SpaceX on Thursday became the first space company to use a recycled rocket to send a payload into orbit, paving the way for a sharp drop in launch costs that is a key part of its long-term plan to carry passengers to Mars. The Los Angeles-based company sent a rocket into orbit using a main booster stage that first flew on April 6 last year. It also […]
The State Department on Wednesday notified Congress of its intent to proceed with the sale without the conditions, according to Micah Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Congress now has two review periods to examine the sale and raise any objections. Continue reading the main story Mr. Tillerson will attend his first meeting of NATO on Friday in Brussels, where he may run into […]
Europe became the main target for cross-border dealmaking in the first quarter of 2017, as US companies rode a Donald Trump-fuelled equity rally to hunt for bargains across the Atlantic. Mergers and acquisitions in Europe hit $215.3bn in the quarter, up 16 per cent compared to the same period a year ago. That marks the strongest start to the year for deals in the region since 2008, […]
“We recognized the nature of the fight was going to change and that we had to ensure that authorities were down to the right level and that we empowered the on-scene commander,” General Votel said. He was speaking specifically about discussions that he said began in November about how the fights in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State were reaching critical phases in Mosul and Raqqa. […]
The White House has not abandoned hope that Congress could make another effort to pass healthcare legislation that Trump administration officials believe would ease resistance to enacting tax reform. President Donald Trump signalled last week that he would switch focus after Republican leaders in the House cancelled a vote to replace the Obamacare law because of disagreements inside their party. But the White House is making another […]
By Isabel Coles and John Davison | MOSUL MOSUL Iraqi special forces and police fought Islamic State militants to edge closer to the al-Nuri mosque in western Mosul on Wednesday, tightening their control around the landmark site and in Baghdad a suicide truck bomb killed at least 17 people. The close-quarters fighting is focussed on the Old City surrounding the mosque, where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr […]
In this Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, photo, a group of self-driving Uber vehicles position themselves to take journalists on rides during a media preview at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh. On Monday, March 27, 2017, Uber said it is resuming its self-driving car program in Arizona and Pittsburgh after it was suspended following a crash over the weekend. The company had also grounded self-driving cars in […]
The bagpiper striding across the bottle label wears flowing green tartan, a luxuriant black moustache — and a red turban. Bagpiper whisky, distilled by Diageo through its United Spirits subsidiary in India, is one of India’s most popular brands, available even in a tetra pak. But at Rs300 ($4.50) for a 750ml bottle, it is not a brand that will power a rapid return on Diageo’s £1.9bn […]
It grossed $1 billion and picked up numerous awards nominations, but it has been revealed that a particular aspect of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story proved one of the most controversial moments of the entire franchise. Fans were polarised by the computer-generated appearances of the long-dead Peter Cushing and a youthful Carrie Fisher, with some admiring the technical wizardry but many dismissing their inclusion as downright […]
China has prevented an academic critical of its growing influence in Australia from travelling home to Sydney, casting a shadow over Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s state visit to the country. Feng Chongyi, a Chinese citizen who teaches at University of Technology Sydney, was halted from boarding at least two flights from China to Australia this weekend. Mr Feng is a permanent resident of Australia, which means he […]
For the hardliners of the Freedom Caucus, a conservative group renowned for its ideological purity, the healthcare defeat they helped inflict on Donald Trump showed their willingness to wreak havoc had reached a new high. The group has a record of ruining the plans of party leaders. But they attained a new potency on Friday by bringing down the top legislative priority of a president from their own party […]
Two-and-a-half years ago, Nathan Law took to the streets of Hong Kong with tens of thousands of fellow students, demanding Beijing give them the right to vote for the leader of their own city government. This Sunday Mr Law will have that opportunity — but not in the way he envisaged during the “Umbrella Revolution” protests. When he was voted on to the city’s Legislative Council in […]
“Reflecting on the past year or so, we should be encouraged by the significant progress we as a coalition are making,” Mr. Tillerson said. Continue reading the main story Mr. Trump has long insisted that citing “radical Islamic terrorism” is key to defeating the Islamic State. “You can’t solve a problem if you refuse to talk about what the problem is,” he said in November 2015. Yet […]
Authored by Robert Parry via The Strategic Culture Foundation, The Kagan family, America’s neoconservative aristocracy, has reemerged having recovered from the letdown over not gaining its expected influence from the election of Hillary Clinton and from its loss of official power at the start of the Trump presidency. Former Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick […]
WASHINGTON — The United States military has begun formally investigating an American airstrike in Syria that officials said targeted dozens of Qaeda operatives at a meeting place that activists and local residents maintain was part of a religious complex where 49 civilians were killed. United States Central Command has begun two investigations: one to determine whether there is credible evidence that civilians were killed in the strike, […]
Tuesday 18:30 GMT What you need to know ● Sell off in financials drives S&P 500 down 1 per cent● Euro climbs to $1.08 and dollar index slips below 100● 10-year Treasury yield at lowest since start of month● Oil prices come under renewed pressure● Gold heads for fifth daily rise in a row——————- Overview A sharp and sudden sell-off for US financial stocks helped put the […]
U.S. children get exposed to opioids and most of them are younger than 5 years old, the most vulnerable age group to the potentially deadly effects of prescription medicines. Figures from the National Poison Data System showed that of the nearly 190,000 reports of people under age 20 who have come in contact with prescription opioids between the years 2000 to 2015, 60 percent involved children 5 years old […]
An Australian teenager who was bitten by a crocodile when he jumped into a river in northern Queensland on a dare is now recovering in hospital and looking forward to a date with the British backpacker he was trying to impress. Lee De Paauw, 18, had met Sophie Paterson while drinking at with a group of friends into the early hours of Sunday morning at a backpackers’ […]
When Tim Armour graduated from Middlebury College, a liberal arts institution in Vermont, he faced a conundrum. He could either accept a graduate programme slot at a West Coast investment group, or go and run a windsurf shop in Florida. Because he loved to windsurf but did not want to turn down a more sensible job, he asked the asset manager whether he could put off the […]
NEW YORK Billionaire philanthropist David Rockefeller, former head of Chase Manhattan Corp and patriarch of one of the most famous and influential American families, died on Monday, a family spokesman said. He was 101. Rockefeller, who reportedly gave away nearly $2 billion in his lifetime, died in his sleep of congestive heart failure at his home in Pocantico Hills, New York, spokesman Fraser Seitel said in a […]
By Mike Stone | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump says he wants to build dozens of new warships in one of the biggest peace-time expansions of the U.S. Navy. But interviews with ship-builders, unions and a review of public and internal documents show major obstacles to that plan. The initiative could cost nearly $700 billion in government funding, take 30 years to complete and require hiring […]
Tim Byrnes is an unlikely symbol of China’s bid to become the world’s high-tech superpower. For a start he is Australian. Yet the 39-year-old quantum physicist’s decision to swap a research post in New York for Shanghai goes some way to explaining the lengths to which Beijing is going in its efforts to upend the world order. “Quantum physics is very strong in China,” says Mr Byrnes. […]
By Patrick Markey and John Davison | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq Iraqi army helicopters strafed and fired rockets at Islamic State positions in Mosul’s Old City on Sunday as troops on the ground closed in on the strategic and symbolic prize of the al-Nuri Mosque. Federal Police troops had advanced past the train station in western Mosul closer to the mosque. A police commander said they were […]
Chuck Berry, who has died aged 90, was to some the greatest rock ’n roll artist of all time: he was certainly among the most influential. All the big British bands of the 1960s, in particular The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Animals, looked to Berry for both inspiration and material. Their early hits such as “Roll over Beethoven”, “Come On” and “Memphis Tennessee” had all […]
