By Mathieu Rosemain and Andrew Callus | PARIS PARIS Centrist French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron extended his lead in the polls over his far-right rival Marine Le Pen on Friday, the final day of a tumultuous election campaign that has turned the country’s politics upside down. The election is seen as the most important in France for decades with two diametrically opposed views of Europe and France’s […]
By Tife Owolabi | YENAGOA, Nigeria YENAGOA, Nigeria At least six Nigerian soldiers have been killed in new military campaign against militants in the country’s restive Niger Delta oil hub, security officials said on Friday. The southern swampland has been largely quiet since the start of the year because militants halted attacks against oil pipelines to give the government a chance to conduct peace talks. But in […]
05 May 2017 Roads & Transport Authority – Nashwan Atta’ee: RTA’s Customers Council has opened a direct discussion with the public via Twitter under the theme (Chat with RTA). The session saw huge interaction of people from all occupations and nationalities. Over two hours tweeters rolled out suggestions, observations and ideas about various services offered by the RTA in the field of taxis; which was the focal […]
BANGKOK Thai police found 35 migrants from Myanmar abandoned and wandering in a southern forest on Friday, raising fears that smuggling and trafficking routes are flourishing despite a crackdown by authorities. The 28 men and seven women were discovered by villagers in Tha Sala district in Nakorn Si Thammarat province, police said. They were on their way to Malaysia and had no identification cards on them. “They […]
ANKARA A Turkish court on Friday rejected an appeal by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia against a government decision to block access to its website, the state-run Anadolu news agency said, a case that has heightened concerns about censorship in Turkey. An Ankara court rejected the appeal from the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, Anadolu said. It quoted the court as saying that while freedom of speech was […]
By James Pearson and Ju-min Park | SEOUL SEOUL In February 2016, Yoo Chang-geun and around 120 other South Korean businessmen frantically pulled their staff out of the Kaesong Industrial Zone, jointly run with North Korea. Seoul had ordered it closed after Pyongyang defied international warnings and tested a long-range rocket. Now, with South Koreans in next week’s presidential election almost certain to elect liberal Moon Jae-in, […]
(Image: file photo) The UK government is planning to push greater surveillance powers that would force internet providers to monitor communications in near-realtime and install backdoor equipment to break encryption, according to a leaked document. A draft of the proposed new surveillance powers, leaked on Thursday, is part of a “targeted consultation” into the Investigatory Powers Act, brought into law last year, which critics called the “most […]
KUALA LUMPUR Malaysian police said on Friday a third Turkish national has been detained, suspected of threatening national security, after two were held earlier this week. The detentions come amid concerns raised by U.S.-based Human Rights Watch that Turks in Malaysia are being held due to pressure from Ankara. Turgay Karaman, the head of an international school, and Ihsan Aslan, a businessman, were arrested on Tuesday. Ismet […]
When NPR’s David Folkenflik was growing up in the Southern California town of Laguna Beach, he would occasionally visit an enormous newsstand where readers could find almost anything they wanted to read. The Economist was next to Time. The surfer magazines were next to the tattoo magazines. The fake or dubious news — the National Enquirers of the world — were also in their own slots, somewhere in the […]
By Saikat Chatterjee | HONG KONG HONG KONG Asian stocks declined for a third consecutive day on Friday as fresh falls in commodities raised concerns about the health of the global economy, though the euro bucked the broad weakness on receding concerns about France’s presidential election. Chinese stocks led regional losers, falling to a three-month low as concerns about tighter financial regulations weighed on banking shares while […]
BEIJING China has ordered private think tanks to register with the authorities, who will also keep tabs on research activity, under new rules published by state media, the ruling Communist Party’s latest move to stamp its authority on intellectual bodies. President Xi Jinping has overseen a drive to place the party back at the centre of China’s media, academia and charities, while cracking down on civil society […]
Photo Gholamali Khoshroo, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, speaking at a U.N. Security Council meeting in February. Credit Mark Lennihan/Associated Press Iran responded angrily on Thursday to criticisms by Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, accusing him of acts that violate the United Nations Charter and calling his kingdom an instigator of “dangerous ambitions in the region and beyond.” The Iranian response came in a formal protest letter […]
Throw them into the bay, or throw them into jail? Those were two possible replies to a poll set up by a user on Twitter. He wanted to know how to deal with “treacherous journalists” – the journalists in question were reporters working for the Panamanian daily newspaper La Prensa. The paper’s newsroom lies just 7.2 miles away from the offices of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm […]
MEXICO CITY The number of homicides in El Salvador slumped by 52.5 percent in the first four months of 2017 compared to the same period last year, officials said on Thursday, crediting new security measures in the violent Central American nation. In the January-April period, 1,133 homicides were reported, compared to 2,387 in the same period in 2016, Security Minister Mauricio Ramírez said. El Salvador, which saw […]
Authored by John Solomon via Circa.com, During his final year in office, President Obama’s team significantly expanded efforts to search National Security Agency intercepts for information about Americans, distributing thousands of intelligence reports across government with the unredacted names of U.S. residents in the midst of a divisive 2016 presidential election. The data, made available this week by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, provides […]
(Image: CNET/CBS Interactive) More than two-dozen popular apps for iPhones and iPads are still leaking sensitive information, such as login details for their services, despite having months to roll out a fix. Earlier this year, Will Strafach set out to see which popular iPhone apps were vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, which allow attackers to intercept data as it’s being passed from a device to a server. Strafach, […]
By Michael Flaherty and Ankit Ajmera Greenlight Capital escalated its battle against General Motors Co (GM.N) on Thursday, posting credit ratings documents that it said the automaker inappropriately changed to undermine the hedge fund’s proposal to create two classes of GM stock. Greenlight, which owns 3.6 percent of GM shares, has said its dual share plan would boost GM’s value by creating a dividend class and a […]
BOSTON President Donald Trump’s executive order on Thursday making it easier for churches to dabble in politics kept faith with his promise to evangelical Christians who helped him win the White House, but could end up benefiting his opponents as well. Leaders of the U.S. religious left, a rising force of opposition to Trump’s hard-line stance on immigration and healthcare, said they were poised to benefit from […]
We’ve known for years that a key protocol that allows global cellular networks to communicate with each other had vulnerabilities — and nobody really took it that seriously. Hackers and politicians alike have been warning for years that these flaws in the calling and text message routing system, known as Signaling System 7 (SS7), can be used to intercept and redirect calls and text messages, allowing hackers […]
May 4, 2017 by: Katrina Manson in New York Donald Trump will visit Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Vatican on his first foreign trip as US president in an effort to unite a coalition against Islamist terrorism and Iran and extract more from traditional allies. The travel plans mark a departure from US foreign policy norms, which usually see new presidents visit neighbouring Canada or Mexico within a month of taking office. […]
By David Brunnstrom | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met Southeast Asian foreign ministers on Thursday to seek their support in pressing North Korea to give up its nuclear and missile programs. Tillerson’s first meeting with all members of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations will also address another pressing regional issue – China’s assertive pursuit of territory in the South China Sea, […]
(Image: file photo) Last month, several competing students from universities across the US descended upon San Antonio for the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC). CCDC, which originated in 2005, is a defensive security competition that puts students in a real-world commercial IT environment and tests their ability to defend, detect, and respond to outside threats, including maintain availability of existing services like mail servers and web […]
Authored by 720Global’s Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, “History has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums” – Alan Greenspan The ability to see beyond the observable and the probable is the most important and under-appreciated characteristic of successful investors. For example, visualize a single domino standing upright. With this limited perspective, one can establish what the domino is doing in the […]
ATHENS A Greek court on Thursday blocked a second extradition request by Turkey for the final two soldiers among a group of eight who fled to Greece following a failed coup attempt last year, drawing an angry rebuke from Ankara. The drawn-out case has highlighted often strained relations between Greece and Turkey, NATO allies which remain at odds over issues from territorial disputes to ethnically-split Cyprus. Turkey […]
