By Lisa Barrington and Angus McDowall | BEIRUT BEIRUT Syrian rebels shelled Aleppo and air strikes resumed around the city on Friday as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies said the insurgents’ withdrawal from the city could pave the way towards a political solution for the country. A day after the last rebels left their remaining pocket of territory in the city, the Syrian Observatory for […]
LONDON More than 4,000 homeless people in Britain are expected to use temporary shelters set up over Christmas by charity Crisis, which said the number of people sleeping rough was rising sharply. Staffed by an army of around 13,000 volunteers, the charity will provide food, shelter, haircuts, massages and dentistry services at shelters until Dec. 30. According to government statistics from 2015, more than 3,500 people sleep […]
The man suspected of attacking a Berlin Christmas market has been shot dead by police near Milan in Italy, closing a chapter on one of Germany’s worst terrorist incidents. Anis Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian with links to Italy, died after being confronted by police near the Italian city early yesterday. Isis later released a video of Amri pledging allegiance to the militant group and promising to “slaughter” […]
Photo Passengers leaving the hijacked Afriqiyah Airways plane at Malta International Airport on Friday. Credit Matthew Mirabelli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images CAIRO — All 109 passengers and crew members on board a hijacked Libyan airliner en route to the capital, Tripoli, were released on Friday, hours after two men claiming to be carrying explosives forced the plane to divert to Malta, Malta’s prime minister said. The hijackers, […]
Christmas is almost here (and so is Hanukkah), and so it is time for the Long View to revisit the offices of Hindsight Capital LLC once more. Hindsight Capital, for the uninitiated, is the hedge fund that beats all others year in and year out because it is endowed with 20/20 hindsight; it can see the future. The returns to clairvoyance are potentially infinite, so it has […]
Law Blog rounds up the morning’s legal news: Closing the book: The Obama administration scrambled to resolve its remaining crisis-era megabank mortgage cases, striking multibillion-dollar settlements with Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse Group over toxic securities while separately filing a lawsuit against Barclays alleging more than $30 billion in fraud-tainted sales. [WSJ, NYT] Platinum probe: […] (via WSJ)
Shortly after the Berlin truck terrorism suspect Anis Amri was killed in a shoot out with Milan police, railway tickets found on Amri’s body showed he had traveled from Chambery in south-eastern France to Turin and then on to Milan, according to Italy’s Ansa. Which is strange because while he kept ticket stubs, he had virtually nothing else on him: Milan police said Amri was carrying few […]
MOSCOW President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia, Iran, Turkey and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had all agreed that the Kazakh capital of Astana should be the venue for new Syrian peace talks. Russia, Iran and Turkey held talks in Moscow on Tuesday after which they said they were ready to help broker a Syrian peace deal. Putin has proposed holding the negotiations in Kazakhstan, a […]
Good morning. A media A-list’s favorite books of 2016 Jake Tapper, the CNN reporter-show host, needed far less time than even a hyperactive wire service rewrite guy to answer a question about his favorite book this year: “‘Moonglow’ by Michael Chabon.” Bam, that didn’t take long. But it’s why amid a Trump- and-terrorism-centric moment, I asked busy and smart journalists to go high when so many others […]
By Michael Shields and Arno Schuetze | ZURICH/FRANKFURT ZURICH/FRANKFURT Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank have been hit with a combined penalty of more than $12 billion over the sale of U.S. toxic debt, further hampering two of Europe’s leading investment banks as they grapple with falling profits. The penalty puts them at a further disadvantage to larger U.S. rivals. Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) agreed in principle to pay […]
Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse have agreed to pay out billions to resolve a probe into the alleged mis-selling of mortgage-backed securities at the height of the US housing bubble, striking deals before the Trump administration takes power. The deals came as federal prosecutors announced they were suing Barclays and two of its executives over the issue of allegedly fraudulent residential mortgage-backed securities. The suit followed the breakdown of talks […]
By James Pearson | SEOUL SEOUL As hundreds of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets every weekend for two months to call for President Park Geun-hye to resign, the opposition’s leading contender to replace her appeared reluctant to seize the moment. That is changing as Moon Jae-in, a 63-year-old human rights lawyer who lost the 2012 election to Park by more than a million votes, […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. It could be a dinner akin to the disastrous ones in “Meet the Parents,” “Talladega Nights” and “Wedding Crashers.” Or maybe “American Beauty,” where newly unemployed Kevin Spacey turns to his wife (Annette Bening) and daughter (Thora Birch) and says […]
Law Blog rounds up the morning’s legal news: VW buy-back: Volkswagen agreed to pay around $1 billion to repurchase or fix an additional batch of diesel-powered vehicles tainted with emissions-cheating software, resolving what had become a sticking point more than a year into Volkswagen’s diesel-emissions crisis. [WSJ] Unrevealing: A newly unsealed search-warrant application in the Clinton probe confirms the FBI found thousands of emails potentially linked to […]
By Karen Freifeld and Arno Schuetze | NEW YORK/FRANKFURT NEW YORK/FRANKFURT Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) has agreed to a $7.2 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over its sale and pooling of toxic mortgage securities in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The agreement in principle, announced by Deutsche Bank’s Frankfurt headquarters early Friday morning, offers some relief to the German lender, whose stock was […]
More than four decades after a sweeping British military withdrawal from bases “east of Suez”, the UK is scaling up its defence engagement in the Gulf and Asia in what analysts regard as a recognition of the region’s growing global importance. Britain is reopening a naval support facility in Bahrain, creating a permanent army presence in Oman and establishing new defence staff centres in Dubai and Singapore. […]
Mr. Trump, who last week nominated as ambassador to Israel a bankruptcy lawyer who heads a fund-raising effort for a West Bank settlement, made clear on Thursday that he would not wait for his inauguration to weigh in. In a statement, he said bluntly that the resolution should be vetoed. Continue reading the main story “As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and […]
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump on Thursday called for the strengthening of their countries’ nuclear capabilities. Speaking at a meeting of defence chiefs in Moscow, Mr Putin said Russia needed to “strengthen the strategic nuclear forces, for that we should develop missiles capable of penetrating any current and prospective missile defence systems”, according to the Tass news agency. Mr Putin claimed Russia’s military was able to repel […]
ANKARA Bana Alabed, the young Syrian girl who drew global attention with her tweets from Aleppo before being evacuated to Turkey this week, says she hopes to go back to her hometown one day and fulfil a dream. “When I grow up I want to become a teacher and go back to Aleppo and teach the children of Aleppo,” Bana told Reuters in an interview in Ankara […]
By Ellen Francis and Stephanie Nebehay | BEIRUT/GENEVA BEIRUT/GENEVA The Syrian army said on Thursday that it had retaken complete control of Aleppo after the last rebel fighters were evacuated from the city, handing President Bashar al-Assad his biggest victory of the war. The army said it had brought “security and safety” to Aleppo, ending four years of rebel resistance in parts of the northern Syrian city. […]
It began on September 24, with a three-word plea: “I need peace.” That day, 18 more tweets were sent from a newly opened Twitter account attributed to Bana Alabed, a seven-year-old girl trapped with her family in eastern Aleppo. Within days, the mainstream western media was carrying stories about “the little girl who shames world over Aleppo”, as the UK’s Daily Mail headlined a front-page picture of […]
According to the Facebook page, Mrs. Elyakim was originally from Haifa, attended Galilee High School in Tiberias and studied at Ohalo College, which trains teachers. In August 2009, she posted a series of pictures from Berlin, including shots of the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, remnants of the Berlin Wall and an old Allied checkpoint, although those images evidently came from a previous winter, since some included Christmas […]
BAGHDAD Islamic State claimed three suicide car bombs that killed at least 15 civilians and eight Iraqi policemen on Thursday in an eastern suburb of Mosul, according to a military statement. The attacks targeted Kokjali, a suburb that the authorities said they had retaken from the jihadists almost two months ago. A military spokesman said the car bombs went off in a market. The U.S.-backed assault on […]
GENEVA More than 4,000 fighters were evacuated overnight from east Aleppo to opposition-held areas, under an agreement between the warring sides overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross and Syrian Arab Red Crescent, the ICRC said on Thursday. “Overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, in one of the last stages of the evacuation, more than 4,000 fighters were evacuated in private cars, vans, and pick-ups from […]
