Just hours after President Trump was sworn into office, amid Chuck Schumer’s jabs over HUD, the Senate has confirmed retired Marine General James Mattis as defense secretary and retired Marine General John Kelly as homeland security secretary. They were both expected to be confirmed easily, and were, but Democrats promised fights over several other nominees. Mattis was the first to be confirmed by a vote of 98 […]
By Steve Holland | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Donald Trump took power as the 45th president of the United States on Friday and pledged to end what he called an “American carnage” of rusted factories and crime in an inaugural address that was a populist and nationalist rallying cry. Striking a defiant tone, Trump said American workers have been devastated by the outsourcing of jobs abroad. “From this day […]
VIENNA An Austrian man suspected of having jihadi contacts was arrested on Friday in Vienna in a move the interior minister said prevented an imminent attack and police urged citizens to report any abandoned bags. Special forces arrested the 18-year-old with a migrant background in a Vienna apartment at around 1700 GMT, police said. “The decisive leads came from foreign intelligence services,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka told […]
The proposed Constitution comes during a period of emergency rule, also approved by Parliament, in the wake of the failed coup attempt in July against Mr. Erdogan. Since then, he has ordered the dismissal of 100,000 state employees and the jailing of more than 40,000 others suspected of supporting the coup. He has also cracked down on the independent news media, jailing about 140 journalists in the […]
Donald Trump will be sworn in on Friday as the 45th president of the United States, taking power over a divided country after a savage campaign and setting the country on a new, uncertain path at home and abroad. In a ceremony likely to draw 900,000 people, including protesters, Trump and his vice president, Mike Pence, will take the oath of office at midday (1700 GMT) outside […]
SEOUL South Korea’s special prosecutor’s office said on Friday it summoned a Samsung Electronics Co Ltd executive for questioning as it investigates a widening influence-peddling scandal that has embroiled President Park Geun-hye. The office said it had summoned Executive Vice President Hwang Sung-soo for questioning at 2 p.m. (0500 GMT) on Friday, adding he was classified as a witness. It did not elaborate. Hwang is the fifth […]
ABU DHABI // Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, has offered condolences to the family of martyr Abdullah Mohammed Al Kaabi. Al Kaabi, along with compatriots Mohammed Ali Zainal Al Bastaki, Ahmed Rashid Salim Ali Al Mazroui, Ahmed Abdul Rahman Ahmad Al Tunaiji, and Abdul Hamid Sultan Abdullah Ibrahim Al Hammadi, was on a humanitarian mission […]
MELBOURNE A man deliberately drove into pedestrians, killing three and injuring more than 15 in the centre of Australia’s second largest city Melbourne on Friday, but police said the lunch-time incident was not terrorism-related. Police eventually rammed the car and shot the 26-year-old driver in the arm, before dragging him from the vehicle and arresting him. Police said the man had a history of family violence and […]
When it comes to bare-knuckle political lobbying, 12-year-old Claudia Conway is a chip off the old block. Today her mother, Kellyanne Conway, the Republican pollster credited with turning round Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, will be celebrating her 50th birthday at the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States. As his special counsellor, Conway is looking forward to life as the most powerful woman in the […]
By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON More than 80 Islamic State militants, some of whom were believed to be plotting attacks in Europe, died in U.S. air strikes on camps outside the group’s former North African stronghold of Sirte in Libya, the United States said on Thursday. “These strikes were directed against some of ISIL’s external plotters,” U.S Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a […]
Lawmakers, government officials, and aid workers are bracing themselves for a broad offensive from President-elect Donald Trump against federal programs that support family planning and gender equality around the world. As one of his first acts in the Oval Office, the Republican president-elect plans to restore the “Mexico City policy” as soon as Sunday, a congressional staffer told Foreign Policy. Also known as the “global gag rule,” […]
The release of the newly available primary documents, which include information not discussed in a 500-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the C.I.A. torture program that was released in 2014, comes at the same time as an urgent legal battle is unfolding over the potential fate of the still-classified, 6,700-page full version of that report. Continue reading the main story Lawyers for two […]
Researchers have written computer programs that found patterns among anonymized data about web traffic and used those patterns to identify individual users. The researchers note web users with active social media are vulnerable to the attack. (via WSJ)
Steven Mnuchin, Donald Trump’s nominee to be Treasury secretary, clashed with Democrats over the business practices of the lender he once chaired, saying he had been wrongly accused of taking advantage of unfortunate borrowers and that he would work “tirelessly” to boost the economy and US hiring. The former banker told the Senate finance committee that he had been maligned and that OneWest, the bank, had extended 100,000 […]
The Afghan Taliban has sought to reassure the United Arab Emirates that it was not behind an attack in the southern city of Kandahar that killed five UAE diplomats and injured the ambassador, senior Taliban officials said on Thursday. More than a dozen Afghan and foreign officials were killed last week by a bomb hidden under a couch in the Kandahar governor’s residence in an attack Afghan […]
A bestselling 13th-century cookbook; stories by popular Al Bernameg TV host Bassem Youssef; a controversial book about Saudi women and award-winning Iraqi novels are among the noteworthy English works coming from Arab authors this spring. The new year promises several strong reads from and about Syria. This month, Haus Publishing kicks off their Modern Arabic Classics series with Ascension to Death by celebrated Syrian author Mamdouh Azzam. […]
Harris was initially pleased by this development. Top predators have long played an important role in nature. Wolves and cougars once put pressure on bison to keep moving over long ranges of land, and he says, “There was never overgrazing because the predators were behind the animals pushing them on, giving the land naturally a chance to rest.” Harris mimics that cycle of rotation and rest in […]
PARIS The latest death toll from this week’s bomb attack on a military camp in northern Mali stands at 77, a French army spokesman said on Thursday, up from an earlier toll of more than 60 deaths. “We regret to say that there are 77 deaths,” said Colonel Patrik Steiger, speaking to reporters in Paris. France intervened in Mali in 2013 to drive back Islamist groups that […]
This love is precisely what is required of an American president in dealings affecting Israel. In such circumstances, and contrary to the adage that applies in most ordinary circumstances of life, that law says that demonstrations of love count for less, paradoxically, than love itself. It says, to be precise, that gestures of friendship, when they do not come from the bottom of the heart and are […]
Longtime Nintendo tactical RPG franchise Fire Emblem is finally coming to mobile via Fire Emblem: Heroes, directly following the release of Super Mario Run in December. It marks the third time for Nintendo to release a title for the smartphone gaming platform after the aforementioned endless runner and Miitomo. Fire Emblem: Heroes As per Nintendo, Fire Emblem: Heroes will feature a new story about two kingdoms in discord, and it’s […]
WASHINGTON: In the first visit of its kind since 2012, US Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has traveled to Syria on a trip that has taken her so far to Aleppo and Damascus.The move, according to Syrian-conflict watchers, indicates that President Bashar Assad “is no longer beyond the pale in US politics and policymaking.”Gabbard, who made news in November with her meeting with President-elect Donald Trump, and was […]
Blockchain has moved on from its Bitcoin past and is being touted as an effective and inexpensive way to safeguard data, with one Singapore-based vendor launching its first blockchain-based authentication tool. Because it provides a shared replicated “immutable” ledger, blockchain can facilitate a “single source of truth” and a secure, tamper-proof system of record, according to Alan Lim, Asean practice lead for IBM Blockchain and Bluemix Garage. […]
By Mubasher Bukhari | LAHORE, Pakistan LAHORE, Pakistan Pakistani security forces said on Wednesday they had killed the leader of the banned Sunni Muslim militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) along with three other militants accused of killing hundreds of civilians. The Counter Terrorism Department of the eastern province of Punjab said its forces had killed Asif Chotoo and his comrades during a shootout in the city of Sheikhupura […]
SEOUL A South Korean court on Thursday dismissed a warrant to arrest the head of the Samsung Group, the country’s largest conglomerate, a court spokesman said, amid a graft scandal that led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. The decision by the Seoul Central District Court to allow Jay Y. Lee to go home is likely to come as a major relief to the company and […]
