Barack Obama has ended a longstanding US policy that allowed Cuban nationals who reached the US to be eligible automatically for residency, putting a final stamp on his foreign policy legacy. “Effective immediately, Cuban nationals who attempt to enter the United States illegally and do not qualify for humanitarian relief will be subject to removal, consistent with US law and enforcement priorities,” the White House said in […]
Photo About 10,000 Palestinians took to the streets in the Jabaliya refugee center on Thursday. Credit Khalil Hamra/Associated Press JABALIYA, Gaza Strip — The nearly two million residents of Gaza have been suffering through a cold winter of crippling power cuts, receiving electricity for only three or four hours a day. The popular anger over the cuts erupted on Thursday in a large protest. In a rare […]
The proposal — opposed by businesses that make and use the solvent — comes eight years after the European Union approved a ban on sales of methylene chloride paint strippers to consumers and companies, with the exception of businesses using it in industrial sites with protective equipment and other cautionary measures. The chemical is also known as dichloromethane. The would-be rule is the third the EPA has […]
ANKARA: Turkey’s threat to close its strategic southern Incirlik Air Base to US-led international coalition flights seem to have paid off, according to analysts.The US recently announced its decision to provide regular aerial intelligence to support Turkey in its military operation against Daesh around the Syrian town of Al-Bab.Incirlik does not belong to NATO, but is a Turkish base that remains open to the operations of NATO […]
By Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The Obama administration on Thursday announced the repeal of a measure granting automatic residency to virtually every Cuban who arrived in the United States, whether or not they had visas, ending a longstanding exception to U.S. immigration policy. The end of the “wet foot, dry foot” policy, which allowed any Cuban who reached U.S. soil to stay but returned any picked […]
The seven candidates for France’s centre-left presidential nomination showed their profound differences on the economy and the EU on Thursday night even as they scramble to pull together a fractured Socialist party ahead of a widely expected crushing defeat in the spring. A little more than a week before the first round of primary elections, the presidential hopefuls quarrelled on primetime television over the legacy of the […]
By Anna Koper and Andrew Osborn | WARSAW/MOSCOW WARSAW/MOSCOW Poland on Thursday welcomed several thousand U.S. troops along with tanks and heavy equipment under a planned NATO operation to beef up its Eastern European allies, vexing the Kremlin, which said the troops’ presence is a threat to Russia. The largest U.S.military reinforcement of Europe in decades of around 2,700 troops, out of 3,500 planned, arrived as part […]
With just 8 days left until President Trump’s inauguration ceremony in Washington D.C., a massive security force, including 7,500 Guardsmen and 3,000 police officers, is preparing for the worst as the event is expected to attract up to 750,000 protesters, some of whom have vowed to “paralyze the city.” Certainly if the protester presence at the Senate confirmation hearings over the past two days is any indicator […]
President-elect Donald Trump may be at war with the intelligence community, but on Thursday his pick to head the CIA tried to bridge the rift between the incoming president and his spies, saying he accepts the assessment that Russia meddled in the election to boost the Republican’s candidacy. “It’s pretty clear about what took place here, about Russian involvement in efforts to hack information and to have […]
BAMAKO Authorities in Mali have arrested a man believed to be linked to an al Qaeda attack on a beach resort town in neighbouring Ivory Coast that killed 19 people early last year, Malian security officials said on Thursday. Gunmen shot swimmers and sunbathers in the town of Grand Bassam, 40 km (25 miles) from the commercial capital Abidjan, last March before storming into several hotels. The […]
The UAE Ambassador to Afghanistan Juma Al Kaabi arrived in Abu Dhabi aboard a military plane on Thursday to receive further treatment from injuries suffered in a bombing in Kandahar. Mr Al Kaabi was accompanied by another UAE Embassy official and an Afghan translator who were also injured in Tuesday’s attack, which Afghan officials now say was carried out with help from outside the country. The injured […]
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in February. (Image: file photo) Despite pleas from privacy groups to rein in the US government’s surveillance powers before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the Obama administration has done the opposite. The outgoing government will now allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to share raw globally intercepted personal data with the government’s other intelligence agencies. […]
By Patrick Rucker and James Oliphant | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. Senate Democrats on Thursday pressed Ben Carson, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead housing policy, on potential conflicts of interest between the agency he is set to run and properties in which the president-elect may hold a financial stake. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) hands out billions of dollars each year to developers and landlords. […]
By Phil Stewart and Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon put Russia at the top of a list of threats to U.S. interests on Thursday and told Congress that America must be ready to confront Moscow where necessary, even as he backed Trump’s bid for better relations. The remarks by retired Marine General James Mattis were the latest by one of […]
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani leaves Trump Tower in November. (Image: CBSNews.com) Rudy Giuliani has been tapped to “lend expertise” and to advise the Trump administration on cybersecurity. The former New York mayor “will be sharing his expertise and insight as a trusted friend concerning private sector cybersecurity problems and emerging solutions developing in the private sector,” said a brief statement from the incoming Trump administration. […]
By Mehreen Zahra-Malik | ISLAMABAD ISLAMABAD A Pakistani Senate committee is set to debate how to prevent the country’s blasphemy laws being applied unfairly, despite opposition from religious conservatives who support legislation that carries a mandatory death penalty for insulting Islam. Senator Farhatullah Babar told Reuters that the Senate Committee on Human Rights, of which he is a member, will start discussions on blasphemy laws as early […]
Minister says his achievements give him legitimacy to chair European energy council, despite lingering questions over Panama offshore company Konrad Mizzi: “I’ve subjected myself to tax audits and extreme scrutiny by the press, something nobody else has done.” Photo: James Bianchi Panama Papers haunts Konrad Mizzi as Malta takes over EU Presidency Konrad Mizzi, Malta’s de facto minster for energy, has defended his legitimacy to chair the […]
While we learned earlier that John McCain was responsible for handing over the 35-page “dossier” of compromising, if arguably fake, revelations about Trump’s connections to Russia over to the FBI, the identity of the actual creator, who was said to be an ex-British intelligence service, remained a mystery. No longer. Courtesy of the WSJ, we now know his name: the former MI-6 officer, now working for a […]
GENEVA Foreign ministers of Britain, Greece and Turkey were to meet in Geneva on Thursday in an attempt to thrash out a security deal for a post-settlement reunited Cyprus. For the first time in decades, the three countries were to address a 1960 treaty which allows intervention in Cyprus, a pretext used by at least one of them to intervene in the island in the past. Cyprus […]
When the Uber app received a major makeover in November of last year, the ride-sharing service promised that it will be adding a feature to integrate the native calendar app of the smartphones of users. Just a couple of months after, the feature is now being rolled out to Uber customers on iOS devices, offering an easier way to request for rides. Calendar App Integration On Uber Through […]
Thursday 08:40 GMT Overview The dollar, Treasury yields and equities are lower — with pharmaceutical groups in the firing line — as traders question the “Trumpflation trade” following the US president-elect’s fractious press conference on Wednesday. The yen is stronger, signalling waning risk appetite among traders, while gold is back above $1,200, a seven-week high. Hot topic Investors are reassessing the implications of a Trump presidency. Markets […]
Cloudflare received a national security letter (NSL) from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) back in February 2013, its transparency report for 2016 has shown, with the company only now able to report the event after being placed under a gag order. The FBI had been seeking the names, addresses, length of service, electronic communications transactional records, transaction and activity logs, and all email header […]
In Wisconsin, Green Bay officials say the Clinton campaign has yet to pay off bills from events in March, September and November totaling nearly $12,800. Eau Claire, Wisconsin, says Clinton won’t pay a $6,812 from a visit in April. Spokane wants $2,793. Clinton’s campaign committee has enough money to pay its bills, having last month reported carrying a more than $838,000 surplus on its books. It did […]
JEDDAH/KANDAHAR: The killing of five diplomats from the UAE in a bombing in southern Afghanistan marks the deadliest attack ever for the young nation’s diplomatic corps, though it’s too soon to tell who was behind it or if the Gulf envoys were even the targets.The UAE said it would fly the nation’s flag at half-staff for three days in honor of the dead from the attack Tuesday […]
