LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As university students mill around a bright and airy study hall in London, Eiad Zinah converses in his native language Arabic with a female student from Germany. It is the first time the pair have met for a language tuition session – and it is the Syrian refugee who is running the tutorial today, not the other way around. “It’s an amazing […]
He was the president who took out Osama bin Laden but was blindsided by Isis; who made Asia his priority but saw his trade deal for the region stymied; who built bridges with once sworn enemies in Cuba and Iran but who sparred with allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia. The mixed and sometimes messy foreign policy legacy of Barack Obama includes a climate change agreement and […]
The head of Dubai Land Department (DLD) has predicted an rebound for the city’s real estate market this year, signaling an upward trend for sustained growth in the run-up to Expo 2020. Sultan Butti Bin Merjen, director general of DLD made the comments in an annual report for 2016 which revealed that total real estate transactions in Dubai exceeded AED259 billion ($70.5 billion). This was marginally down […]
PARIS Over the past two decades, planemakers Airbus (AIR.PA) and Boeing (BA.N) have traded the crown in the annual orders race, and it was usually clear who had bragging rights in the fiercely competitive $120 billion annual jet market. On Wednesday, Airbus retained the top spot when it said it had recorded a total of 731 net orders for 2016, beating Boeing’s tally of 668 for the […]
‘Contemporary art is not a decoration, it is a statement. It is a wonderful seismograph of our societies and realities.” These words were part of the opening speech given last week by founder Lorenzo Rudolf at the seventh edition of Art Stage Singapore in the South-east Asian island city. Rudolf, from Switzerland, has made it his mission to champion those sentiments since 1991, when he took over […]
Video A Hunger Strike for His Wife Arash Sadeghi, an Iranian political prisoner, went on hunger strike for more than two months to protest the incarceration of his wife, Golrokh Ebrahimi-Iraee, who was temporarily released. By NEETI UPADHYE on Publish Date January 4, 2017. . Watch in Times Video » TEHRAN — The hunger strike, a pressure tactic of self-starvation used by political protesters around the world, […]
If Donald Trump was concerned by the clashing views that emerged from his cabinet nominees in the first days of Senate confirmation hearings, he did not show it on Friday. “All of my Cabinet nominee (sic) are looking good and doing a great job,” the president-elect tweeted before sunrise in New York. “I want them to be themselves and express their own thoughts, not mine!” But the […]
International investigators have said for the first time that they suspect President Bashar al-Assad and his brother are responsible for the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict, according to a document seen by Reuters. A joint inquiry for the United Nations and global watchdog the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had previously identified only military units and did not name any commanders […]
Throughout the presidential campaign and since Donald Trump’s election, former diplomats, retired generals, and foreign-policy analysts have attempted to decipher, explain, and predict his foreign-policy strategy. Will he pursue the big-stick model of Teddy Roosevelt? Embrace a neo-Nixonian “madman” strategy? Is Trump actually a champion of foreign-policy realism, or perhaps no realist at all? But all those questions make the same mistake — they assume the incoming […]
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi | AMMAN AMMAN Syrian army command said on Friday that Israel fired rockets at a major military airport west of Damascus, the capital, and warned Tel Aviv of repercussions of what it called a “flagrant” attack. Syrian state television quoted the army as saying several rockets were fired from an area near Lake Tiberias in northern Israel just after midnight which landed in the […]
President-elect Donald Trump may be at war with the intelligence community, but on Thursday his pick to head the CIA tried to bridge the rift between the incoming president and his spies, saying he accepts the assessment that Russia meddled in the election to boost the Republican’s candidacy. “It’s pretty clear about what took place here, about Russian involvement in efforts to hack information and to have […]
By Phil Stewart and Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon put Russia at the top of a list of threats to U.S. interests on Thursday and told Congress that America must be ready to confront Moscow where necessary, even as he backed Trump’s bid for better relations. The remarks by retired Marine General James Mattis were the latest by one of […]
By Patricia Zengerle and Yeganeh Torbati | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson expressed views on Wednesday at odds with President-elect Donald Trump’s positions on key foreign policy issues like nuclear proliferation, trade deals, climate change and relations with Mexico. In a nine-hour Senate confirmation hearing, the former chief executive of oil company Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) said he favoured maintaining U.S. sanctions against Russia for […]
Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun said his country’s ties with Saudi Arabia were recovering, after tensions linked to the regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran led Riyadh to cancel $3 billion of military aid to Beirut last year. Aoun, an ally of the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah, visited Saudi Arabia this week, trying to mend relations with the Sunni Muslim monarchy which has traditionally backed Hezbollah’s […]
Airbus posted an eight percent rise in deliveries last year, beating its own forecasts by a comfortable margin to set a company record, and pulled off a last-minute surge in orders to beat arch-rival Boeing in the race for new orders. Confirming an estimate published by Reuters, the European planemaker said on Wednesday it delivered 688 aircraft in 2016, compared with an official company forecast of more […]
In order to survive, the Syrian regime has had to rely to an extraordinary degree on Russian and Iranian forces, and their proxies, like Hezbollah. It really wasn’t the Syrian Arab Army that retook Aleppo. Indeed, the Syrian military is stretched so thin by geography and attrition that last month it lost most of the city of Palmyra (again) to the Islamic State while pro-government forces were […]
Photo James E. Cartwright, a retired Marine general, arriving at Federal District Court in Washington in October. Credit Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press PWASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors asked a judge on Tuesday to sentence James E. Cartwright, a retired Marine Corps general and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to two years in prison for lying to F.B.I. agents about his discussions with reporters about […]
Good morning. Elites caught in a bubble? John Oliver and Meryl Streep bashed Donald Trump and praised journalism. Donations soared for two nonprofits praised by them: ProPublica and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Hip, hip, hoorah. Truth and justice win out over the forces of darkness. Or did they? You couldn’t try harder, or be more articulate, than Streep. “It was simply stunning: eloquent and urgent, the […]
Submitted by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute, Sharia courts administering Islamic justice in Britain are run by clerics who believe some offenders should have their hands chopped off, according to Muslim scholar Elham Manea. She described the prevailing attitude as “totalitarian” and as more backward than some parts of Pakistan. Teaching children fundamental British values is an act of “cultural supremacism,” according to the National Union […]
Photo Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2016. Credit Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images Relations between the United States and Iran, which improved under President Obama to the point where the two sides were able to strike a nuclear deal, were already facing an uncertain future under Donald Trump, who has taken a tough line against Tehran. The death on Sunday of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi […]
Photo The United States guided missile destroyer Mahan in the Mediterranean in 2013. Credit Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jacob D. Moore/U.S. Navy, via Reuters WASHINGTON — In a vivid illustration of the tensions between the United States and Iran, an American Navy warship fired warning shots at Iranian boats that were racing toward it near the Strait of Hormuz, Defense Department officials said on Monday. The […]
BEIRUT: A Syrian truce brokered by Russia and Turkey was under growing strain on Monday as opposition fighters vowed to respond to regime’s violations and President Bashar Assad said the army would retake an important opposition-held area near Damascus. Assad, in comments to French media, also said his regime was ready to negotiate on “everything” at peace talks his Russian allies hope to convene in Kazakhstan, including […]
Abu Dhabi // Rulers and officials of the GCC on Monday sent messages of condolence to the Iranian president and the family of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the senior revolutionary figure and pragmatist who had developed good relations with member states and presided over a thaw in Tehran’s relations with Riyadh during his tenure as president. Rafsanjani died on Sunday at the age of 82 after suffering a […]
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” So Henry Temple, the third Viscount Palmerston, described British foreign policy in 1848, at the height of its imperial pomp. “England is a power sufficiently strong, sufficiently powerful to steer her own course.” It is more than fanciful to imagine US […]
