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Middle East

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 […]

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 […]

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By Andrew Osborn | MOSCOW MOSCOW The Kremlin says U.S. intelligence agency allegations it ran an influence campaign to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House are false. But if U.S. spies are right, Moscow may wish it hadn’t bothered to meddle in the first place. The belief, widely held in the West, that the Kremlin helped discredit Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by orchestrating embarrassing media […]

Sonos has promoted former BlackBerry manager Patrick Spence to take over as chief executive from founder John MacFarlane, after the rise of streaming music services propelled the wireless speaker maker to further growth last year. The change comes as 15-year-old Sonos repositions itself to take advantage of a new wave of voice-controlled “virtual assistants” such as Amazon’s Alexa and connected-home technologies. Mr Spence joined the California-based company […]

Posada made his first professional stop in Oneonta, N.Y., in the shadow of Cooperstown, in 1991. He had been drafted as a middle infielder the previous summer, in the 24th round, from Calhoun Community College in Alabama. The Oneonta manager, Jack Gillis, thought he profiled better as a catcher. Continue reading the main story “The first practice day, we were working in the bullpen on catching,” said […]

By Christine Kim and Se Young Lee | SEOUL SEOUL A U.S. bribery case against two relatives has cast a pall over former United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon’s planned return this week to South Korea, where he is expected to launch a bid to run for president. Ban, 72, has not declared his candidacy but has had a team of people laying groundwork in Seoul ahead of […]

Gamers who are looking forward to the Nintendo Switch will finally know all the details on the upcoming hybrid console on Jan. 12, through a presentation by Nintendo that will be livestreamed for the whole world to watch. In advance of the official presentation, the rumor mill has been busy churning out reports and leaks for the Nintendo Switch, including the lineup of games available upon the hybrid […]

Norway will today become the first country in the world to begin switching off FM radio and moving fully to digital in a move that has stoked controversy nationally and widespread interest abroad. The switch-off will start in the town of Bodo, northern Norway, at 11.11am and will be rolled out across the country throughout this year. Countries such as the UK, Switzerland and Denmark will be monitoring […]

Photo James E. Cartwright, a retired Marine general, arriving at Federal District Court in Washington in October. Credit Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press PWASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors asked a judge on Tuesday to sentence James E. Cartwright, a retired Marine Corps general and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to two years in prison for lying to F.B.I. agents about his discussions with reporters about […]

BAGHDAD: Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi said on Tuesday relations with northern neighbor Turkey could “not move forward one step” without a withdrawal of Turkish forces from a camp in northern Iraq, state television reported.Turkish forces have been stationed at Bashiqa camp near Mosul since before the start of an offensive against Daesh. Meanwhile, Iraqi forces pushed Daesh back further in Mosul on Tuesday in a renewed […]

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, […]

Jan. 10, 2017 DUBAI, United Arab Emirates– (BUSINESS WIRE/ME NewsWire)  GMO GlobalSign K.K., a leading provider of trusted identity and security solutions and one of the longest established Certificate Authorities in the world, today announced the inauguration of its new office in Dubai. The local entity, GMO GlobalSign FZ-LLC, based in Dubai Internet City, is strategically located to cater to further strengthen GlobalSign’s presence in Asia, particularly […]

SEOUL Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is unaware of the circumstances surrounding bribery charges laid by U.S. prosecutors against two of his relatives, Ban’s spokesman Lee Do-woon told reporters on Wednesday. Ban’s brother and nephew have been indicted on U.S. charges that they engaged in a scheme to bribe a Middle Eastern official in connection with the attempted $800 million sale of a building complex in Vietnam. […]

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 […]

Uber’s policy chief David Plouffe is leaving the company to join the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropic group led by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, at a time when Uber’s policy battles around the world continue to heat up. Mr Plouffe, who served as President Barack Obama’s campaign manager in 2008, joined Uber in 2014 and saw the company through some of its fiercest political […]

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, […]

Tuesday, January 10th  2017  DUBAI, UAE: Major infrastructure projects in the Middle East and across Sub-Saharan Africa are increasingly becoming a key investment target for Islamic investors, according to Project & Infrastructure Partner at Jones Day, Nadim Khan. Billions of US dollars’ worth of project capital from the growing Islamic economy is a potential source of investment for the type of mega infrastructure that underpins economic and […]

Sony is sprucing up its console offerings, adding a new color option for its PlayStation 4 Slim: Glacier White. Finding a PS4 console in another color option besides the traditional black avatar is not easy to come by, as other options are as rare as the legendary Pokémon. Nevertheless, PS4 fans are now in luck as the company just announced a Glacier White PS4 Slim is set […]

Since the start of the 21st century the South American nation of Suriname, population 540,000, has been riding a commodity boom that yielded major benefits for a country rich in bauxite, gold, oil and bananas. From 2000 to 2014, annual per capita income more than quintupled to almost $10,000. Child mortality fell by a third. A child born there today can expect to live to 70, up […]

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