BEIRUT A Syrian city that is a stated target of a Turkish-backed operation in the north of the country Syria is under the protection of a local, Kurdish-allied militia and the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, the local militia said. The Manbij Military Council says it has controlled the city of Manbij since its capture from Islamic State last year by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) […]
While some provisions in the new order have been relaxed, Mr. Trump and immigration hard-liners in the administration are expected to assert that the new version is no less strict because it retains a temporary ban on refugees. Continue reading the main story The senior administration official said Iraq had been removed from the travel ban after Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson had discussions with the […]
KUALA LUMPUR • Seven men, four of them Yemenis, have been detained in the Klang Valley for suspected links to terror groups. The seven were picked up by the Bukit Aman Special Branch Counter Terrorism Division between Feb 21 and Feb 26 following multiple raids. The suspects are a 41-year-old Malaysian factory technician, a 28-year-old Indonesian farmer, a 37-year-old East Asian man, and the four Yemenis. Inspector-General […]
A Friday session as part of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature presented an undeniably emotional moment – the author and subject on a public stage together for the first time. The latter was Nujeen Mustafa, the Syrian teenager who travelled more than 5,000 kilometres in a wheelchair to escape the civil war ripping apart her homeland. The writer was veteran journalist Christina Lamb, who documented Mustafa’s […]
ANKARA A Syrian pilot whose plane crashed in Turkey on Saturday said in an initial statement to Turkish authorities that his aircraft was shot down on its way to strike rural areas near Idlib, which is in northern Syria, state-run Anadolu agency reported on Sunday. The Syrian airforce pilot who bailed out as his warplane crashed on Turkish territory was found by a Turkish rescue team and […]
The 20th century was a bull market for literacy, freedom, prosperity, health, and technology. As a result of these gains, wealth has increased exponentially, and world poverty is now at all-time lows. Life expectancy continues to improve in most countries, global literacy is near 90%, and there are well over 100 democracies throughout the planet. But, as VisualCapitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, not every positive trend can keep […]
KUALA LUMPUR Malaysia has arrested six foreigners and one Malaysian for suspected links to militant groups including Islamic State, the police chief said on Sunday. The Southeast Asian nation has been on high alert since suicide bombers and gunmen linked to Islamic State launched multiple attacks in Jakarta, the capital of neighbouring Indonesia, in January 2016. A grenade attack on a bar on the outskirts of the […]
ISTANBUL A Syrian air force pilot who bailed out as his warplane crashed on Turkish territory has been found by a Turkish rescue team and is being treated at a hospital in the Hatay region, a hospital spokeswoman said on Sunday. Dogan news agency said the pilot, who crashed his plane on Sunday, had been found around 40 km (25 miles) from the wreckage. He was first […]
Nearly 70 percent of employers in the UAE are planning to hire new staff in the next 12 months, according to the latest Middle East Job Index Survey. Compiled by Bayt.com and YouGov, the survey results showed that within the next three months, more than half of UAE employers (52 percent) said that they are “definitely” or “probably” going to hire. Among UAE companies that plan to […]
By Firas Maqdisi | PALMYRA, Syria PALMYRA, Syria Islamic State militants have severely damaged a major Roman monument in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, an antiquities official said after visiting the site on Saturday. Under heavy Russian air cover, the Syrian army and allied militias drove the jihadist group out of the UNESCO world heritage site on Thursday, two months after it had seized it in […]
Photo American armored forces patrol on Friday near Manbij in northern Syria. Credit Delil Souleiman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images WASHINGTON — The United States has increased its forces near the northern Syrian town of Manbij as concerns have grown that fighting could erupt among the complex array of militias and Syrian and Turkish troops who are operating on the crowded battlefield near there. Photographs of American troops […]
WASHINGTON Twenty-one civilians were killed in nine separate strikes by the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria between November and January, the U.S. military said on Saturday. That brings the total number of civilians unintentionally killed by the coalition since the start of operations against the militant group in 2014 to 220, the military said in a statement. “Although the Coalition takes extraordinary efforts […]
AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan on Saturday executed 10 prisoners with ties to Islamist extremism who had carried out five shootings and a bombing since 2003, a government spokesman said. Among those killed in the attacks were a British tourist, an outspoken Jordanian critic of Islamist extremism and members of the Jordanian security forces. The executions on Saturday were the first since Jordan began a crackdown on Islamist […]
ANKARA Turkey said on Saturday a MiG-23 warplane, probably belonging to the Syrian air force, had crashed on the Syrian side of the border and a search was under way for the pilot who probably bailed out and may have come down on Turkish soil. But a local Turkish governor told Anatolian news agency a rescue team had reached the remains of the plane, which suggested it […]
Singapore will set up a new cybersecurity command centre to combat increasing threats and ensure there are adequate skillsets in cyberdefence. Running 24 by 7, the new facility would encompass four key groups and comprise top-ranking military and armed officers, according to the country’s defence minister Ng Eng Hen. The new Defence Cyber Organisation (DCO) would be manned by some 2,600 soldiers operating within divisions overseeing cybersecurity […]
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. So what have you heard more often: “Fox & Friends” shilling for President Trump or sophisticated people confiding their real reason for reading The New Yorker is the cartoons? Ah, if only Bob Mankoff had long ago negotiated some piece […]
LONDON Britain’s foreign minister Boris Johnson will go to Moscow in the coming weeks to discuss the differences between the two countries over Syria and Ukraine, the Foreign Office said on Saturday, in the first such visit for five years. Britain backed sanctions against Russia in response to its annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the countries have clashed on other issues, including Russia’s support for Syrian […]
GENEVA Syria’s chief negotiator said on Saturday that the “only thing” achieved at 10-day talks in Geneva was an agreed agenda and that the government wanted a unified opposition delegation as its negotiating partner. In his first remarks since talks ended on Friday, Bashar al-Ja’afari, Syria’s ambassador to the UN in New York said that all four subjects in the agreed agenda reached through U.N. mediator Staffan […]
BAGHDAD Twelve people, including women and children, are being treated for possible exposure to chemical weapons agents in Mosul, where Islamic State is fighting off an offensive by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces, the United Nations said on Saturday. The U.N.’s World Health Organization has activated with partners and local health authorities “an emergency response plan to safely treat men, women and children who may be exposed to the […]
Photo Syrians in the rebel-held town of Douma, on the eastern outskirts of the capital, Damascus, last week. Credit Abd Doumany/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The top United Nations diplomat working to resolve the civil war in Syria reported some progress Friday after nearly 10 days of talks, saying both sides finally had agreed on what he described as a “clear agenda” for further negotiations. The diplomat, […]
WASHINGTON President Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin used his first senior staff meeting last month to tell his new aides he would not tolerate leaks to the news media, three sources familiar with the matter said. Current and former officials said that in a departure from past practice, access to a classified computer system at the White House has been tightened by political appointees to prevent […]
GENEVA The Syrian opposition has provisionally accepted 12 principles given to delegates by the United Nations at the end of an eight-day round of peace talks, chief negotiator Nasr al-Hariri said. The general principles on the future of Syria were derived from points set out by U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura last year, Hariri told reporters after the final meeting of the round of U.N.-led talks in […]
BEIRUT// Humanitarian aid has been distributed to more than 1,000 families at a Palestinian refugee camp, by the UAE Embassy in Lebanon. Almost 5,000 people benefited from winter clothing, shoes, woolen blankets and dates provided by the Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation. The aid efforts at Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp, follow directives from Sheikh Khalifa, the President to turn 2017 into the Year of Giving. The […]
GENEVA Syrian peace talks are expected to conclude later on Friday with an “agreed agenda” and a plan to resume negotiations later this month in Geneva, Western diplomats said. It was not immediately clear whether the issue of fighting terrorism would be part of the terms, as sought by the Damascus delegation led by Syrian Ambassador Bashar al-Ja’afari. A third Western diplomat said there had been movement […]
