BEIRUT Syrian Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham said on Thursday six other rebel factions had joined its ranks in northwestern Syria in order to fend off a major assault by a powerful jihadist group. The hardline Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, once allied with al Qaeda and formerly known as the Nusra Front, attacked Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups west of Aleppo this week, accusing them of conspiring against […]
Photo Joy Reid Credit Stephen Voss for The New York Times A few weeks ago, you said the media should stop covering Donald Trump’s tweets in order to force him into giving a press conference. Now that we’ve seen one, did you find it useful? It wasn’t a press conference, and it wasn’t useful. It was a weird third-world pep rally. Trump could make a very fine […]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s civil-rights office has made a rare finding of discrimination, saying the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality treated African American residents of Flint unfairly during the permitting of a power plant more than two decades ago. In a letter dated Jan. 19, the last full day of the Obama administration, the EPA’s External Civil Rights Compliance Office said the evidence showed that “African […]
The true subject of science fiction is always the present. Its imagined futures are mirrors to today’s hopes and fears. George Orwell’s 1984 simply shifted the numbers of the year in which he wrote the book – 1948 – and made a metaphor of that time’s dark politics. Likewise 2084, the latest from Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal, is addressed to, and in some way is part of, […]
Those misfortunes, of course, mean it has also been a rare year of schadenfreude for many outside Duke. Continue reading the main story But perhaps there is something to be said for what Duke offers its fans. At a time when entire segments of the country have retreated into private echo chambers of elation or fear, sports is not a terrible place to try to put oneself […]
It is difficult to understand why Donald Trump’s campaign promise to “make America great again” resounded so deeply with so many. True, the threat of terrorism, rising inequality and job-killing digitalisation have been breeding anxiety for some time. However, on most metrics the US economy has been doing just fine and certainly better than Europe. While the median US household’s real income still stands below peak of […]
Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB), the United Arab Emirates’ largest sharia-compliant lender, is targeting loan growth of between 10 and 15 percent in 2017 after reporting an estimate-beating 58.4 percent rise in fourth-quarter 2016 net profit. Aiming to pave the way for the bank’s next stage of growth, it also said it would seek shareholder approval next month to raise Tier 1 issued capital by $1 billion, as […]
By Antonio Denti and Isla Binnie | FARINDOLA, Italy FARINDOLA, Italy Rescuers pulled more bodies on Wednesday from the ruins of an Italian hotel which was flattened by a wall of snow last week, raising the death toll from the avalanche to 25. No one has been found alive since early Saturday and hopes of finding more survivors are fading. Using pickaxes and mechanical diggers, the rescuers […]
By Doina Chiacu and Susan Heavey | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would seek an investigation of what he believes was voter fraud in the November election, despite overwhelming consensus among state officials, election experts and politicians that voter fraud is rare in the United States. The new Republican president has bristled at references to losing the popular vote to Democrat Hillary […]
All but one of the students were enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA. Created in 2012 by an Obama-administration executive action, DACA allowed teenagers and young adults who came to the United States illegally as children with their parents to register with the government and in turn receive a two-year renewable protection against deportation, along with work permits and Social […]
The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Wednesday rose above 20,000 points for the first time marking a milestone for Wall Street’s venerable equity barometer as the Trump trade that stalled at the onset of 2017 resumes. The gauge of blue-chip companies climbed 0.5 per cent to 20,014 in opening trading, as US equities extended their record-setting rally that began after the presidential election in November. Investors have […]
Until recently, oil rich Gulf states could afford to ignore global bond markets. While developed and developing countries issued record sums of debt in the years after the financial crisis, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates used the vast oil wealth to propel themselves to affluence. The states — members of the six-country Gulf co-operation council — built skyscrapers, schools and motorways […]
BRASILIA Brazil’s top labour prosecutor said President Michel Temer’s proposals to modernize the country’s labour laws were illegal in a report published on Tuesday that provided ammunition to workers’ unions fighting the reforms. Updating outdated labour laws to allow outsourcing and more flexibility in contracts and work hours is part of Temer’s plan to reduce business costs and pull Brazil from its worst recession on record. But […]
By John Irish and Andrew Osborn | ASTANA/MOSCOW ASTANA/MOSCOW Peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition in Kazakhstan were a coup for their international sponsors, but exposed the limits of what Russia, Turkey and Iran can achieve in their efforts to resolve the six-year-old war. It was the first time in nine months the two sides had come together, albeit briefly and unhappily, and the first […]
BAGHDAD Iraq’s oil is the property of Iraqis, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday, in reaction to U.S. President Donald Trump who argued that the United States should have taken possession of the nation’s crude reserves. In a speech to CIA officials on Saturday, Trump suggested the United States should have taken Iraq’s oil in reimbursement for the 2003 invasion that put an end to Saddam […]
By Denis Dyomkin and John Irish | ASTANA ASTANA Syria’s warring sides met for their first talks in nine months on Monday, with their Russian and Turkish backers pushing to cement a ceasefire that could pave the way for political talks. The meeting in the Kazakh capital comes at a time when Turkey, which backs the rebels, and Russia, which supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, each want […]
By Michael Georgy | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq Mohamed Mahmoud is relieved he no longer has to watch Islamic State militants hang corpses from electricity poles, now that Iraqi forces have cleared the group from his east Mosul district. But he still fears for his safety. Like other Iraqis, he worries that destructive forces like sectarianism, which already provoked one civil war since the fall of Saddam […]
By Svetlana Reiter and Christian Lowe | MOSCOW MOSCOW President Vladimir Putin’s allies have passed a preliminary draft bill in Russia’s parliament that would ease some penalties for domestic violence, which supporters say would keep the state from meddling in the home but critics say would encourage abuse. Asked about the domestic violence law at a news conference last month, Putin said that while he was not […]
Photo The Roman amphitheater, left, in Palmyra, Syria, in 2016. Satellite pictures on the right show the structure before it was damaged, above, and after. Credit Bryan Denton for The New York Times Islamic State militants have destroyed the facade of a second-century Roman amphitheater and another ancient monument in the historic city of Palmyra, Syria, the Syrian state-run news agency reported on Friday. The news agency, […]
By Amanda Ferguson | BELFAST BELFAST Sinn Fein named Michelle O’Neill to succeed Martin McGuinness and lead the Irish nationalist party into Northern Irish elections in March, marking a shift towards a generation not directly involved in decades of conflict. McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army (IRA) commander turned peacemaker, bowed out of frontline politics last week, saying illness and Northern Ireland’s current political crisis had led […]
The Syrian government and rebels opened talks in Kazakhstan on Monday as part of a Turkish and Russian-backed effort to end the Arab state’s near six-year civil war. It is the first time the warring parties have held negotiations in a year, and if successful could mark a turning point in a conflict that has killed an estimated 400,000 people, while also underlining the increasing roles of […]
Having already signed a (mostly symbolic) executive order on Obamacare on Friday night, urging US agencies to “waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation” of provisions deemed to impose fiscal burdens on states, companies or individuals, Trump is preparing to unload a volley of many more executive orders. Courtesy of Axios, which quotes “one of the best-wired Republican lobbyists in town”, here is a preview […]
ANKARA Sixty-five Islamic State militants were killed in operations by the Turkish army in support of rebels in northern Syria on Sunday, the Turkish military said on Monday. Turkey launched an operation to drive the jihadists away from the Syrian border five months ago and have been besieging the Islamic State controlled town of al-Bab for weeks. (Reporting by Orhan Coskun; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by […]
Symantec Symantec has confirmed that the company has once again been forced to revoke a batch of faulty certificates. Last week, SSLMate’s Andrew Ayer publicly revealed the discovery of misissued Symantec certificates, which were issued for domains including example.com and a variety of test.com certificates, such as test1.com, test2.com, and test.com. In an advisory, Ayer said that “with the exception of test4.com and test8.com, these domains are […]
