Photo Marine Corps jets flew over the pyramids of Egypt during a military exercise in 1999. Credit Staff Sgt. Jim Varhegyi/United States Air Force CAIRO — The top commander of American military operations in the Middle East said during a visit here on Sunday that the United States wanted to resume a major military exercise with Egypt that President Barack Obama had canceled in 2013 to protest […]
Bahrain’s Council of Representatives has approved an amendment to Bahrain’s Constitution that would enable military courts to try civilians, in violation of international fair trial standards, Human Rights Watch has said. The amendment goes next to the upper house of parliament and then to King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa for his final approval. Bahrain’s Constitution currently limits the jurisdiction of military courts to offences by security […]
CAIRO, Egypt: An Egyptian lawmaker started collecting signatures on Sunday for a motion to extend presidential terms and lift restrictions on re-election — a year before general-turned-president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s first term is due to expire.As defense minister, Sissi overthrew elected President Mohammed Mursi, a Muslim Brotherhood official, in mid-2013 following mass protests against his rule and launched a crackdown on Egypt’s oldest Islamist movement.El-Sissi, now 62, […]
Berkshire Hathaway’s eye-catching recent bets on Apple and US airline stocks are not likely to prove as enduring as the investments that it made on Coca-Cola or American Express more than two decades ago, according to readers of Warren Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders. Mr Buffett struck a new tone in his passages on Berkshire’s $122bn portfolio of public equities in this year’s letter, released over the […]
By REUTERS | Feb. 25, 2017 | 1:39 Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director, reacted to the news that the Israeli government has denied his work visa, accusing the group of engaging in “Palestinian propaganda” on Friday. NYtimes
Top executives at some of the world’s biggest banks and insurers will have to vouch for their companies’ resilience to cyber attacks, under tough rules laid down by New York’s state regulator. A new regulation, which takes effect on March 1, requires companies supervised by New York’s Department of Financial Services to establish and maintain a cyber security programme that can protect consumers’ private data and “ensure […]
Video Airstrikes in Syria More than 30 people were killed Saturday in attacks on two Syrian security offices in the central city of Homs. In Douma, on the eastern outskirts of the capital, Damascus, men evacuated children from the rubble of destroyed buildings after a reported government airstrike. By REUTERS and THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. Photo by Sameer Al-Doumy/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. Watch in Times Video » […]
BEIRUT The Syrian army and its allies made a sudden advance on Saturday and Sunday into areas held by Islamic State in northwest Syria, a war monitor said, as the jihadist group retreated after losing the city of al-Bab to Turkey-backed rebels on Thursday. The eastwards advance in an area south of al-Bab has extended Syrian army control across 14 villages and brought it within 25km (15 […]
o Food consumption in the GCC to expand at a 4.2 per cent from 48.1 million MT in 2016 to 59.2 million MT in 2021 o Consumers spending Dh250 worth of Prestige cookware/kitchenware products is guaranteed of winning something back! 26 February 2017o Food import bill is expected to have crossed US29.17 billion in 2016 o UAE’s packaged food import bill reached US$4.3 billion in […]
In a small office on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the same Paris street as the Élysée Palace, the secretive “ideas and images” online unit of France’s far-right National Front was planning its next attack. As the battle for the presidency hotted up, signs that Emmanuel Macron, the centrist presidential contender, was polling strongly raised the possibility that he would make the second round vote to face FN […]
Corporate speeches usually avoid talk of a “difficult and dark” past. But this month Mark Cutifani, head of Anglo American, defended the South African mining industry’s record on opening up ownership to the country’s black majority. With the government planning to shore up black participation in mining, the next few months are the most critical in the sector’s 150-year history, Mr Cutifani said. Many “still don’t understand” […]
More than 30 people were killed Saturday in attacks on two Syrian security offices in the central city of Homs. In Douma, on the eastern outskirts of the capital, Damascus, men evacuated children from the rubble of destroyed buildings after a reported government airstrike. NYtimes
TEHRAN: Iran’s nuclear chief said Saturday that the country had requested to buy 950 tons of uranium concentrate from Kazakhstan over the next three years to help develop its civil reactor program.The request has been made to the body that oversees the nuclear deal signed between Iran and world powers in 2015.Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told the ISNA news agency that the […]
February 25, 2017 by: Arash Massoudi and Javier Espinoza Bain Capital has made a €3.6bn offer to buy Stada, as the bidding war between private equity firms for the German maker of generic versions of drugs such as Viagra nears its climax. The offer from the US-based buyout group values shares in Stada at €58 a share and comes two days after its rival Advent International also […]
Concourse D at Dubai International Airport has served more than 16.6 million passengers during its first year of operations. Concourse D, which represents the final major piece of infrastructure to be built at the airport as part of the $7.8 billion 2020 programme, marks its first anniversary on February 24. The $1.2 billion facility became the home of 60 international airlines that operate into Terminal 1 and […]
Developer BioWare’s last release was Dragon Age: Inquisition and the title succeeded in satisfying most fans of the Dragon Age series. The company is well known for making role playing games which are not only entertaining, but also tend to create some very well drawn out characters. The developer’s next game Mass Effect: Andromeda is slated to be released in the U.S. on March 21 while a multiplayer beta of the game could launch before […]
©EPA WASHINGTON, Feb 24 — The White House excluded several major news organizations, including some it has criticised, from an off-camera briefing held by the White House press secretary on Friday. Reporters for CNN, The New York Times, Politico, The Los Angeles Times, the BBC and BuzzFeed were not allowed into the session in the office of press secretary Sean Spicer. Mr Spicer’s off-camera briefing, or “gaggle,” […]
Photo Credit Rukmini Callimachi/The New York Times I’m in northern Iraq and spent the day traveling to the front lines of western Mosul, where Iraqi government forces are battling the Islamic State for complete control of this city. Along the way, my colleagues and I met a villager who had just escaped. The villager, Lahib Muhammed Ali, lived on a dairy farm. He said that because the […]
SoFi, the biggest and the brashest of a new breed of online lenders in the US, has sealed a $500m funding round, giving it firepower to push into new products and markets including Canada and Australia. The private San Francisco-based company last received a big shot of funds — its fifth — in September 2015, when SoftBank of Japan led a $1bn round, the biggest in the […]
In a war in which the United States has sought to minimize its own military footprint, this militia has become the American military’s ally of choice in northern Syria and its best hope of taking Raqqa in the coming months. Continue reading the main story But the budding alliance has drawn the United States deeper into the complex politics of northern Syria and prompted furious objections from […]
Credit: shatterered.io Today, researchers at the Dutch research institute CWI and Google jointly announce that they have broken the SHA-1 internet security standard in practice. This industry standard is used for digital signatures and file integrity verification, which secure credit card transactions, electronic documents, GIT open-source software repositories and software distribution. CWI cryptanalyst Marc Stevens says: “Many applications still use SHA-1, although it was officially deprecated by […]
Iraqi fighter jets struck Isis positions in neighbouring Syria on Friday, in what officials said was retaliation for a spate of car bomb attacks in the capital Baghdad. The air strikes coincided with Iraq’s ground forces pushing deeper into the western half of Mosul and reaching the first residential districts. Iraq’s second city, a critical Isis stronghold split by the Tigris river, is divided between government forces […]
Photo Christian families who had left El Arish, in northern Sinai, arriving at a church in Ismailia, Egypt. Credit Ahmed Aboulenein/Reuters CAIRO — Dozens of Egyptian Christian families fled their homes in the northern Sinai Peninsula on Friday, driven by a targeted campaign of Islamist violence that has killed at least seven people in recent weeks. People flooded into a church compound in the city of Ismailia, […]
Two years after Donald Trump was booed at an influential conservative event, the US president returned to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday for a victory lap. But his rambling address, at an event that was more campaign rally than detailed presentation of policy, struck a jarring note at the end of a week that saw a semblance of orthodoxy from the new administration. While his […]
