To an outsider, it looked preposterous. The archaeologists were cataloging and storing absolutely everything, treating this physical material as though it were digital information — JPEGs of itself. And yet they couldn’t afford not to: Everything a Neanderthal came into contact with was a valuable clue. (In 28 years of excavations here, archaeologists have yet to find a fossil of an actual Neanderthal.) “This is like putting […]
Donald Trump angrily denied claims that Russia sought to cultivate and compromise him, after unverified allegations about his personal conduct and ties to Moscow spilled out into the open, just 10 days before his inauguration. US media reported that intelligence agency officials shared a written synopsis of a dossier containing lurid but unsubstantiated personal claims about Mr Trump, allegedly compiled by Moscow, when they met the president-elect […]
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 […]
Wednesday 08:30 GMT Overview European stocks and US index futures are lacking momentum, while government bond yields see minimal moves, as traders appear wary of making bold bets ahead of a press conference later in the day from US president-elect Donald Trump. The dollar is steady against the euro but the Turkish lira has hit another record low. Industrial commodity prices mostly are holding recent gains. Hot […]
By Engen Tham and Samuel Shen | SHANGHAI SHANGHAI China’s forex regulator is telling banks to keep its instructions about curbing capital outflows secret and to ensure that research analysts keep any negative views about the yuan’s prospects to themselves, several bankers said. Both demands are seen as an attempt by the authorities to prevent alarm that could trigger further declines in the yuan, the bankers from […]
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, The true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the nation all the time, loyalty to the government when it deserves it. – Mark Twain, The Czar’s Soliloquy” At this point, pretty much everyone in America has seen the results of Hillary Clinton media pet, John Harwood’s recent Twitter poll. Who do you believe America? — John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) January 6, […]
MEXICO CITY Pranksters changed the name of Mexico’s lower house of Congress to the “Chamber of Rats” on Google Maps on Tuesday in the latest dig at the political class during a testing start to the year for the country’s government. The lower house, also known as the Chamber of Deputies, became the “Chamber of Rats”, using the Spanish word “rata,” which is also slang for thief […]
By Jonathan Landay and John Walcott | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Classified documents that the heads of four U.S. intelligence agencies presented last week to President-elect Donald Trump included claims that Russian intelligence operatives have compromising information about him, two U.S. officials said Tuesday evening. They told Reuters the claims, which one called “still unsubstantiated,” were contained in a two-page memo appended to a report on Russian interference in […]
SEATTLE Boeing Co (BA.N) warned on Tuesday that it will conduct involuntary layoffs of engineers, part of a cost-cutting drive as the aerospace and defense company responds to increasing competition amid slowing aircraft sales. The reductions, disclosed in an internal memo seen by Reuters, also include dozens of job categories eligible for voluntary layoffs in Washington state, southern California and South Carolina. Boeing did not indicate the […]
The Middle East has given McLaren Automotive, the British manufacturer of luxury sports and supercars, good reason to get revved up with sales soaring last year. Its Middle East, Africa and central and South America region grew by an impressive 69 per cent last year, as the company posted another record year of sales growth. From offices in Dubai, McLaren has expanded into Abu Dhabi. “We continue […]
WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will attend a Middle East peace conference organised by France and to be held in Paris on Jan. 15, his spokesman said on Tuesday. The conference is aimed at determining whether Israelis and Palestinians could be brought back to negotiations and revive moribund peace talks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected the conference proposal. (Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati, […]
The FTSE 100 notched up its longest run of record highs on Tuesday as another low for sterling helped the UK’s blue-chip index outperform European peers. The main London benchmark added 0.5 per cent, up 37.7 points to 7,275.47. It was the FTSE’s ninth consecutive record-high close as well as its 11th consecutive gain, a winning streak it has only equalled three times — in 1997, 2004 […]
By Amanda Ferguson | BELFAST BELFAST After a decade of bitter compromises over paramilitaries and policing, Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government finally fell apart this week over the abuse by farmers of a green-energy grant to burn fuels such as wood pellets instead of coal. The confrontation has exposed a growing rupture in trust between Catholic Irish nationalists and pro-British Protestant unionists whose cooperation underpins the 1998 Good […]
Short-lived compounds like greenhouse gas methane stay in the atmosphere just between a year and a few decades. However, researchers have found that they can cause lingering warmth that can lead to sea levels rising for centuries long after the compounds have been cleared from the atmosphere. In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the Simon Fraser University and […]
By Parisa Hafezi | ANKARA ANKARA The death of former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani deprives Iran’s reformers of a powerful ally, boosting anti-Western hardliners before a presidential election which will determine how open Tehran is to the world. The loss of Rafsanjani’s skills as a factional powerbroker also means rivalries in Iran’s unwieldy dual system of clerical and republican rule could grow unchecked, testing the stability […]
Close on the heels of plans for the first-ever Apple Store in Seoul, South Korea, Apple is all set to embark on building an underground retail store in the historic Liberty Square in Milan. For the unfamiliar, Piazza del Liberty – popularly called the Liberty Square – is one of the most populous metropolitan areas in Italy. The city’s planning department has approved of the construction last month based on […]
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 […]
PARIS French cosmetics group L’Oreal (OREP.PA) is acquiring three specialized skincare brands – CeraVe, AcneFree and Ambi – from Canada’s Valeant Pharmaceuticals International (VRX.TO) for $1.3 billion in cash to expand into one of the fastest growing areas of the beauty industry. The French cosmetics giant paid nearly eight times the brand’s combined annual revenue of $168 million. “These three brands, built on strong relationships with health […]
January 10, 2017 by: Henry Mance, political correspondent Boris Johnson has claimed Britain is “first in line” for a post-Brexit trade deal with the US, following meetings with Republican congressional leaders including Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. The foreign secretary visited New York and Washington, paving the way for an official trip by Theresa May to meet Donald Trump later this year. For Mr Johnson, the visit […]
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 […]
By Ellen Wulfhorst UNITED NATIONS (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Sweden’s top diplomat has a question: “Where are the women?” Taking a seat on the United Nations’ influential Security Council, Sweden will use its clout to press its feminist foreign policy, Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said on Monday. That policy, coined when Wallstrom took office two years ago, seeks equal rights, decision-making roles and fair allocation of resources […]
Pakistan’s recently retired army chief Raheel Sharif has been appointed to lead a new Saudi-military alliance to fight terrorism, Pakistani media have reported. Government officials in Saudi Arabia could not be reached on Sunday to confirm the appointment to head the coalition, the founding of which Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced at a sudden midnight press conference in December 2015. Pakistani Defence Minister […]
The Federal Reserve should be ready to consider reducing the size of its balance sheet as part of its efforts to prevent overheating in the US, a senior policymaker said as he noted the pick-up in wage inflation and predicted a return of inflation to target by the end of the year. Eric Rosengren, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said that if the […]
Last year was a relatively tough year for real estate players across the UAE, as the market adjusted to lower levels of economic growth. This ‘new normal’ is a reflection of oil prices well below their peaks of 2014 and 2015. While the average oil price declined dramatically during 2015, the decline was much more modest in 2016 and it is important to recognise that oil prices […]
