DAMASCUS: The Syrian regime said on Friday that Israeli missile strikes caused a series of explosions at an air base outside Damascus before dawn.The airport southwest of the capital is a major strategic air base used mainly by Syrian elite Republican Guards and had been a base used to fire rockets at former opposition-held areas in the suburbs of Damascus. State television did not give any further […]
Your daily guide to community and cultural activities across the Emirates for January 14, 2017, including performances, festivals, art exhibitions, film screenings, health and fitness events, talks, classes, workshops and family fun. newslide Sharjah Art workshop Register to take part in the Emirati doll heads workshop at Maraya Art Centre. Using basic doll-making techniques, you can design and make doll heads with traditional headgear. The final product […]
ANKARA Two Chinese nationals of Uighur origin were arrested on Friday for suspected links to the mass shooting in an Istanbul night club on New Year’s Eve, state-run Anadolu agency said. Two suspects, Omar Asim and Abuliezi Abuduhamiti, who are Chinese citizens, were remanded in custody on charges of being members of an armed terrorist organisation, and aiding in 39 counts of murder. Turkish authorities last week […]
WASHINGTON The United States has not received a formal invitation to Syria peace talks being organised by Russia and Turkey to be held in the Kazakh capital of Astana on Jan. 23, the U.S. State Department said on Friday. “To my knowledge we have not received … a formal invitation to the talks,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at a daily briefing. (Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; […]
WASHINGTON Iraqi forces fighting Islamic State in Mosul reached the Nineveh province governance building and raised the Iraqi flag there on Friday, a senior U.S. defense official said. Elissa Slotkin, the acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, also told a Pentagon briefing on the fight against Islamic State that a U.S. liaison team is in talks with Turkey about helping its forces near al-Bab […]
Deir al-Zour, an oil-rich province that borders Iraq, is largely under Islamic State control and has been the focus of American-led airstrikes and other military action. Continue reading the main story Since early 2015, the jihadists have besieged the provincial capital, also called Deir al-Zour, where about 200,000 people live. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, controls roughly half of the city, while the […]
International investigators have said for the first time that they suspect President Bashar al-Assad and his brother are responsible for the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict, according to a document seen by Reuters. A joint inquiry for the United Nations and global watchdog the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had previously identified only military units and did not name any commanders […]
For years, Iran has been under a series of international sanctions prohibiting it from exporting arms. The United States has frequently claimed that Tehran has violated the sanctions in support of proxy forces in many conflicts, including in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the Palestinian territories. Photo Weapons seized in February from smugglers near Yemen’s coast. Credit Australian Department of Defense, via Small Arms Survey The grenade launchers […]
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 Suleiman Al-Khalidi | AMMAN AMMAN Syrian army command said on Friday that Israel fired rockets at a major military airport west of Damascus, the capital, and warned Tel Aviv of repercussions of what it called a “flagrant” attack. Syrian state television quoted the army as saying several rockets were fired from an area near Lake Tiberias in northern Israel just after midnight which landed in the […]
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 […]
Posted January 13, 2017 05:49:38 The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States and the rise of populist leaders in Europe poses a “profound threat” to human rights, the US-based Human Rights Watch has warned in its annual global report. The 687-page report reviews human rights practices in more than 90 countries. “Trump and various politicians in Europe seek power through appeals to racism, […]
By Patricia Zengerle and Yeganeh Torbati | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson expressed views on Wednesday at odds with President-elect Donald Trump’s positions on key foreign policy issues like nuclear proliferation, trade deals, climate change and relations with Mexico. In a nine-hour Senate confirmation hearing, the former chief executive of oil company Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) said he favoured maintaining U.S. sanctions against Russia for […]
11 January 2017 A new report from the Arab Advisors Group analyzes the cellular tariffs for 42 cellular operators in 16 Arab countries. The analysis revealed that the average prepaid package rate was US$ 70.82, while the average postpaid package rate was US$ 47.77. Lebanon had the highest prepaid and postpaid average package rates, while Sudan and Morocco had the lowest postpaid average package rates. The analysis […]
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attempt to take control of all levers of power and a mounting terrorist threat has begun to alarm investors, sending the Turkish lira down 4 per cent to an all-time low on Wednesday. The lira traded at 3.93 to the dollar, down 12 per cent since the beginning of January, clocking its worst performance since a failed coup in July which prompted […]
Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun said his country’s ties with Saudi Arabia were recovering, after tensions linked to the regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran led Riyadh to cancel $3 billion of military aid to Beirut last year. Aoun, an ally of the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah, visited Saudi Arabia this week, trying to mend relations with the Sunni Muslim monarchy which has traditionally backed Hezbollah’s […]
PARIS Alois Brunner, an Austrian SS officer found responsible for the World War Two deportation of 125,500 European Jews to Nazi death camps, died in a Syrian jail cell in 2001, according to a report by two journalists published in France. Until now, Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s right-hand man, was reported to have died around 2010 in Damascus, where he fled in 1954 and lived under government protection, […]
In order to survive, the Syrian regime has had to rely to an extraordinary degree on Russian and Iranian forces, and their proxies, like Hezbollah. It really wasn’t the Syrian Arab Army that retook Aleppo. Indeed, the Syrian military is stretched so thin by geography and attrition that last month it lost most of the city of Palmyra (again) to the Islamic State while pro-government forces were […]
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, The true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the nation all the time, loyalty to the government when it deserves it. – Mark Twain, The Czar’s Soliloquy” At this point, pretty much everyone in America has seen the results of Hillary Clinton media pet, John Harwood’s recent Twitter poll. Who do you believe America? — John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) January 6, […]
By Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Senior U.S. Republican and Democratic senators will introduce legislation on Tuesday seeking to impose a wide range of sanctions on Russia over its cyber activities and actions in Syria and Ukraine. The legislation is sponsored by 10 senators – Republicans John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Ben Sasse and Rob Portman and Democrats Ben Cardin, Robert Menendez, Jeanne Shaheen, Amy Klobuchar […]
Submitted by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute, Sharia courts administering Islamic justice in Britain are run by clerics who believe some offenders should have their hands chopped off, according to Muslim scholar Elham Manea. She described the prevailing attitude as “totalitarian” and as more backward than some parts of Pakistan. Teaching children fundamental British values is an act of “cultural supremacism,” according to the National Union […]
Pakistan’s recently retired army chief Raheel Sharif has been appointed to lead a new Saudi-military alliance to fight terrorism, Pakistani media have reported. Government officials in Saudi Arabia could not be reached on Sunday to confirm the appointment to head the coalition, the founding of which Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced at a sudden midnight press conference in December 2015. Pakistani Defence Minister […]
BEIRUT: A Syrian truce brokered by Russia and Turkey was under growing strain on Monday as opposition fighters vowed to respond to regime’s violations and President Bashar Assad said the army would retake an important opposition-held area near Damascus. Assad, in comments to French media, also said his regime was ready to negotiate on “everything” at peace talks his Russian allies hope to convene in Kazakhstan, including […]
Once again, the dawn of a new year is upon us. People will wonder what to do, what will happen and what can they expect. We, as humans, will rely on pundits to tell us what they think and yes most of what will be said will have a 50/50 chance of being as much right as wrong. This year is going to usher in many seismic […]
