DUBAI Five Emirati humanitarian workers were killed in a bomb attack in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) official news agency reported on Wednesday. The five were killed on Tuesday while engaged in humanitarian, educational and development work, state news agency WAM reported, adding President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan had ordered flags flown at half mast for three days in mourning. […]
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 […]
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 […]
BuzzFeed on Tuesday published a 35-page dossier that summarized damaging allegations about President-elect Donald Trump’s personal and financial dealings. By publishing the entire dossier, which has not been disclosed publicly by U.S. intelligence agencies, BuzzFeed has taken an unusual step. It’s uncommon for public-spirited news organizations to publish explosive, unverified information about public officials without first confirming the details independently. Complicating the situation is the origin of […]
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 […]
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 […]
BRAZZAVILLE A former opposition leader in Republic of Congo was arrested on Tuesday for arms possession after months in hiding, police said. Okombi Salissa, who lost last year’s election to President Denis Sassou Nguesso, but accused the longtime leader of rigging the poll, had an arrest warrant out against him since December for holding weapons. “This arrest was made without violence. It is part of an investigation […]
The list grows longer. The names sometimes come via police posts like Police Station 3, and Sagpang described how he compiled them. “A confidential informant came, to say drugs are very prevalent in such-and-such area,” he told me. “We have to dig deeper. We deploy detectives and intelligence operatives” to verify that “Mr. So-and-So is fiddling drugs in the community.” In other words, the police counted on […]
(Image: Tesla) The mystery over where programming language aficionado Chris Lattner would be heading after his stint at Apple lasted mere hours, with Tesla announcing his recruitment. Lattner will serve as Tesla’s vice president of Autopilot Software, taking the reins from Jinnah Hosein, who had been serving as software vice president for SpaceX as well as looking after Autopilot on an interim basis. “Chris’ reputation for engineering […]
By Jeff Mason | CHICAGO CHICAGO President Barack Obama will give a farewell speech to the nation on Tuesday night, looking back at his legacy as he encourages supporters demoralized by the election of Republican Donald Trump to feel optimism about the future of the country. The Democratic president is feeling some nostalgia as he prepares to leave the White House on Jan. 20 after eight years […]
In a dramatic example of blowback against the establishment in the post-Trumpian world, Hungary announced it plans to crack down on non-governmental organizations linked to billionaire George Soros now that Donald Trump will occupy the White House, according to the deputy head of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s party, cited by Bloomberg. The European Union member, and native country of Soros, will use “all the tools at its […]
By Lisa Lambert and Emily Stephenson | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday put renewed pressure on congressional Republicans working to repeal Obamacare, insisting that lawmakers pass a replacement for the healthcare law at the same time or soon after they vote to dismantle it. In an interview with the New York Times, Trump said he wanted a substitute for President Barack Obama’s healthcare law […]
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 […]
By Shadia Nasralla | VIENNA VIENNA Iran decided not to escalate a stand-off over the extension of U.S. sanctions at a meeting of diplomats overseeing the nuclear deal it reached with world powers in 2015, senior Russian and Iranian diplomats said after the session on Tuesday. Tehran threatened last month to retaliate against a U.S. Senate vote to extend the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA), saying it violated […]
The UAE will spend AED600 billion ($163.3 billion) over the next three decades in developing the country’s energy market, with a plan for clean energy to power 50 percent of the sector by 2050. The first unified energy strategy for the UAE has been announced which aims to balance economic needs and environmental goals. In a series of tweets on the official Dubai Media Office feed, it […]
By Julia Edwards Ainsley | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Donald Trump’s candidate for attorney general on Tuesday said he opposed banning Muslims from entering the United States and, taking a tougher stance than the president-elect, said waterboarding is torture and illegal. Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, the nominee, responded to questions at a Senate confirmation hearing, the first in a series this week for nominees to serve in the Cabinet […]
ABIDJAN Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara has named Amadou Gon Coulibaly, a close political ally, as the West African nation’s new prime minister, the government said on its official Twitter account. Coulibaly had been serving as an adviser to the president, in the role of secretary-general. (Reporting by Joe Bavier; editing by Edward McAllister and Gareth Jones) ‘); $(‘.second-article-divide’).append($(‘.slider.slider-module’)); $(‘.third-article-divide’).append(”); var median = (relatedItemsTotal / 2); var […]
To address criticism from regulators and public policy groups, Microsoft is making some changes in its privacy practices. Of all the body blows Microsoft has absorbed in the past 18 months over Windows 10, the criticisms of its privacy policies have to sting the most. Last summer, the French National Data Protection Commission (CNIL) issued a formal notice against Microsoft, ordering that the company “stop collecting excessive […]
The debate about “fake news” has gripped politics since the election of Donald Trump in November and has entered markets as investors spar over a “great rotation” from bonds into stocks. Long predicted by some analysts, expectations of a pronounced rotation out of low-yielding bonds and defensive share sectors into areas of the equity market that prosper from faster economic growth have been heightened by the prospect […]
For more evidence that central bank intervention in the foreign exchange market is increasingly becoming an exercise in futility – look no further than Mexico. The peso briefly sank to a fresh all time low against the dollar on Tuesday, dropping by as much as 1.1 per cent to MXN 21.6227, as concerns continue to mount over incoming US president Donald Trump’s trade rhetoric towards Mexico, report […]
By Hamid Shalizi | KABUL KABUL A Taliban suicide attack in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday killed more than 30 people and wounded some 70 others, as twin blasts hit a crowded area of the city during the afternoon rush hour. Saleem Rasouli, a senior public health official, said 33 people had been killed and more than 70 wounded on the Darul Aman road, near an […]
As the Jeff Sessions confirmation hearing continues, Trump’s nominee for attorney general said that he would recuse himself from any potential future investigations or probes involving Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while working as secretary of state, as well as any questions about her family’s philanthropic foundation. Responding to senator Chuck Grassley if he could approach issues involving Trump’s presidential challenger impartially and objectively, […]
