BAGHDAD Islamic State militants attacked an Iraqi army outpost and a police station near the city of Tikrit on Friday, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 12 others, military and police sources said. The militants used a car bomb and two suicide attackers in their assault shortly after midnight on the army outpost in the town of al-Dour on Tikrit’s outskirts, killing two officers and two […]
ANKARA The Turkish military and Syrian rebels killed 32 Islamic State militants in the latest clashes in northern Syria on Thursday, Turkey’s armed forces said in a statement on Friday. In a round-up of its military operations over the last 24 hours in support of rebels in northern Syria, the army said Turkish warplanes destroyed 21 Islamic State targets in the areas of al-Bab and Bzagah, including […]
With all eyes likely on wage growth indications in the subtext of tomorrow’s payrolls report (following The Fed Minutes’ comments on full employment), Goldman Sachs is forecasting a better-than-expected 0.3% rebound in average hourly earnings (helped by more favorable calendar effects) and a better-than-expected 180k payrolls print (albeit with a small rise in the unemployment rate). However, they are careful to note that any downside can be […]
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi | AMMAN AMMAN The Syrian army and its allies pressed ahead on Friday with a two-week-long offensive to seize a strategic valley where a key spring provides supplies to four million people in the capital, Damascus, residents and rebels said. Aerial bombing and shelling from the army as well as Hezbollah fighters stationed in the mountains that overlook the valley on the northwestern edge […]
By Stephen Kalin and Isabel Coles | ERBIL, Iraq ERBIL, Iraq Iraqi forces have retaken around 70 percent of eastern Mosul from Islamic State militants and expect to reach the river bisecting the city in the coming days, Iraq’s joint operations commander told Reuters. Lieutenant General Talib Shaghati, who is also head of the elite counter-terrorism service (CTS) spearheading the campaign to retake the northern city, said […]
BAGHDAD Two car bombs in Baghdad killed at least 14 people on Thursday, police and medics said, part of a surge in violence across the capital at a time U.S.-backed forces try to drive Islamic State from the northern city of Mosul. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the first blast which went off in Baghdad’s eastern al-Obeidi area during the morning rush, killing six and wounding 15. […]
Submitted by Darius Shahtahmasebi via TheAntiMedia.org, Lithuania has confirmed the presence of U.S. special forces inside its territory, stating the deployment’s purpose is to train local forces and act as a deterrent against Russian aggression. Supposedly, Vladimir Putin has been deploying nuke-ready missiles in the Russian province of Kaliningrad, an area that borders Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania. This move has prompted the neighboring Baltic states to become “highly concerned” about […]
Wednesday 05:00 GMT Overview Data-fuelled optimism helped lift equities for a second day in Asia as Japanese investors cheered the weaker yen after the US dollar hit new 14-year highs. With few significant events on the regional calendar for Wednesday, it was left to overnight gains on Wall Street to set the tone Hot topic Is it too early to start talking about Friday’s US non-farm payrolls […]
For a long time, no visitors were allowed in his hospital room; the burn unit was a sterile environment. But on the morning Miller’s arm was going to be amputated, just below the elbow, a dozen friends and family members packed into a 10-foot-long corridor between the burn unit and the elevator, just to catch a glimpse of him as he was rolled to surgery. “They all […]
BEIRUT Air strikes on a building in northern Syria used by an insurgent group formerly known as the Nusra Front had killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens more on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The British-based Observatory said it was unclear whether the strikes had been carried out by aircraft belonging to Russia or to the U.S.-led coalition. Tuesday is the fifth […]
|By Matein Khalid|“Few individuals alter the course of history. Fewer still change the map of the world. Hardly anyone creates a nation state. Mohammed Ali Jinnah did all three”. Dr. Stanley Wolpert’s words still give me goose pimples two decades after I first read his book. Mr. Jinnah founded Pakistan and was also my ancestral kinsman. I too was born in Karachi, the city by the sea, […]
Via GEFIRA, The rule of law is often invoked by as a Western value that “populist” movements want to destroy, yet the establishment’s own governments have long suspended that very same rule of law when it comes to immigration. The most evident example of this is the immigration policy started by the Italian Letta government in 2013 and continued since then under the Renzi government. In October […]
Seven months after the leak of 11.5 million documents from a law firm in an incident that has come to be known as the “Panama Papers”, the world is right to ask what has been done since to fight global tax evasion and promote financial transparency. As president of Panama, and in particular through my interactions with the international community, it is clear that the affair shined […]
AMMAN Syrian rebel groups said on Monday they had decided to freeze any talks about their possible participation in Syrian peace negotiations being prepared by Moscow in Kazakhstan unless the Syrian government and its Iran-backed allies end what it said were violations of a ceasefire. In a statement, the rebel groups also said that any territorial advances by the army and Iran-backed militias that are fighting alongside […]
WASHINGTON No evidence has emerged to suggest Russian hacking influenced the outcome of the U.S. presidential election and it would be irresponsible to jump to conclusions before receiving a final intelligence report, Donald Trump’s spokesman said on Monday. “There is zero evidence that they influenced the election,” Sean Spicer told Fox News. Due to become White House press secretary when Trump enters the White House on January […]
Two weeks after a Tunisian man, Anis Amri, whose German asylum request had been rejected, rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market and was later shot dead by Italian police, the German state prosuector’s office said on Monday that a Syrian migrant who arrived in Germany two years ago was arrested on suspicion of seeking money from the Islamic State, to drive truck bombs into crowds. […]
Photo The remains of a suicide car bombing on Monday in a bustling outdoor market in Baghdad’s eastern Sadr City district. Credit Karim Kadim/Associated Press BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber detonated a pickup truck loaded with explosives on Monday in a busy Baghdad market, killing at least 36 people hours after President François Hollande of France arrived in the Iraqi capital. The Islamic State later claimed responsibility […]
By Erik Kirschbaum | BERLIN BERLIN A Syrian migrant who arrived in Germany two years ago has been arrested on suspicion of seeking funds from Islamic State to drive truck bombs into a crowd, a German state prosecutor’s office said on Monday. The arrest follows an attack two weeks ago when a Tunisian whose asylum request had been rejected rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, […]
Turkish police have detained eight people in connection with the deadly shooting at an Istanbul nightclub after Isis claimed responsibility for the attack on a New Year’s Eve party that left 39 people dead and more than 65 wounded. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said the gunman, who went on the run after the attack, was not among the eight who were being questioned at Istanbul’s main […]
WASHINGTON At least 188 civilians have been killed in U.S.-led strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria since the operation began in 2014, the U.S. military said in a statement on Monday. The Combined Joint Task Force, in its monthly assessment of civilian casualties from the U.S. coalition’s operations against the militant group, said it was still assessing five reports of unintentional deaths from four […]
Welcome to a new year and the pressing market issues facing investors as they look to put money to work and navigate 2017. Geopolitical surprises upended expectations last year and few predicted that 2016 would end with a global bull market in equities, while bond yields remain relatively low. Will strategists be any better at forecasting this time around? Here are the big questions that will preoccupy […]
KABUL Afghan President Ashraf Ghani suspended his minister for telecommunications and information technology on Monday while he is investigated over a levy on mobile telephone charges, officials said. The removal of Communications Minister Abdul Razaq Wahidi adds to a lingering political crisis in Afghanistan, heightened in November when parliament passed no confidence votes against a number of ministers over poor performance and budgetary issues. Yasin Sameem, a […]
By Elizabeth Pineau | BAGHDAD BAGHDAD France will fight any French jihadists it finds on the battlefields of Iraq, arrest them if they return home and work to de-radicalise their children, President Francois Hollande said on a visit to Baghdad on Monday. There are about 60 French citizens fighting alongside Islamic State militants in the northern city of Mosul alone and hundreds more in the rest of […]
Submitted by Federico Pieraccini via Strategic-Culture.org, The two previous articles have focused on the various geopolitical theories, their translations into modern concepts, and practical actions that the United States has taken in recent decades to aspire to global dominance. This segment will describe how Iran, China and Russia have over the years adopted a variety of economic and military actions to repel the continual assault on their sovereignty by the […]
