The Turkish Army and police won, but victory brought an Aleppo-like landscape. Two dozen acres of the old city have been cleared of the rubble so far, leaving a featureless circular gash on aerial maps. The damage is mostly invisible from street level though, because alleyways leading up to the most devastated areas have been walled up where they intersect with streets that have reopened for business. […]
ABU DHABI // Five times a day, Sayed Hameed announces prayers from his mosque in International City. After every call, the muezzin says a silent prayer for his son. His eldest son, 11-year-old Yousef, needs corrective surgery on his right leg, which has been deformed since birth. However, his 35-year-old Afghan father cannot afford to pay Dh60,000 for operation. “Yousef didn’t have any accidents and doesn’t suffer […]
Christian Arbeit, a press officer for the club, joked that the renown of Union Berlin’s Christmas party had overshadowed the fame of the team itself. Mr. Arbeit, who served as the M.C. on Friday night (and also played a few songs on the trumpet in an ensemble that featured his mother on the clarinet and his father on the trombone), said the aim was to retain the […]
By Maher Chmaytelli | BARTELLA, Iraq BARTELLA, Iraq Several hundred Iraqi Christians flocked on Saturday to a northern town recently retaken from Islamic State, celebrating Christmas for the first time since 2013, their joy tainted with sadness over the desecration of their church. Once home to thousands of Assyrian Christians, Bartella emptied in August 2014 when it fell to Islamic State’s blitz across large parts of Iraq […]
ANKARA Turkish authorities are investigating some 10,000 people on suspicion of using social media to support terrorism, the interior ministry said on Saturday, part of a wide crackdown that has alarmed rights groups and some Western allies. Turkey, which faces security threats from Kurdish and leftist militants and Islamic State, has sacked or suspended more than 100,000 people following an attempted military coup in July. It says […]
By Philip Pullella | ROME ROME Security for the long Christmas weekend was heightened throughout Italy and at the Vatican on Saturday following the killing by police of the man believed to be responsible for the Berlin market truck attack. As investigators sought to determine if Anis Amri had accomplices in Italy, and associates of the 24-year-old were arrested in his home country of Tunisia, national security […]
MOSCOW Rosneft’s (ROSN.MM) plans for next year allow it to be flexible with production volumes, Russia’s top oil producer said on Saturday, after Moscow clinched a deal with OPEC to cut production to bolster weak oil prices. State-controlled Rosneft, which accounts for over 40 percent of Russian oil production, said its board has looked into plans for 2017-2018. “The plan is formed on the basis of actual […]
Owners of the Honor 8 smartphone – which debuted to an overwhelming response, raking in 1.5 million unit sales worldwide within a few months of its release – will be pleased to learn that the handset is poised to benefit from the much-awaited Android 7.0 Nougat software update in early 2017. Come February 2017, the 5.2-inch phablet is set to receive a bump-up from Android Marshmallow and get […]
A round up of some of 2016’s most significant corporate events and news stories. Smartphone sales © EPA A bright start to the year for Samsung Electronicswent up in smoke, after it took the unprecedented decision to axe its Galaxy Note 7 line, following a spate of safety issues that saw the smartphone banned from aircraft, writes Nic Fildes. The 2016 Galaxy Note iteration won substantial praise […]
So it would appear. Bit Player Turns Star Shawn Harrington was one of the bit players in “Hoop Dreams.” A sophomore point guard at Marshall who moved from the junior varsity to the varsity during that glorious 1991 tournament run, he had his own star turn a few years later. After bouncing around several colleges — during which time he both got a degree and became a […]
CAIRO Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Saturday that the military’s economic activity accounted for no more than two percent of the country’s output, dismissing suggestions that the military could control as much as half of the economy. Speaking at an event celebrating the expansion of a military-owned company, Sisi said the military made up 1.5-2 percent of economic output which he said was 3-4 trillion […]
ISTANBUL Turkey-backed rebels killed 68 Islamic State militants in clashes in northern Syria overnight, Turkish state media reported the military as saying on Saturday, as intense fighting around the town of al-Bab continued. Syrian rebels supported by Turkish troops have been laying siege to the Islamic State-held town for weeks, as part of the “Euphrates Shield” operation launched by Turkey nearly four months ago to sweep the […]
Qatar Airways has marked its seventh anniversary in Melbourne, Australia, by announcing plans to introduce its superjumbo A380 aircraft from the end of June 2017 to meet rising passenger demand. The 517-seater A380 aircraft will increase Qatar Airways’ current daily capacity by 44 percent on this route to meet the growing travel and trade demand, the airline said in a statement. Qatar Airways Group CEO Akbar Al […]
By Rodrigo Campos | NEW YORK NEW YORK The year-end stocks rally on the heels of the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president was built on expectations of reduced regulations, big tax cuts and a large fiscal stimulus. Now signs are emerging from the Trump camp that harsher trade policies that could jeopardize the honeymoon are likely in the offing, and investors would be well advised […]
AJMAN//An arts and crafts market has proved a big hit with shoppers, with thousands of people picking up handicrafts and homemade food since it opened last month. The weekend Mosaic Market at Al Safia Park was set up to support small businesses and entrepreneurs with about 40 stalls selling everything from organic vegetables to clothes said Shaikha Al Nuaimi, corporate communication manager at the Abdulaziz bin Humaid […]
Getting $45 million in new work In the complaint, the whistleblowers said that when they originally lodged accusations of mismanagement — several years earlier — Bechtel project leaders launched a coordinated lobbying campaign to defend their work and also to collect new revenues for additional work on the waste treatment plant project. It then billed the department for the costs of this lobbying, the complaint said. In January 2010, […]
UNITED NATIONS: In a striking rupture with past practice, the United States allowed the UN Security Council on Friday to condemn Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as a “flagrant violation” of international law. In doing so, the outgoing Obama administration brushed aside Donald Trump’s demands that the US exercise its veto and provided a climax to years of icy relations with Israel’s leadership.The […]
“The boundaries of uncertainty have increased [for fixed-income markets],” says Dan Ivascyn, chief investment officer at Pimco, the bond specialist that invests more than $1.5tn. “Rates certainly can go higher.” What is clear for bond investors is that they face a true test of their convictions in 2017 after an end to 2016 that challenged the consensus of low inflation and rates that, at one point, drove […]
By Aaron Ross | KINSHASA KINSHASA Political parties in Democratic Republic of Congo paused talks on Saturday, close to a deal under which President Joseph Kabila would leave power in 2017 and elections would be held the same year, participants at the talks said. The talks between the ruling coalition and opposition parties mediated by a conference of Catholic bishops broke up at around 5.30 a.m local […]
On April 7, 14 large blue letters quietly disappeared from the outer walls of an office building in an exclusive neighborhood in northern San Salvador. One by one, the letters came down from the blue and beige stucco walls, leaving behind faint traces of the name of the law firm that had been working there just days before: M-O-S-S-A-C-K-F-O-N-S-E-C-A. Employees of the El Salvador branch of Mossack […]
Weakening encryption is against US nation interests, says a congressional working group. Image: iStockphoto Any attempt to weaken encryption is against the national interest, a group of US lawmakers has warned. The widespread use of strong encryption has lead to complaints from law enforcement agencies that they are unable to access to communications of criminals – the so-called ‘going dark’ issue. This has lead to calls for […]
A hundred years ago, an arms race between the dominant global superpower the (British Empire) and a rising power (Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany) culminated in the mass slaughter of World War One. The deep mistrust between the United States and the People’s Republic of China has all the potential to spawn a traumatic chapter in international relations. Despite its “pivot” to Asia, the Obama White House was cautious […]
The chief executive of Lockheed Martin Corp told President-elect Donald Trump on Friday that she was committed to driving down the cost of the company’s F-35 fighter jet, a day after Trump took aim at the cost of the F-35 in a Twitter post. CEO Marillyn Hewson said she spoke with Trump on Friday afternoon and assured him that she had heard his message “loud and clear” […]
That longstanding principle has largely collapsed since the victory by Mr. Trump, who campaigned on a strategy of breaking all the rules and has continued to speak in unmodulated tones. Continue reading the main story “In some ways, Trump is neutering the Obama administration,” said Douglas G. Brinkley, a professor of history and a presidential historian at Rice University in Houston. “They’ve avoided personally attacking each other, […]
