Taj El Khayat to bolster development in key markets, with security and cloud to the fore 19 February 2017 Dubai, United Arab Emirates – F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV) has appointed Taj El Khayat as its new director for the Gulf, Levant & North Africa region. Reporting directly to Diego Arrabal, Middle East and Africa VP, F5 Networks, El Khayat will lead a team comprising of salespeople, channel […]
By Feisal Omar | MOGADISHU MOGADISHU A car bomb ripped through a market in Mogadishu on Sunday, killing 39 people and injuring around 50, a local official said, days after Somalia elected a new president. The car was driven by a suicide bomber, said Ahmed Abdulle Afrax, the mayor of Wadajir district where the bombing happened. “We carried 39 dead bodies and there were many others injured,” […]
STOCKHOLM The Swedish embassy in Washington has asked the U.S. State Department for an explanation of a comment made by President Donald Trump that suggested there had been some sort of security incident in Sweden on Friday. The U.S. President was speaking at a political rally in Florida on Saturday when, in connection with the mention of a need to keep the United States safe, he said: […]
Following Trump Chief of Staff Priebus’ comments earlier, it is clear, as Axios notes, President Trump’s biggest problem has quickly become a leaking administration. The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by “intelligence” like candy. Very un-American! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017 Here are The Top 10 Leaks so far… The “National Guard roundup”: The AP published a story […]
Last week, as delegations from the new US administration, Russia, China and the EU gathered at the Munich Security Conference to discuss the strategic challenges facing the international community, a very different international assembly was taking place at the Abu Dhabi headquarters of the UAE’s Ministry of Culture and Knowledge Development. As ministers in Germany prepared to debate matters diplomats define as “hard power” – military and […]
Photo The Iranian city of Ahvaz during a sandstorm on Saturday. Rain has turned the dust there into mud, which caused power stations to stop working. Credit Morteza Jaberian/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images TEHRAN — Days of protests against dust storms, power outages and government mismanagement in one of Iran’s most oil-rich cities subsided on Sunday after security forces declared all demonstrations illegal. Residents of Ahvaz, a […]
SINGAPORE — It is important at this juncture for the United States and China to articulate their overarching foreign policy objectives towards Asia, Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said yesterday. During a panel discussion at the 53rd Munich Security Conference in Germany, Dr Ng said the US’ ability as a military power to continue its presence and influence in the Pacific was “not in doubt”. “But this […]
CAIRO Islamic State published a video on Sunday threatening Egyptian Christians and showing the last statement of a man it said was responsible for the deadly bombing in December of a Coptic cathedral in Cairo. The masked man in battle-dress, whom the group identified as Abu Abdallah al-Masri, is seen encouraging militants all over the world not to give up and promising Islamists jailed in Egypt they […]
By Andy Sullivan and Sarah N. Lynch | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON President Donald Trump’s next pick for national security adviser will have autonomy over staffing and key decisions, the White House said on Sunday as it scrambles to fill the post following the turbulent departure of Michael Flynn. Trump fired Flynn, a retired U.S. Army general, on Monday after it was revealed that he discussed U.S. sanctions against […]
Like others interviewed, Abu Marwan, citing concerns about safety, agreed to speak on the condition that his full name not be published. He and others are identified by honorifics or nicknames. Residents said anyone caught using a cellphone risked being beaten or killed by militants. Continue reading the main story Abu Salah, who lives in the Bab al-Tob neighborhood in western Mosul, said the Islamic State, also […]
MUNICH: Iran’s foreign minister on Sunday stepped up efforts to improve ties with Gulf Arab Sunni states urging them to work with their Shiite rival to address “anxieties” and violence across the region.Iranian President Hassan Rouhani last week traveled to Oman and Kuwait to try improve ties, his first visit to the Gulf states since taking power in 2013.The six Arab members of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), […]
President Trump unveiled an alternate universe Thursday in which virtually every problem of his is the creation of the press. In a rambling, angry and contradictory media meltdown, Trump bashed “the failing New York Times,” The Wall Street Journal, CNN and the BBC, among others, following a fleeting announcement of a new nominee for Labor Secretary. It constituted what at minimum is a quadrupling down — or might […]
Theresa May has ordered her top officials to examine Kraft Heinz’s proposed takeover of Unilever to see if it raises concerns for the wider British economy and merits government intervention. The $143bn takeover approach is a big test for Mrs May’s industrial policy: last year she criticised Kraft’s 2010 takeover of the British chocolate maker Cadbury — the US company reneged on a promise to retain factories […]
By Maher Chmaytelli and Isabel Coles | BAGHDAD/SOUTH OF MOSUL, Iraq BAGHDAD/SOUTH OF MOSUL, Iraq U.S.-backed Iraqi forces on Sunday launched a ground offensive to dislodge Islamic State militants from their remaining stronghold in Mosul, in the western part of the city, and put an end to their ambitions for territorial rule in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the start of the offensive, asking Iraqi […]
MUNICH U.S. Republican senators plan to introduce legislation to impose further sanction on Iran, accusing it of violating U.N. Security Council resolutions by testing ballistic missiles and acting to “destablise” the Middle East, a U.S. senator said Sunday. “I think it it is now time for the Congress to take Iran on directly in terms of what they’ve done outside the nuclear programme,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a […]
Hackers are carrying out surveillance on members of the Israeli military by hacking into their Android phones in order to monitor activity and steal data – potentially including photos and audio recordings – according to security companies. Developed and deployed by currently by a so-far unidentified group, ViperRAT is designed to collect sensitive information from infected devices, with those behind the malware seemingly most interested in images […]
19 February 2017 Manama – (The 13th Annual Middle East Insurance Forum (MEIF 2017), being held in partnership with the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB), is set to commence on 20 February 2017 in the Kingdom of Bahrain with the expected participation of more than 400 high level attendees to explore “Current Challenges and their Implications on the Regional Insurance Industry – The Road Ahead”, the theme of this year’s event. A […]
BAGHDAD A suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt on Sunday in the “My Fair Lady” neighborhood of Mosul that was retaken recently from Islamic State, killing one and wounding nine others, security sources said. A restaurant in the same area was hit on Feb. 10 by a suicide bombing that killed at least 10 people. U.S.-backed forces dislodged Islamic State from the east side of Mosul in […]
In light of the recent flurry of leaks by the so-called “deep state”, which includes such agencies as the NSA and FBI and which last week lead to the resignation of Mike Flynn after a phone recording of his phone conversation with the Russian ambassador was leaked to the WaPo and other anti-Trump publications, an article published on January 12 by the NYT has generated renewed interest. […]
Donald Trump has closed out the first month of his presidency by returning to his raucous campaign style and lashing out at the media as an agenda-bearing component of a corrupt system determined to undermine his time in office. A day after dubbing journalists the “enemy of the American people” at the end of the rockiest week so far of this White House’s short existence the new […]
special feature Harnessing IoT in the Enterprise The tech revolution is spreading to every corner of the earth with the Internet of Things, and it’s enabling data analytics and automation in ways never before imagined in business. Depending on whose numbers turn out to be right, there will be somewhere between 20 and 200 billion “things” connected to the internet by 2020. We all know about the […]
YANGON Two members of Myanmar’s security forces were injured in a clash with militants on the troubled Rakhine State border with Bangladesh, Myanmar state counselor’s office said, casting doubt on the government’s claim that the region had stabilised. The government last week said the situation in northern Rakhine had stabilised and that it had ended a four-month security crackdown on Rohingya Muslims. The security operation had been […]
For populists on both sides of the Atlantic, “expert” is now an expletive, a synonym for out-of-touch elitists swindling the common man. This was perhaps most obvious during the Brexit referendum campaign, when the UK Justice Secretary and “Leave” advocate Michael Gove told a stunned interviewer that “the people of this country have had enough of experts … from organizations with acronyms saying that they know what is best.” Polling indicates […]
By Julia Edwards Ainsley | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The Department of Homeland Security has prepared new guidance for immigration agents aimed at speeding up deportations by denying asylum claims earlier in the process. The new guidelines, contained in a draft memo dated February 17 but not yet sent to field offices, directs agents to only pass applicants who have a good chance of ultimately getting asylum, but does […]
