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Authored by Michael Jabara Carley via The Strategic Culture Foundation, On 10 January 2017 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fired his minister of external affairs, Stéphane Dion, and replaced him with Chrystia Freeland, who was then minister of international trade. This cabinet shuffle might not have gotten much public notice except that Dion is a distinguished parliamentarian, former leader of the party and leader of the opposition, […]

One of the authors of the report was Richard Falk, an American law professor and former United Nations human rights investigator whom critics regard as an anti-Israel extremist. He has been refused entry to Israel for what Israeli leaders have described as his hostile point of view. Continue reading the main story The report comes amid a hardening polarization on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with […]

How much does the Gulf’s traditional folk music have in common with one of America’s greatest art-forms – jazz? Far more than any musicologist might realise, argues Tarek Yamani, the trailblazing UAE-based pianist, who exposes and explores the shared rhythmic strands linking these two distinct disciplines in an ambitious new, multi-faceted project. Commissioned by the Abu Dhabi Festival, Yamani’s conceptual new album Peninsular will have its live […]

The preparations for Fireworks Wednesday started Tuesday afternoon when the gardeners carefully laid out seven small piles of sand near the square. Seven is regarded as a holy number in Iran’s pre-Islamic Zoroastrian faith. They then brought over several wheelbarrow loads of firewood. I noticed several of my neighbors peeking down from their balconies. Fireworks Wednesday is traditionally celebrated on the last Tuesday before the end of […]

New research used high pressure and temperature to reveal a kind of ‘structural memory’ in samples of the metal bismuth, a discovery with great electrical engineering potential. (via WSJ)

It is fitting that just a few hours until the Fed’s second rate hike in two quarters, and one day after Goldman downgraded global stocks to Neutral for the next 3 months, not to mention with the results of the anticipated Dutch election due shortly, that global stocks as well as S&P futures are higher, while crude oil has finally managed to stage a rebound as the […]

Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai, visited the Art Dubai Exhibition on display at Madinat Jumeirah. Art Dubai is a platform that lets Middle Eastern artists exhibit their works on a global stage. Sheikh Hamdan toured Art Dubai, which features 94 galleries from 43 countries, showcasing works from more than 500 artists. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai, visited the Art Dubai Exhibition […]

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Toyota Motor Corp signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Tuesday with a Saudi Arabian government agency to conduct a feasibility study into producing vehicles and parts in the Middle Eastern nation. The move, if firmed up, would be a big step for the Saudi economy as the government tries to diversify beyond oil exports and create jobs as part of the kingdom’s 2030 Vision. So far, […]

Photo Mahmoud Abbas, right, the president of the Palestinian Authority, met with Jason Greenblatt, President Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, in the West Bank on Tuesday. Credit Mohamad Torokman/Reuters JERUSALEM — President Trump’s new envoy to the Middle East met on Tuesday with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, striving in the administration’s first diplomatic undertaking here to maintain a public evenhandedness amid the […]

Photo A damaged classroom after shelling in the rebel-held town of Hass in Idlib Province. Credit Ammar Abdullah/Reuters GENEVA — Syrian military airstrikes on rebels were responsible for severing water supplies to 5.5 million people in the Damascus region for weeks starting last December, the United Nations said on Tuesday, rebutting government claims that insurgents were to blame. In a bombing campaign to drive rebel forces from […]

Tuesday 15:10 GMT What you need to know ● Pound under pressure amid Brexit and Scottish secession worries● Sterling drops below $1.22 and euro edges up towards 88p● S&P 500 down 0.5 per cent as sliding oil hits energy stocks● Treasury yields little changed ahead of Fed decision——————- Hot topic The UK pound is back under pressure as traders become concerned that Edinburgh’s demand for a another […]

When Strata + Hadoop World comes around in the US, once a year in New York and once a year, as it is now, in San Jose, CA, it’s a bit of a news feeding frenzy. I’m not even at the event; I was merely pre-briefed by four vendors, last week and yesterday, with announcements they’re making this morning. And still, it’s a lot. Cloudera told me […]

Rumor has it that the successor to OnePlus 3T will skip the “4” and just jump into OnePlus 5, a la Note 5 jumping into the Note 7 naming scheme. The 3T has only been out for a few months, becoming available this past November. Yet, because of how fast-paced smartphone development has become, we’re now seeing rumors of the OnePlus 5, and they’re all sounding pretty good […]

ADDIS ABABA Bereaved families tussled with rescue workers on Tuesday at the site of an Ethiopian rubbish dump where a landslide killed 65 people this weekend. Relatives pushed and shoved the handful of emergency workers, angrily accusing them of delays and saying dozens of people were still missing after Saturday’s disaster at the Reppi dump in the capital of Addis Ababa. Hundreds of people live on the […]

Researchers have developed a range of composite metal foams (CMFs) that can be used in applications from armor to hazardous material transport — and they’re now looking for collaborators to help identify and develop new applications. To that end, the researchers are issuing a comprehensive overview and new data on their CMFs. (via WSJ)

From the geometric work of Tunisian artist Nicène Kossentini – who spent time in Córdoba’s Great Mosque while on a residency in Andalusia and produced abstracted drawings based on Tawq Al Hamamah (The Ring of the Dove), a 11th-century treatise of love written by Ibn Hazm – to the paintings of Ahmed Morsi, the pieces displayed as part of the 11th edition of Art Dubai hold fascinating […]

The San Francisco Department of Public Health has revealed that two people are critically ill and are now in the hospital after drinking toxic herbal tea that they bought at a Chinatown shop. The patients, a woman and a man, became ill within an hour of drinking tea made from leaves they bought from Sun Wing Wo Trading Co. The two individuals quickly experienced weakness, which was followed […]

Photo Hosni Mubarak waved to supporters in 2015, on his 87th birthday, from the Maadi Military Hospital in Cairo. Credit Amr Nabil/Associated Press CAIRO — An Egyptian prosecutor ordered Hosni Mubarak, the toppled Egyptian autocrat, released from the Maadi Military Hospital in southern Cairo, where he has been held for much of the last six years. But as of Monday night, Mr. Mubarak, 88, still had not […]

In a photo op at the start of their meeting, Mr. Netanyahu greeted Mr. Greenblatt warmly, addressing him as Jason, and said, “I hope we can do some good things together.” Mr. Greenblatt replied, “I think we are going to do great things together.” Once seated, he thanked Mr. Netanyahu for reorganizing his schedule, throwing in a “todah,” Hebrew for thank you. Continue reading the main story […]

Abraaj Group Art Prize In October last year, Rana Begum won the US$100,000 (Dh367,250) Abraaj Group Art Prize. The title is awarded each year to aid an artist realise a proposed project, which is later unveiled at Art Dubai. Begum, a Bangladeshi-born, London-raised artist, is interested in the geometry of a city. Her brightly coloured, angular metal sculptures and installations look at the unexpected architecture of a […]

ADDIS ABABA Desperate parents scrabbled through a towering pile of fetid garbage in the Ethiopian capital on Monday, screaming the names of missing children buried in a landslide after a mound of trash collapsed on an informal settlement killing at least 50. “My babies, my babies, my little daughter,” cried one man wandering through the site, tears streaming down his face. Neighbors said he had lost four […]

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) have mystified scientists since their discovery in 2007. Astronomers know they come from distant galaxies, but their potential origins remain a mystery. Fast Radio Bursts And Sailing Aliens Now, a new study published by Harvard researchers in the Astrophysical Journal Letters suggests the phenomenon may have something to with sailing aliens. The researchers suggest the bursts may be leakage that come from planet-sized transmitters whose […]

Photo Babies are carried away away from destroyed buildings following an air strike in Aleppo, Syria, in 2016. Credit Ameer Alhalbi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Children suffered a “drastic escalation” in violence from the Syrian civil war in 2016, the United Nations said Sunday in a report that showed child deaths jumped at least 20 percent from the year before and recruitment of child combatants more than […]

By carefully combining multiple structures, metamaterials can exhibit properties that don’t naturally exist. A research team has a new, simpler way of making them, using a concept dubbed ‘photonic doping.’ (via WSJ)

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