Russia said the evacuation of thousands of people trapped for months in the last rebel foothold of Aleppo was finished on Friday, hours after a series of blasts halted the operation. “The Syrian army operation to liberate the militant-controlled eastern districts of Aleppo is complete,” the Russian defence ministry said. “Syrian government forces are liquidating isolated pockets of resistance by radicals.” An agreement for rebels to withdraw […]
By Karolina Tagaris and Renee Maltezou | ATHENS ATHENS Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras seems determined to go down in history as a leader who tried to save Greece’s most vulnerable from austerity. But the crowd of pensioners in Athens on Thursday night was cynical about his promise to placate them with a one-off Christmas bonus. “We are living in misery and we won’t tolerate being fooled […]
WASHINGTON The U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State said on Friday it destroyed 14 tanks, an air defense artillery system and other weaponry near the Syrian city of Palmrya after Islamic State seized the city from Syrian and Russian forces this month. The strikes, which the military said in a statement took place on Thursday, followed a warning from the U.S. military that it could strike weapons it […]
Authored by Carl Bildt, originally posted at Project Syndicate, In August 2015, I tweeted that if Donald Trump were to be elected President of the United States, we would have to “head for the bunkers.” A Trump presidency was considered highly unlikely back then; but here we are. And while heading for the bunkers might not be the most appropriate response (yet), where we are is undoubtedly […]
By Andrew Osborn and Nick Tattersall | MOSCOW/ISTANBUL MOSCOW/ISTANBUL President Vladimir Putin said he and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan are working to organise a new series of Syrian peace talks without the involvement of the United States or the United Nations. In a snub to Washington, Putin made clear on Friday that the initiative was the sole preserve of Moscow and Turkey and that the peace […]
Photo A member of the Syrian government forces watched the evacuation operation of rebel fighters and civilians from Aleppo on Friday. Credit George Ourfalian/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images BEIRUT, Lebanon — The process of evacuating residents from the last rebel-held section of Aleppo broke down on Friday, a day after Syrian government buses and ambulances began taking residents out of the besieged area. The reason for halting […]
ALEPPO, Syria The evacuation of people from eastern Aleppo was suspended on Friday and a Reuters witness heard at least four blasts at a location where buses had been departing. A state-run Syrian TV station reported that rebels had breached an agreement with the government by trying to take prisoners with them during the evacuation. A Syrian official overseeing the evacuation told Reuters it had been obstructed […]
ANKARA A camp to host people evacuated from Syria’s Aleppo will be set up inside Syria near the border, senior Turkish officials told Reuters on Friday, and Turkey will continue to accept sick and wounded coming from the city. Two potential sites, around 3.5 km (2.2 miles) inside Syria, have been identified to set up a camp, which will have the capacity to host up to 80,000 […]
Investors have piled into Russian equity and bond funds over the past week as oil prices have rallied and President-elect Donald Trump named an oil executive with close ties to Vladimir Putin as US secretary of state. Russian stock funds recorded inflows of $451m in the week to December 14, the biggest weekly haul since the first quarter of 2011, according to EPFR. Mutual funds and exchange […]
CAIRO — Egypt said Thursday that explosive traces had been detected on the bodies of passengers retrieved from EgyptAir Flight 804, which plunged into the Mediterranean Sea in May and killed all 66 people on board. The announcement by the Civil Aviation Ministry offers the strongest suggestion yet that a bomb might have felled the airliner as it flew to Cairo from Paris. Previously, officials had focused […]
A one-two punch of a surging US dollar and rising interest rates sent the price of gold tumbling to its lowest level since February on Thursday, hurting the shares of miners and spurring hefty liquidations of exchange traded funds that track the metal. The price of gold in New York fell as much as 1.8 per cent to $1,122 an ounce, as the dollar rose across the […]
What’s the story behind your business? Our story is a typical start-up story. We began 15 years ago with six people, and at the time we operated out of our chairman’s extra bedroom in Jumeirah. We started the agency with the philosophy of changing the rules of advertising across the region. At the time, people thought we were a bit crazy – they said everything had already […]
Convoys of green buses and ambulances ferried several thousand rebels and wounded civilians through the rubble-strewn streets of Aleppo on Thursday as the highly anticipated evacuation of the last opposition enclave of the northern Syrian city finally began. The operation got off to a shaky start after the first ambulances were shot at in the morning, wounding three people and underlining the fragility of a deal brokered […]
By Gabriela Baczynska | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS European Union leaders agreed on Thursday to extend the bloc’s main economic sanctions against Russia over the turmoil in Ukraine for six months until mid-2017, diplomats said. The decision was expected and the formal process to extend the sanctions on Russia’s defence, energy and financial sectors will take place early next week, they said. “We welcome unanimous decision by the EU […]
BEIRUT Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Thursday the world would be different after what he called the “liberation of Aleppo”, describing it as a historic moment. “What is happening today is the writing of a history written by every Syrian citizen. The writing did not start today, it started six years ago when the crisis and war started against Syria,” Assad said in a video statement […]
Law Blog rounds up the morning’s news: Business regulations: President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to eliminate regulations on U.S. businesses will likely take years to fulfill given the complex steps involved in reversing them and political and legal challenges from Democratic lawmakers and state attorneys general. [WSJ] Terrorism defense: As authorities crack down on ISIS sympathizers, the […] (via WSJ)
“If they’ve managed to sleep through the night, bonds traders in the US will have quite a shock when they check their screens in the morning,” Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz, tweeted early on Thursday. Wall Street bond traders and investors will have turned in on Wednesday night already jolted by the Federal Reserve, which under Janet Yellen’s leadership has become synonymous with caution on […]
By Patrick Markey | AL-DHIBANIYAH, Iraq AL-DHIBANIYAH, Iraq His right arm strapped with a tourniquet and numbed by anaesthetic, Azad Hassan sat before the crowd waiting for Islamic State militants to chop off his hand as a punishment. First, he had watch them do the same to his brother. Freed from Islamic State rule in Mosul by Iraqi forces who are fighting to recapture the city, the […]
Thousands of people had gathered outside a hospital in the Mashhad neighborhood, which is still controlled by rebels, hoping that an evacuation deal announced on Tuesday by Turkey, Russia and Syrian rebels would hold. But the constant threat from snipers, bombs and shelling was unsettling. Video Aleppo Activists Say Final Goodbyes as Assad Closes In Syrian government forces had reclaimed most of rebel-held eastern Aleppo by Tuesday, […]
Thursday 11:00 GMT Overview Stock markets are trading cautiously as Treasury yields hit fresh highs after the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates for only the second time since the financial crisis. The prospect of the US central bank perhaps having to tighten policy faster than expected to reflect any additional boost to growth from president-elect Trump’s fiscal plans is lifting the dollar to a 14-year […]
ANKARA The first goal in the evacuation of eastern Aleppo is to get the sick and wounded to hospital, whether in Syria or Turkey, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Huseyin Muftugolu said on Thursday. He told a news conference that evacuees need to be put into camps quickly and that work was continuing on establishing camps in Syria. He added that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad […]
By Laila Bassam, Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Tom Perry | ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT An attempt to evacuate people in need of medical attention from rebel-held eastern Aleppo stalled on Thursday when fighters loyal to the Syrian government fired on the convoy, wounding three, the head of the ambulance service said. The vehicles had intended to leave under a deal to evacuate people from rebel areas following rapid […]
MOSCOW The International Committee of the Red Cross will help with transporting injured rebels out of the eastern part of Syria’s war-torn city of Aleppo, Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday, Interfax news agency reported. Russian soldiers are now preparing to lead rebels out of Aleppo under orders from President Vladimir Putin, the defence ministry said earlier on Thursday. (Reporting by Alexander Winning; Writing by Andrey Ostroukh; […]
Sky News Australia Indonesian jails ripe for ISIS recruitersSky News AustraliaAlmost a year after Jakarta was rocked by a terrorist attack and a crackdown on Indonesia’s prison system was announced, systemic problems continue to plague deradicalisation efforts inside, a report warns. In the first eleven months of 2016, some 120 … and more » (via Google News)
