By Stephen Kalin and Maher Chmaytelli | SOUTH OF MOSUL/BAGHDAD, Iraq SOUTH OF MOSUL/BAGHDAD, Iraq U.S.-backed Iraqi forces fought Islamic State fighters on Monday to clear the way to Mosul’s airport, on the second day of a ground offensive on the jihadists’ remaining stronghold in the western side of the city. Federal police and elite interior ministry units known as Rapid Response are leading the charge toward […]
By Mubasher Bukhari | LAHORE, Pakistan LAHORE, Pakistan Pakistan will seek the help of a paramilitary border-security force to crack down on Islamist militants in Punjab province, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s power base, after attacks that killed more than 100 people last week, a government spokesman said on Monday. On Sunday, days after a suicide bomber killed 13 people in the Punjabi city of Lahore, the provincial […]
For President Trump, the designation debate is an election promise made good. He has made no bones about taking an approach to the Middle East that is narrowly focused on counterterrorism, and that plays to domestic supporters who view all Islamist movements — or even all Muslims — as potentially hostile. Continue reading the main story In much of the Middle East, though, the rapid pace and […]
By Ben Blanchard and Philip Wen | BEIJING BEIJING With the suspension of all North Korean coal imports, China has wielded a big stick against its reclusive neighbour, but there is no sign it will cut off all critical links and Beijing is still promoting talks to solve the dispute over Pyongyang’s programme to develop nuclear weapons. China has been getting increasingly fed up with what it […]
Lenín Boltaire Moreno is in the lead after Sunday’s nail-biting presidential election in Ecuador. The anointed candidate of leftwing President Rafael Correa was close to the margin needed to avoid a second round against Guillermo Lasso, a conservative former banker, in a test for Latin America’s battered left. After a campaign that underlined the divisive legacy of Mr Correa, the US-trained economist who has been in power […]
By Rozanna Latiff | KUALA LUMPUR KUALA LUMPUR Footage from airport cameras purportedly showing the assault on the half-brother of the North Korean leader emerged on Monday as a row between Malaysia and North Korea escalated over the handling of the investigation into the killing of Kim Jong Nam. Malaysia recalled its envoy from Pyongyang and summoned North Korea’s ambassador in Kuala Lumpur, who again cast doubt […]
BEIRUT Syrian government forces fired rockets at a rebel-held area on Damascus’s outskirts on Sunday, pressing an attack that began the day before and has killed up to 16 people, a medical worker and war monitors said. The medical worker and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was the biggest attack on the Qaboun area, to the city’s northeast, in at least two years. At […]
President Donald Trump sought to refocus on governing on Sunday by interviewing a shortlist of candidates to be his national security adviser having continued to blame media bias for portrayals of chaos in his administration. Following last week’s firing of Michael Flynn amid controversy over his Russia ties, Mr Trump was due to speak to four candidates to replace him in the post — the most crucial […]
STOCKHOLM The Swedish embassy in Washington has asked the U.S. State Department for an explanation of a comment made by President Donald Trump that suggested there had been some sort of security incident in Sweden on Friday. The U.S. President was speaking at a political rally in Florida on Saturday when, in connection with the mention of a need to keep the United States safe, he said: […]
Following Trump Chief of Staff Priebus’ comments earlier, it is clear, as Axios notes, President Trump’s biggest problem has quickly become a leaking administration. The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by “intelligence” like candy. Very un-American! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017 Here are The Top 10 Leaks so far… The “National Guard roundup”: The AP published a story […]
CAIRO Islamic State published a video on Sunday threatening Egyptian Christians and showing the last statement of a man it said was responsible for the deadly bombing in December of a Coptic cathedral in Cairo. The masked man in battle-dress, whom the group identified as Abu Abdallah al-Masri, is seen encouraging militants all over the world not to give up and promising Islamists jailed in Egypt they […]
AMMAN Syrian rebel groups who have participated in peace talks said on Sunday that an upsurge in Syrian army shelling and bombing was wrecking the prospects of maintaining a Russian-Turkish-brokered ceasefire. The rebel groups, mostly backed by Turkey, who attended two rounds of talks in the Kazakh capital Astana said they had supported a political solution to end the bloodshed, but that war had been “imposed” on […]
Like others interviewed, Abu Marwan, citing concerns about safety, agreed to speak on the condition that his full name not be published. He and others are identified by honorifics or nicknames. Residents said anyone caught using a cellphone risked being beaten or killed by militants. Continue reading the main story Abu Salah, who lives in the Bab al-Tob neighborhood in western Mosul, said the Islamic State, also […]
A soldier from the United Arab Emirates died while taking part in a Saudi-led military operation in Yemen, state news agency WAM reported on Friday, without clarifying the circumstances of his death. A second Emirati soldier in Yemen died of a heart attack, the report said. The UAE is a member of a mostly Gulf Arab military coalition led by Saudi Arabia that is backing Yemen’s internationally […]
President Trump unveiled an alternate universe Thursday in which virtually every problem of his is the creation of the press. In a rambling, angry and contradictory media meltdown, Trump bashed “the failing New York Times,” The Wall Street Journal, CNN and the BBC, among others, following a fleeting announcement of a new nominee for Labor Secretary. It constituted what at minimum is a quadrupling down — or might […]
Hackers are carrying out surveillance on members of the Israeli military by hacking into their Android phones in order to monitor activity and steal data – potentially including photos and audio recordings – according to security companies. Developed and deployed by currently by a so-far unidentified group, ViperRAT is designed to collect sensitive information from infected devices, with those behind the malware seemingly most interested in images […]
Donald Trump has closed out the first month of his presidency by returning to his raucous campaign style and lashing out at the media as an agenda-bearing component of a corrupt system determined to undermine his time in office. A day after dubbing journalists the “enemy of the American people” at the end of the rockiest week so far of this White House’s short existence the new […]
Photo Iraqi forces advance toward western Mosul on Sunday. Credit Khalid Al-Mousily/Reuters ERBIL, Iraq — Iraq’s government announced the beginning of an offensive on Sunday to take back the western half of Mosul from the Islamic State, nearly three years after the city was overrun by the terror group. Overnight, planes crisscrossed the sky over the city’s occupied half, carpeting the ground with leaflets, which made a […]
YANGON Two members of Myanmar’s security forces were injured in a clash with militants on the troubled Rakhine State border with Bangladesh, Myanmar state counselor’s office said, casting doubt on the government’s claim that the region had stabilised. The government last week said the situation in northern Rakhine had stabilised and that it had ended a four-month security crackdown on Rohingya Muslims. The security operation had been […]
For populists on both sides of the Atlantic, “expert” is now an expletive, a synonym for out-of-touch elitists swindling the common man. This was perhaps most obvious during the Brexit referendum campaign, when the UK Justice Secretary and “Leave” advocate Michael Gove told a stunned interviewer that “the people of this country have had enough of experts … from organizations with acronyms saying that they know what is best.” Polling indicates […]
By Jonathan Landay | MUNICH MUNICH Russia has shown no change in behaviour or policies to embrace U.S. President Donald Trump’s offer of better relations or cooperation in fighting Islamist militants, U.S. officials and lawmakers say. Trump’s latest overture was delivered by Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday to a security conference in Germany held amid European worries over U.S. commitment to the continent’s security and […]
Those bombings never happened, but the intent of the conspiracy, prosecutors said, was to destroy New York landmarks, kill hundreds of people and force the United States to abandon its support for Israel and Egypt. Continue reading the main story Prosecutors also asserted that Mr. Rahman was linked to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six people. In Mr. Abdel Rahman’s trial, prosecutors […]
MUNICH A new version of a Trump administration travel ban will not stop green card residency holders or travellers already on planes from entering the United States, U.S. Secretary for Homeland Security John Kelly said on Saturday. U.S. President Donald Trump’s initial attempt to clamp down for security reasons on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries and on refugees snarled to a halt amid a judicial backlash and […]
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 if Donald Trump strong-armed media advertisers in the same way he’s trying to get companies to keep jobs in the United States? The subject was broached by a faraway observer after Trump’s angry and rambling anti-press rhetorical screed […]
