Angela Merkel is to call on Germany to withstand the test of Islamist terrorism by countering the militants’ “hatred” with “humanity” and “unity,” days after the truck attack on a Christmas market. In her New Year’s address, the chancellor will condemn the Berlin attack in which 12 people were killed. It is believed to have been carried out by Anis Amri, a Tunisian who was killed in […]
The events of the past few days have renewed a longstanding debate over whether American Jews must always stand with the Israeli government, and under what circumstances should they criticize a friend. Continue reading the main story “There’s a very clear values clash going on,” said Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the executive director of T’ruah, a rabbinical human rights organization. “On the one hand, we have a small […]
A year ago the coffers at Argentina’s central bank were empty as the country teetered on the brink of a currency crisis. Now banks are scrambling to fly dollars back to the US as their vaults fill to bursting with piles of cash. That would sound like good news for Alfonso Prat-Gay, who as finance minister this week boasted that his tax amnesty had already repatriated $90bn hidden […]
BERLIN Martin Schulz, the European Parliament president who is returning to German politics, does not expect to run as the Social Democrats’ (SPD) candidate for chancellor next year, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Friday. Schulz’s decision not to run, if confirmed, would likely clear the way for SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel to be the party’s candidate to challenge conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bid for a fourth term […]
The two-state solution would establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel — two states for two peoples. In theory, this would win Israel security and allow it to retain a Jewish demographic majority (letting the country remain Jewish and democratic) while granting the Palestinians a state. Continue reading the main story Most governments and world bodies have set achievement of the two-state solution as official policy, including […]
By Erik Kirschbaum | BERLIN BERLIN Nearly 55,000 migrants who were not eligible for or were likely to be denied asylum left Germany voluntarily in 2016, up by 20,000 from the number who left of their own volition in 2015, the government said on Wednesday. “That’s a considerable increase from last year,” Interior Ministry spokesman Harald Neymanns told a news conference, saying the 2016 figure had climbed […]
Given the number of people in the city, New Yorkers rarely feel they’re on the same page with each other. The day after Donald Trump was elected United States president, however, they quietly mourned together. The weather, as if set in a Shakespearean drama, reflected the solemn state of the city’s inhabitants. In the days leading up to the election, the weather was perfectly crisp. The annual […]
In 2016 it was all about Panamagate. But by retaining Konrad Mizzi in his executive and Keith Schembri besides him in Castille, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat stubbornly failed to recognise the extent of the public outrage at these revelations Jurgen Balzan 27 December 2016, 7:20am Joseph Muscat stood by his men and by his own admission, he evidently considers himself unable to complete the energy plans without […]
A problem has emerged for France’s anti-immigrant, anti-Euro presidential frontrunner, Marine Le Pen, and it has little to do with being behind in the polls ahead of the 2017 presidential elections, far from it. It has, however, everything to do with something far simpler: money, as the National Front leader is suddenly struggling to raise the €20 million ($21 million) she needs to fund the French presidential […]
By Ju-min Park | SEOUL SEOUL A South Korean ruling party faction announced on Tuesday it would form a new party, and a prominent member of the defectors said they wanted outgoing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the front-runner in some presidential polls, to join them. The 29 lawmakers from President Park Geun-hye’s conservative Saenuri Party were among those who supported a parliamentary motion to impeach Park over […]
The Sunday Times of Malta’s cartoonist Steve Bonello picked this effort as his favourite cartoon of the year. “The Panama Papers had not been published by that date (March 13), but it was what all of Malta was talking about, with the government pedalling hard to shift the focus on its three years of achievements,” Mr Bonello said in explaining his choice. It is indeed a remarkable […]
2016 was chock-full of surprises, both in markets and in politics. As Goldman’s Allison Nathan explains, the year began with a perfect storm of worries that had become all too familiar already in 2015. Oil prices plunged and fears of faltering growth and a sharp depreciation of China’s currency escalated, driving disruptive sell-offs in credit and other risk assets. Confidence in global growth faltered, particularly after an […]
Eileen Eagar was a single mom, working at a steel mill in Chicago. Feeding her two kids sometimes meant going out on a date, ordering the biggest steak on the menu and bringing the leftovers home. When we met her in the fall of 2016, she had married, moved to Arizona and started a career in real estate — the “best darn” realtor in Tucson, her husband […]
Shortly after the Berlin truck terrorism suspect Anis Amri was killed in a shoot out with Milan police, railway tickets found on Amri’s body showed he had traveled from Chambery in south-eastern France to Turin and then on to Milan, according to Italy’s Ansa. Which is strange because while he kept ticket stubs, he had virtually nothing else on him: Milan police said Amri was carrying few […]
By James Pearson | SEOUL SEOUL As hundreds of thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets every weekend for two months to call for President Park Geun-hye to resign, the opposition’s leading contender to replace her appeared reluctant to seize the moment. That is changing as Moon Jae-in, a 63-year-old human rights lawyer who lost the 2012 election to Park by more than a million votes, […]
2016 was fact-checking’s finest year [1]. No it wasn’t, it was the year of “post-truth” [2] — some preferred “post-fact” [3] — and fact-checking is a fool’s errand. The discussion about facts in journalism worldwide has rarely been as fractured and animated as it has been in 2016, so we collected 366 links, one for each day of the year, to try and make sense of what […]
By Steve Scherer | ROME ROME Three days after resigning as Italian prime minister and before his successor took office, Matteo Renzi typed a late-night Facebook post from his family home near Florence that seemed to cast doubt on his future. “I have no seat in parliament, no salary, no pension… I’m starting over,” he wrote. Since stepping down on Dec. 7 after a crushing referendum defeat […]
Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com, On December 9, a panel of 3 judges in the Netherlands convicted Geert Wilders of incitement to discrimination, and also of insulting an ethnic group. Nonetheless, the two most recent polls show Geert Wilders, an anti-Islam, anti-migration politician far ahead of the pack. Wilders Heads Polls A quick check of Opinion Polling for the Dutch General Election, 2017 shows Wilders strongly […]
ABU DHABI // The majority of Emiratis and Arabs identify themselves by their nation state rather than their religion or Arab identity. These were the results of a survey that were revealed at the Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies forum on Monday. This is a major shift from the past decade when many polls suggested that Arabs saw themselves as “being Arab” more than anything else. The […]
By Roberta Rampton and Eric M. Johnson | WASHINGTON/SEATTLE WASHINGTON/SEATTLE At least five Democrats who had been committed to back Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Electoral College cast ballots for other people on Monday, the largest number of “faithless electors” seen in well over a century. The 538 electors were voting across the country to confirm Republican Donald Trump as the next president. The event is normally […]
A last-ditch attempt by Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the struggling Italian bank, to raise up to €5bn in capital was thrown into doubt after the country’s private bank rescue fund expressed “strong reservations” over the terms of a bridge loan that is key to the deal. On Monday, MPS said in a statement that it was “in contact” with Quaestio Capital Management — which manages the […]
David Cameron began 2016 in 10 Downing Street and ended it at DePauw University in a small Indiana town, speaking for a reported £120,000 an hour. The former British prime minister is now paid almost as much for a 60-minute speech as he used to earn in a year, as he tries to make sense of his own historic failure: Brexit. Whatever he says now, Mr Cameron’s […]
Venezuelans are bracing for Christmas without cash after the country’s highest denomination banknote was withdrawn from circulation with new larger bills not due until January, as many fear that the country is spiralling towards hyperinflation. Embattled President Nicolás Maduro this week announced plans to scrap the ubiquitous 100 bolívar bill, which makes up about half the country’s banknotes but is increasingly worthless as annual inflation is forecast […]
MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte predicted Saturday night that neophyte senator and boxing champion Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao would become president and even gave him an advice in the event that he occupies Malacañan. In a freewheeling speech delivered during Pacquiao’s 38th birthday celebration in General Santos, Duterte referred to the senator as “president-to-be.” “I asked permission from President-to-be Manny Pacquiao. Ako, nagbitaw na ako ng […]
