UK taxpayers are facing a £24bn bill for decommissioning oil and gasfields in the North Sea — threatening to wipe out remaining tax revenues from an industry that has been among the Treasury’s most reliable cash cows for the past four decades. The new estimates show how the North Sea oil industry risks becoming a net drain on UK resources as it enters its sunset years and […]
By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin | DUBAI DUBAI Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani died on Sunday at the age of 82, state media reported, a big blow to moderates and reformists deprived now of their most influential supporter in the Islamic establishment. “Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani was taken to hospital after heart attack and more than an hour long efforts by doctors to revive him were not successful,” the […]
Yet many Western analysts believed that he sought a less confrontational relationship with the United States than other powerful figures in the Iranian hierarchy, for whom hostility toward Washington was a touchstone of ideological purity. Continue reading the main story Mr. Rafsanjani, for instance, was credited with suggesting that “Death to America” be dropped from the litany of slogans at Tehran’s Friday prayers, a weekly moment of […]
One of the more cherished bits of jargon used in finance is an idea that cash may sit on the sidelines, as if piles of notes are substitute players ready to dive into the great game of markets. Investors are still sitting on large piles of cash, holding nearly 5 per cent of their portfolios in spare liquidity in December, according to data from BofA Merrill Lynch. […]
The iPhone 7 – 10 years after the release of the first iPhone, Apple is under pressure to come up with a new wonder The smartphone continues to change the world a decade after the debut of the iPhone, even as Apple is under pressure to come up with a new wonder. The iPhone—introduced by late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007—set the stage for […]
MADRID Spain sees just a slim chance of joint sovereignty over Gibraltar if Britain opposes it, its foreign minister said in an interview with the leading Spanish newspaper El Pais. “I think you have to be realistic, if the United Kingdom does not want to negotiate it will be difficult to carry it forward,” Alfonso Dasits, said in his first interview with a Spanish newspaper since he […]
By Jack Kim and Tony Munroe | SEOUL SEOUL North Korea said on Sunday it can test launch an intercontinental ballistic missile at any time from any location set by leader Kim Jong Un, saying the United States’ hostile policy was to blame for its arms development. Kim said on Jan. 1 that his nuclear-capable country was close to test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). (Full Story) […]
The human body is a very complex system of organs that work together for the survival of the human being. Sometimes, though, it can play strange little tricks on humans just to show what it is capable of. Such is the case of a 16-year-old girl in Japan who underwent an emergency appendectomy for her acute appendicitis. However, during the said operation, doctors noticed a large growth […]
All of the podcasts below are easily acquired by clicking ‘subscribe’ on iTunes or on Stitcher or any other podcast-delivery platform. New episodes are automatically downloaded, ready for listening Revisionist History With the tagline “because sometimes the past deserves a second chance”, author Malcolm Gladwell visits moments and episodes from history, looking at stories or ideas that might have been misunderstood or overlooked – there’s always a […]
A year ago Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince and the power behind the throne, electrified the global energy industry by revealing plans to float the world’s largest oil producer. The ambitious proposal for an initial public offering in state-owned Saudi Aramco is the centrepiece of the hard-charging 31-year-old’s vision to overhaul an economy seen as too heavily dependent on natural resources. One year on […]
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth made her first public appearance since before Christmas on Sunday as she recovered from a heavy cold that caused the 90-year-old monarch to miss Christmas and New Year church services. The queen, wearing a vibrant blue coat and hat, arrived with her husband Prince Philip, 95, at St Mary Magdalene church in Sandringham in eastern England, where she traditionally spends the festive period on […]
Here are the big questions for investors ahead of the coming trading week. What impact will Donald Trump’s press conference have on markets? “I will be having a general news conference on JANUARY ELEVENTH in N.Y.C. Thank you.” That was how the president-elect last week [3] tweeted news of what is surely the first big market-moving event of the year — if it takes place. Mr Trump […]
Along with most of his Wall Street peers, BofA’s Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett flipped his outlook on risk assets shortly after the election, turning from quietly bearish to vocally bullish and forecasting a substantial rise in US equities, and even more substantial bounce for Japanese, European and UK stocks as well as oil. So far, Hartnett has been correct, and according to recent fund flows, much […]
By Brad Brooks | SAO PAULO SAO PAULO A new prison uprising in Brazil early on Sunday left four dead, adding to the chaos in Brazil’s penitentiary system that has left almost 100 inmates killed in the past week in a gang war. The latest violence took place at the Desembargador Raimundo Vidal Pessoa jail in the center of the jungle city of Manaus, according to an […]
BERLIN A people smuggler left 19 migrants, including five children, at a motorway parking area in freezing temperatures in southern Germany and fled the scene, police said on Sunday. Police said the temperature was -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday when they found the migrants, one of whom had approached two other people at the parking area to raise the alarm after their driver left […]
A predicted collision of two stars may just give us a spectacular show in the year 2022. A thorough observation that began in 2013 led Larry Molnar, a Calvin College Professor, along with his students and his colleagues Karen Kinemuchi and Henry Kobulnicky to predict that a binary star is most likely going to collide and explode into a red nova in 2022, give or take a […]
In October 1938, the one-hour adaptation of H G Wells’s The War of the Worlds, directed by Orson Welles, was broadcast on CBS Radio in the United States. A story of aliens invading rural New Jersey rendered as news broadcasts and authentic-sounding updates, it was a little too convincing. There are legends of panic in the streets, mass hysteria and heart attacks. That may have been the […]
Photo A Marine patrol in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in 2011. A new deployment of Marines will replace an Army unit stationed there. Credit Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images KABUL, Afghanistan — Approximately 300 United States Marines will return this spring to help fight a resurgent Taliban in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, the site of a yearslong bloody campaign, American officials in Afghanistan said on […]
JERUSALEM A truck driven by a Palestinian rammed into pedestrians on a popular promenade in Jerusalem on Sunday killing four people, according to Israeli police who called it a deliberate attack. “It is a terrorist attack, a ramming attack,” a police spokeswoman said on Israel Radio. Police said the dead, three women and one man, were all in their twenties. An Israeli bus driver who witnessed the […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. Even when it comes to brutality, little is left to the media imagination these days. The latest example of the decline in consensus about the acceptable involves the Facebook video of a mentally disabled Chicago man who was attacked and […]
How’s your weekend going? Redditor, Law School Graduate, and nimble navigator William Craddick (/u/PleadingtheYiff / brand new Twitter handle @williamcraddick) has made quite the name for himself on Reddit’s “The_Donald” forum. In just three short months, Craddick has managed to rack up over 153,000 “post karma” and 48k “comment karma,” which (if you’re not familiar) is impressive. The guy is an incredibly effective dot-connector, perhaps owing it to his legal training – often posting lengthy reads that […]
Uncover some of the cool new features hidden in iOS 10. It’s been nearly 10 years since I camped out in the rain to purchase the original Apple iPhone. We’ve seen the iPhone go from a MP3 player feature phone to a full blown handheld computer that is finding its way throughout the enterprise market. At my engineering consulting firm, we have a BYOD policy with IT […]
Sources within the Office of the Prime Minister speaking to The Malta Independent on Sunday have indicated that the audit commissioned into the financial affairs of Minister Konrad Mizzi will be published next month to coincide with a fact-finding mission to Malta by the European Parliament’s Panama Papers committee. The committee, named the PANA Committee, is due to visit Malta on 20 February. The […]
By Alex Dobuzinskis SeaWorld in San Diego will host its last killer whale performance on Sunday, the culmination of its promise to phase out the decades-old show after criticism of its treatment of the captive marine mammals. SeaWorld Entertainment Inc President and Chief Executive Officer Joel Manby said in 2015 that the company would replace its signature theatrical killer whale show at the San Diego park with […]
