Volkswagen will plead guilty to three felonies and pay $4.3bn in penalties to settle a US Department of Justice investigation into the diesel emissions scandal that has engulfed the German carmaker for the past 15 months. Six VW executives based in Germany have also been indicted in connection with the case, including Oliver Schmidt who was arrested in the US on Monday, said Loretta Lynch, US attorney-general. “For years, […]
To an outsider, it looked preposterous. The archaeologists were cataloging and storing absolutely everything, treating this physical material as though it were digital information — JPEGs of itself. And yet they couldn’t afford not to: Everything a Neanderthal came into contact with was a valuable clue. (In 28 years of excavations here, archaeologists have yet to find a fossil of an actual Neanderthal.) “This is like putting […]
It would be premature to decide whether an agreement among OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers to cut output, reached late last year, needs to be extended beyond six months, the United Arab Emirates’ energy minister said on Wednesday. Speaking at an oil industry conference, Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazroui said there needed to be competition in the oil market and trying to fix the market to achieve a […]
By Linda Sieg | TOKYO TOKYO A South Korean political vacuum and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s concerns about his conservative political base have rekindled a feud over wartime history, just as tension over North Korea makes cooperation between the U.S. allies as vital as ever. The row over “comfort women”, as those forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels are known, coincides with uncertainty over […]
By Lisa Lambert and Emily Stephenson | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday put renewed pressure on congressional Republicans working to repeal Obamacare, insisting that lawmakers pass a replacement for the healthcare law at the same time or soon after they vote to dismantle it. In an interview with the New York Times, Trump said he wanted a substitute for President Barack Obama’s healthcare law […]
By Shadia Nasralla | VIENNA VIENNA Iran decided not to escalate a stand-off over the extension of U.S. sanctions at a meeting of diplomats overseeing the nuclear deal it reached with world powers in 2015, senior Russian and Iranian diplomats said after the session on Tuesday. Tehran threatened last month to retaliate against a U.S. Senate vote to extend the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA), saying it violated […]
By Amanda Ferguson | BELFAST BELFAST After a decade of bitter compromises over paramilitaries and policing, Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government finally fell apart this week over the abuse by farmers of a green-energy grant to burn fuels such as wood pellets instead of coal. The confrontation has exposed a growing rupture in trust between Catholic Irish nationalists and pro-British Protestant unionists whose cooperation underpins the 1998 Good […]
Short-lived compounds like greenhouse gas methane stay in the atmosphere just between a year and a few decades. However, researchers have found that they can cause lingering warmth that can lead to sea levels rising for centuries long after the compounds have been cleared from the atmosphere. In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the Simon Fraser University and […]
For more evidence that central bank intervention in the foreign exchange market is increasingly becoming an exercise in futility – look no further than Mexico. The peso briefly sank to a fresh all time low against the dollar on Tuesday, dropping by as much as 1.1 per cent to MXN 21.6227, as concerns continue to mount over incoming US president Donald Trump’s trade rhetoric towards Mexico, report […]
By Parisa Hafezi | ANKARA ANKARA The death of former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani deprives Iran’s reformers of a powerful ally, boosting anti-Western hardliners before a presidential election which will determine how open Tehran is to the world. The loss of Rafsanjani’s skills as a factional powerbroker also means rivalries in Iran’s unwieldy dual system of clerical and republican rule could grow unchecked, testing the stability […]
Over 13 years, consumption of gasoline rose in countries that lowered taxes or raised subsidies The average tax on petrol in 157 nations fell 13 percent from 2003 to 2015, even as the world acknowledged the need to slash greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, researchers reported Monday. Over 13 years, consumption of gasoline rose in countries that lowered taxes or raised subsidies, they said in a study […]
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 […]
January 10, 2017 by: Henry Mance, political correspondent Boris Johnson has claimed Britain is “first in line” for a post-Brexit trade deal with the US, following meetings with Republican congressional leaders including Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. The foreign secretary visited New York and Washington, paving the way for an official trip by Theresa May to meet Donald Trump later this year. For Mr Johnson, the visit […]
Photo Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2016. Credit Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images Relations between the United States and Iran, which improved under President Obama to the point where the two sides were able to strike a nuclear deal, were already facing an uncertain future under Donald Trump, who has taken a tough line against Tehran. The death on Sunday of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi […]
By Ellen Wulfhorst UNITED NATIONS (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Sweden’s top diplomat has a question: “Where are the women?” Taking a seat on the United Nations’ influential Security Council, Sweden will use its clout to press its feminist foreign policy, Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said on Monday. That policy, coined when Wallstrom took office two years ago, seeks equal rights, decision-making roles and fair allocation of resources […]
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 […]
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DUBAI // The main site for the UAE Food Bank was announced on Monday after the first meeting about the new charity initiative. The bank’s main branch will be in the Dubai Vegetable Market, while 15 other outlets are planned for inside and outside the UAE. Sheikha Hind bint Juma Al Maktoum, Chairwoman of the Food Bank, said it is hoped that it will become the “biggest […]
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” So Henry Temple, the third Viscount Palmerston, described British foreign policy in 1848, at the height of its imperial pomp. “England is a power sufficiently strong, sufficiently powerful to steer her own course.” It is more than fanciful to imagine US […]
A high-profile forum co-hosted by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and European Union (EU) is to take place in Riyadh on Monday. In information carried on its website, the EU said that several GCC and EU officials would participate in the meeting aimed at expanding cooperation and encouraging bilateral investment. European Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc is to lead the EU representation in the GCC along with […]
Submitted by Peter Korzun via Strategic-Culture.org, It should be noted that quite often the most interesting arms contracts escape media attention. That’s how it was in 2016. Signing a multi-billion-dollar military aid package between the United States and Israel and the subsequent White House approval for long-awaited fighter sales to the Middle East hit the radar screen. In late September, the US approved the sales of Boeing fighters worth […]
By Marius Zaharia and Fathin Ungku | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE Singapore’s defence minister said on Monday that the nine armoured vehicles seized in Hong Kong could not be detained or confiscated but that he welcomed Hong Kong’s pledge that the dispute would be handled in line with its laws. Hong Kong customs seized the troop carriers in November as they were being shipped from Taiwan to Singapore after […]
Who would now warn publicly against “Islamic fascism,” when the hard-liners sought to influence elections? Who would state openly that there should be a nuclear compromise? Continue reading the main story Mr. Rafsanjani said things others would not dare to say, all agreed, and his voice had at least created some tolerance for debates. “Hard-liners will be happy, but this is the start of a period of […]
Entrepreneurs in the country are using some old-fashioned handiwork to help create products for mass production at a fraction of the today’s costs. Whether this will be a manufacturing revolution or evolution, 3D printing is here to stay. For a man working at the frontier of a technological revolution, there is a surprising amount of handicraft to Ahmad Mackieh’s approach to 3-D printing that shows in the […]
