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Middle East

A newly recognized primate that lives in eastern Myanmar and southwestern China has been named after Star Wars‘ Luke Skywalker. Jedi Name The scientists who discovered the animal decided to choose the name Skywalker hoolock gibbon not just because of their love for Jedis and the make-believe world created by George Lucas. The scientific name of the Skywalker hoolock is hoolock tianxing. In Chinese, tianxing translates to “Heaven’s […]

The seven candidates for France’s centre-left presidential nomination showed their profound differences on the economy and the EU on Thursday night even as they scramble to pull together a fractured Socialist party ahead of a widely expected crushing defeat in the spring. A little more than a week before the first round of primary elections, the presidential hopefuls quarrelled on primetime television over the legacy of 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 […]

The US Department of Justice inspector general said on Thursday that he is investigating actions taken by DoJ and FBI officials, including FBI director James Comey, during the 2016 presidential election.  The surprise probe was launched in response to calls from Congress and members of the public, who have questioned whether Mr Comey’s statements in the final weeks of the campaign were politically motivated, according to a […]

By Patrick Rucker and James Oliphant | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. Senate Democrats on Thursday pressed Ben Carson, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead housing policy, on potential conflicts of interest between the agency he is set to run and properties in which the president-elect may hold a financial stake. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) hands out billions of dollars each year to developers and landlords. […]

Dubai, UAE, 12 January 2017 10x Genomics, Inc., a company focused on expanding genomics applications including single-cell research, has signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Alliance Global FZ LLC to bring the Chromium™ System and solutions for genome, exome and single cell analysis to the Middle East and African (MEA) markets.  10x Genomics recently launched the Chromium Single Cell Controller which is a massively scalable tool for […]

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 […]

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Vladimir Putin is trying to break the north Atlantic alliance and his policies represent one of the key threats to the global order that has prevailed since the second world war, James Mattis, the retired general nominated to be secretary of defence, has told a Senate committee. In testimony that struck a notably harder line on Russia than that of Donald Trump, Mr Mattis said the US […]

The evolution of human language has been unscripted in our history. With time, we have taken our spoken words which have great significance for granted. Although the construction of language was undocumented, the evolution of human speech can be easily traced through our related and living non-human primates. A recent study conducted by Louis-Jean Boë of Grenoble Alpes University, France, and colleagues, published on Jan.11, 2017 concluded […]

Car sales in China are forecast to slow sharply this year as stimulus measures designed to boost demand are set to end. Sales are expected to increase 5 per cent in 2017, a significant drop from growth of 13.7 per cent last year, which was the fastest rate since 2013 despite a broader economic slowdown. Growth in 2016 exceeded expectations due to tax incentives on smaller vehicles, […]

JERUSALEM Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said talks to discuss the Middle East peace process in Paris on Sunday would be “rigged” against Israel, which has announced it would not participate. “It’s a rigged conference, rigged by the Palestinians with French auspices to adopt additional anti-Israel stances. This pushes peace backwards,” Netanyahu said in public remarks on Thursday. “It’s not going to obligate us. It’s a relic […]

Having publicly trashed the US economy’s performance during the presidential campaign, Donald Trump has become its most prominent cheerleader. The president-elect has in recent weeks claimed credit for surging consumer confidence, stellar equity prices and stronger end-of-year household spending, arguing there was “no hope” before he arrived on the scene. To Barack Obama’s supporters, claims from Mr Trump that the US was cloaked in economic gloom before […]

Saudi Arabia, 12 Jan, 2017  One of Saudi’s leading travel agencies, Mosaid Travel and Tourism Services, has renewed its ten-year exclusive relationship with global travel technology provider, Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ: SABR), to support its vision to expand regionally, provide more personalised travel experiences and improve customer satisfaction. “The travel industry is fast-evolving with new trends and rapidly-changing traveller expectations,” said Nadir Kazalbash, General Manager, Mosaid Travel and […]

Rex Tillerson has set the stage for a major diplomatic clash between Washington and Beijing after the nominee for US secretary of state said China should not be allowed to access islands it has built in the South China Sea. At his confirmation hearing before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, Mr Tillerson said China’s construction of artificial islands in the contested sea was “akin […]

JEDDAH/KANDAHAR: The killing of five diplomats from the UAE in a bombing in southern Afghanistan marks the deadliest attack ever for the young nation’s diplomatic corps, though it’s too soon to tell who was behind it or if the Gulf envoys were even the targets.The UAE said it would fly the nation’s flag at half-staff for three days in honor of the dead from the attack Tuesday […]

|By Saifur Rahman| US President-Elect Donald Trump said he’s rejected a Dh7.3 billion (US$2 billion) deal with Damac Properties at a press conference on Wednesday, just nine days before his inauguration as the 45th President of the United States. “Over the weekend, I was offered $2 billion to do a deal in Dubai with a very, very, very amazing man ‑ my friend Hussain [Sajwani] ‑ a […]

Top US lawmakers are challenging Wells Fargo to explain a recent rise in overdraft charges, signalling a new regulatory battle for the bank still reeling from a fake accounts scandal. On Wednesday a group of Democrats on the Senate banking committee wrote a letter to Tim Sloan, the bank’s chairman and chief executive, asking him to explain whether the bank’s recent surge in income from overdraft charges […]

Photo Israeli soldiers in an exercise with laser-equipped rifles and an interactive screen at the Camp Tsur training base in southern Israel last year. Credit Amir Cohen/Reuters TEL AVIV — It usually started with a bit of cyberflirting. A direct message was sent through Facebook or another social network from an unknown woman to an Israeli soldier’s smartphone. Then, according to Israeli military officials, it developed into […]

ABU DHABI // The relationship between the UAE and Afghanistan goes back for more than a decade, with the Emirates involved in the country’s military stabilisation since the collapse of the Taliban regime. Since 2003, it has had an effective presence in Afghanistan, ensuring stability as the country continues to suffer attacks from Taliban militants, and delivering aid while helping it to rebuild. “Afghans appreciated UAE officers […]

Volkswagen will plead guilty to three felonies and pay $4.3bn in penalties to settle a US Department of Justice investigation into the diesel emissions scandal that has engulfed the German carmaker for the past 15 months.  Six VW executives based in Germany have also been indicted in connection with the case, including Oliver Schmidt who was arrested in the US on Monday, said Loretta Lynch, US attorney-general. “For years, […]

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 […]

|ARABIAN POST SPECIAL| Abu Dhabi’s much-fancied plan to set up the first SeaWorld marine life park outside the US on the Yas Island has run into a controversy, with the animal cause organisation PETA shooting off a letter of appeal to Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority to scrap the project. The theme park is set to be run by Miral Asset Management, which is the development […]

|By Arabian Post Staff| Although smartphone sales growth rate is slowing down worldwide, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is witnessing an increase in sales. Smartphone shipment to the MENA region reached 171.2 million in 2016, up from 157.5 million, according to Statista.com – a global portal of statistics that collects information from 18,000 sources. This also means that the Middle East mobile market is […]

Turkey’s lira cemented its reputation as the most fragile of emerging market currencies on Wednesday, falling 4 per cent against the dollar to a fresh record low after the country’s current account deficit took a turn for the worse. Turkey’s currency has plunged 11.5 per cent so far this year and depreciated nearly 30 per cent in the last three months. The lira’s travails eclipse the South […]

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