue reading the main story A spokeswoman for Ms. Trump did not respond to questions about her position on immigration — or about whether her remarks were intended to pressure her father. […]
CARACAS Venezuela said on Wednesday it was withdrawing from the Organization of American States, deepening the diplomatic isolation of the socialist-run nation that is already out of step with Latin America’s steady shift to the right. Critics of President Nicolas Maduro have said Venezuela could be expelled from the group, accusing his government of eroding the country’s democracy by delaying elections and refusing to respect the opposition-led […]
By Andrew Cawthorne and Eyanir Chinea | CARACAS CARACAS Venezuelan security forces fired scores of tear gas volleys and turned water cannons on rock-throwing protesters on a bridge in Caracas on Wednesday as the death toll from this month’s anti-government unrest hit at least 29. A 20-year-old male demonstrator died in those latest clashes in the capital after being hit by a gas cannister, said officials of […]
The Iraqis do not have the luxury of conducting a siege: Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has told his generals that dragging out the Mosul operation, now in its seventh month, would work only to the advantage of the Islamic State, which many in the West call ISIS or ISIL, but the Iraqis call Daesh. Continue reading the main story This was not the mission that American military […]
ERBIL, Iraq Islamic State militants have developed an improvised explosive device (IED) that can be launched from rifles or dropped from an aerial drone, an arms monitoring group said on Wednesday. Conflict Armament Research (CAR) said the Sunni militant group was “promoting the development of ‘own-brand’ weapons” to provide its insurgents with otherwise unavailable armaments. “The (IED) can be thrown, launched from an improvised rifle attachment, or […]
By Andrew Cawthorne and Diego Oré | CARACAS CARACAS Two Venezuelan men died on Tuesday from gunshots at political demonstrations, bringing to 26 the number of fatalities around this month’s protests against President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government. The state prosecutor’s office said Orlando Medina, 23, was gunned down on a street in western Lara state during a protest local media identified as anti-Maduro. Luis Marquez, 52, died […]
American officials said Turkey had informed the United States less than an hour in advance that it intended to carry out the bombing raids in the crowded airspace over northern Syria and Iraq. American officials said that they had asked Turkey not to proceed without proper coordination, but that the request was ignored. Continue reading the main story Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, said the United […]
A demo booth at Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference, Tuesday, April 18, 2017. CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed recent violence on Facebook at the conference.(Photo: AP Photo/Noah Berger) SAN FRANCISCO — A distraught father in Thailand killed his 11-month-old child on Facebook Live, the latest in a string of disturbing incidents including suicide, torture and sexual assault that have reached millions on the live-streaming service, raising questions about Facebook’s […]
TOKYO The Japanese cabinet minister overseeing reconstruction of areas devastated by the 2011 earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster intends to resign after saying it was better that the disaster struck the northeast instead of Tokyo, national broadcaster NHK said. Masahiro Imamura made the comments when talking about the economic costs of the disaster at a party for ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers earlier on Tuesday. The remarks […]
