BERLIN Germany’s chief prosecutor has charged a 28-year-old German citizen with murder, belonging to a terrorist group and committing war crimes for his role in the execution of six detainees by Islamic State militants in Syria in 2015. The man, identified as Harry S. in court documents, has been in custody since returning to Germany in July 2015, shortly after prosecutors said he took part in the […]
Despite the weakness in ‘hard’ industrial production data, US Manufacturing ‘soft’ survey data from ISM and Markit surged in November and December. PMI rose to 54.3 final for December – a 21-month high – with employment rising and inventory-building. However, stagflation concerns continue to build as new orders declined and input price inflation accelerated. ISM rose to its highest since Dec 2014 with prices paid soaring to […]
By Erik Kirschbaum | BERLIN BERLIN A new acronym coined by German police to describe troublemaking migrants from North Africa has sharpened a national debate over immigration and crime as the country recovers from a deadly attack and gears up for a vital election this year. Police in Cologne said this week they had prevented trouble on New Year’s Eve by screening some 650 ‘Nafris’ – an […]
Florence Foster Jenkins was a real-life American socialite who billed herself as being a great opera star – but is seemingly the only person who does not realise she is a horrible singer. Nonetheless, she never let small details like the lack of tone and having no descernable musical talent stop her from performing, and became a prominent cult figure in the New York musical scene of […]
But Trump has also ventured beyond mere name-calling, turning the 2016 election into a competition between knowledge systems: the tell-it-like-it-is “people” versus the know-it-all “elites.” His campaign insisted for months that pollsters and technocrats and media would be proven wrong by his electoral success. The fact that he did win dealt a blow to an entire worldview, one in which empirical inquiry and truth-telling were supposed to […]
By Humeyra Pamuk and Daren Butler | ISTANBUL ISTANBUL The gunman who killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Day in an attack claimed by Islamic State appears to have been well versed in guerrilla warfare and may have trained in Syria, a newspaper report and a security source said on Tuesday. The attacker, who remains at large, shot dead a police officer and […]
LONDON Upbeat data from China helped lift global markets as 2017 trading started in earnest on Tuesday, with the dollar notching its biggest gain in three weeks, oil on a tear and European stocks setting a one-year high. Base metal prices and bond yields also advanced, as the better-than-expected factory growth in China dovetailed with higher inflation data in Europe to give investors a solid start to […]
Security systems can be expensive, so this relatively low-cost modular offering from Blink could fit the bill for some businesses. When I met up with the company, representatives noted that while the system is primarily marketed for home use, it could equally suit a small office. The price is certainly compelling: a one camera setup costs £109.99 (inc. VAT, or $99 in the US). There are […]
Donald Trump is expected to tap a longtime advocate of greater protectionism as his US trade representative in yet another signal that his administration is poised to enact the aggressive trade policies he advocated during the campaign into government. Robert Lighthizer, whose impending nomination was reported by US media on Monday, has been seen as the favourite for the trade role for weeks and has been leading […]
He was released on his recognizance, but arrested 10 days later. He was accused of acting as an undercover liaison between Fatah, the dominant faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization, and guerrilla cells in the West Bank. Continue reading the main story The authorities also said he had smuggled gold, whiskey and television sets across the border. In addition, investigators said the archbishop had been involved in […]
While 2016 was the year the unlikely became real, currency investors enter 2017 no better equipped to tell the difference between reality and illusion. Brexit and Trump made a mockery of assumptions, shredded investors’ best-laid plans and turned political risk analysts into the most in-demand advisers of the year. The two big themes of 2016 will feel palpable during the first quarter of 2017. Donald Trump takes […]
HANOI Doctors in Vietnam have removed surgical forceps from a man who unknowingly carried them inside his body for 18 years, national television VTV reported. Ma Van Nhat, 54, said the forceps had probably been left in his abdomen in 1998 when he had emergency surgery after a traffic accident. Nhat had felt only the occasional pain and a clinic had given him medicine for a suspected […]
Qatar’s budget deficit is set to decline by 38.9 percent from $13bn (QR46.5bn) in 2016 to $7.8bn (QR28.4bn) in 2017 due to a rise in government revenues, according to an economic analysis by Qatar National Bank. However, capital spending is expected to increase in 2017 and remain as the main driver of economic growth in the coming years, revealed The Peninsula Qatar. The decision is aimed at […]
SEOUL U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s comments on North Korea show he is aware of the urgency of the threat posed by its nuclear programme and will not waver from a policy of sanctions against the isolated country, South Korea said on Tuesday. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said on Sunday his nuclear-capable country was close to test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), raising the prospect of […]
Seven months after the leak of 11.5 million documents from a law firm in an incident that has come to be known as the “Panama Papers”, the world is right to ask what has been done since to fight global tax evasion and promote financial transparency. As president of Panama, and in particular through my interactions with the international community, it is clear that the affair shined […]
Abu Dhabi Gas Liquefaction Company Limited confers certificate of excellence to TÜV Rheinland Middle East for asset integrity services provided in 2015 TÜV Rheinland provides ADGAS continuous engineering support for oil and gas projects at Das Island 03 January 2017 A client’s award – TÜV Rheinland Middle East recently received a certificate of recognition for their consistent engineering support and excellent customer service during 2015. ADGAS […]
Funding activity for advertising technology start-ups has crashed to its lowest point in five years, underlining the struggle faced by the ad sector as Google and Facebookbecome dominant. Adtech, an umbrella term for companies that automate and facilitate the buying and selling of digital advertising, rose to prominence over the past five years, but appears now to be on the decline. The number of global adtech venture […]
But that consensus is cracking. Part of the reason is that the hundreds of writers who vote are, as a whole, becoming younger and seemingly less inclined to take an unyielding stance on steroid cheats. Continue reading the main story And part of the reason appears to be the decision last month to induct Bud Selig into the Hall. Selig, who served as commissioner of baseball as […]
Australian Attorney-General George Brandis has extended the deadline for those wanting to make a submission on whether the federal government should prohibit access by parties for civil proceedings to data retained by telecommunications providers under the data retention legislation. Submissions now close on Friday, January 27 — two weeks after the original January 13 submission due date. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) had […]
Two weeks after a Tunisian man, Anis Amri, whose German asylum request had been rejected, rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market and was later shot dead by Italian police, the German state prosuector’s office said on Monday that a Syrian migrant who arrived in Germany two years ago was arrested on suspicion of seeking money from the Islamic State, to drive truck bombs into crowds. […]
“I pity every person who has not been to Aleppo,” says Marlene Matar, a Lebanese author and cooking instructor whose magnificent recipe book, The Aleppo Cookbook, has just been published in English. Mater compares the city’s rich tradition of culinary excellence to that of Paris – “in Aleppo, wherever you eat, you eat well” – and writes with wonder of the 13 kilometre-long Souq Al Madina, where she […]
Venezuela has issued $5bn in new bonds to state-run Banco de Venezuela in a private placement, as it seeks cash for imports of food and medicine as the country struggles with critical shortages of basic goods. France-based Global Emerging Markets Group said it advised on structuring and executing the deal. The operation was underwritten by China’s Haitong Securities, according to two bond traders who had seen preliminary […]
By James Pearson | SEOUL SEOUL North Korea has been working through 2016 on developing components for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), making the isolated nation’s claim that it was close to a test-launch plausible, international weapons experts said on Monday. North Korea has been testing rocket engines and heat-shields for an ICBM while developing the technology to guide a missile after re-entry into the atmosphere following […]
Statcounter’s graph for desktop operating system market shares in the USA shows Windows 10 climbing rapidly and only just overtaking Windows 7 (yellow line). Image: Screen grab for ZDNet Installation of Microsoft’s Windows 10 slowed dramatically when the free upgrade stopped, but it has still overtaken Windows 7 in the UK and USA, on Statcounter‘s usage-based web monitoring. On Netmarketshare’s numbers, which are based on unique visitors […]
