For France, 2016 ends as it began, with the nation under a state of emergency following terrorist outrages and in anticipation of more to come. The warnings of French leaders of potential further attacks have come gloomily true. Even last month, as the French centre-right party Les Républicains was choosing the Thatcherite Francois Fillon as its candidate in the presidential elections, ISIL was attempting to inflict further […]
By Nobuhiro Kubo | TOKYO TOKYO Japan’s defence minister visited a controversial shrine to Japan’s war dead on Thursday, just after accompanying Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a historic visit to Pearl Harbor, where Japan’s attack brought the United States into World War Two. Television footage showed a smiling Tomomi Inada in a black jacket and skirt arriving at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, which honours Japanese who lost […]
Aliens may be communicating to us in the form of fast radio burst (FRB) signals, scientists believe. Two separate groups of astronomers have recently discovered radio bursts coming from the Auriga constellation, which is about 3 billion light years away from the Milky Way galaxy. According to a report filed in The Astrophysical Journal, the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia discovered five radio bursts coming from the Auriga […]
Updated December 29, 2016, 9:08 AM By Restituto Cayubit HILONGOS, Leyte – At least 32 persons watching an amateur boxing bout were injured in an explosion at the town plaza Wednesday night. HILONGOS, Leyte CREDIT: Google Maps, Manila Bulletin Leyte police provincial director Supt. Franco Simborio said out of the 32 injured, 16 were treated as outpatient while the remaining 16 were brought to various hospitals in […]
Some of the biggest law firms on Wall Street are scrambling to shore up their defences against cyber attacks, in the wake of a raid by Chinese hackers which led to millions of dollars of profits from insider trading. Preet Bharara, US attorney for the southern district of New York, this week charged three individuals who he said infiltrated law firms over a period of about 18 […]
LONDON European Union voters in France, Germany, Italy and Greece think their countries are heading in the wrong direction but there is not yet any Europe-wide inclination to follow Britain towards exiting the bloc, according to a poll published on Thursday. Britain’s shock June 23 Brexit vote, which was praised at the time by then U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump as a “miracle”, has raised questions about […]
By Nia Williams | CALGARY, Alberta CALGARY, Alberta A Canadian man punched a cougar in the face to stop it attacking his dog in a wooded area near a fast food chain in Whitecourt, central Alberta, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said on Wednesday. William Gibb, 31, from Red Deer, Alberta, had stopped at a Tim Hortons outlet, a popular Canadian restaurant chain on his 600-kilometre […]
By Andreina Aponte | CARACAS CARACAS Roughly one person is being lynched in crisis-ridden Venezuela every three days as frustrated residents take revenge on suspected criminals, a monitoring group said on Wednesday. The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV), which monitors crime, said mob killings have become a generalized phenomenon across the country, with 126 deaths reported in 2016 versus 20 last year. “Due to being repeated victims […]
US secretary of state John Kerry delivered a stinging rebuke of the Israeli government on Wednesday, accusing it of making the establishment of a viable Palestinian state nearly impossible through the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. With Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu joining forces with president-elect Donald Trump to attack the Obama administration, Mr Kerry said that the US allowed a […]
By Lesley Wroughton and Yeganeh Torbati | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned on Wednesday that Israel’s building of settlements in occupied territory was endangering Middle East peace, expressing unusually frank frustration with the longtime American ally. In a swiftly issued statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Kerry of showing bias. He said Israel did not need to be lectured to by foreign […]
Within the tech world, there is something known as a Chaos Monkey. It is a software tool that simulates chaos and uncertainty, rampaging through a system pulling at cables and kicking computers. Simulate big problems so you can prepare for them; that’s how the thinking goes. Chaos Monkeys are tame – they are a tool employed by network administrators to make their systems safer and more stable. […]
Law Blog rounds up the morning’s legal news: Law firm hacking: Three Chinese traders earned more than $4 million in illegal profits after they hacked into the computer systems of prominent U.S. law firms and stole nonpublic information on mergers and acquisitions, according to an unsealed federal indictment. [WSJ, NYT] Student loan bankruptcy: Borrowers are beginning to win battles to erase some student loans in bankruptcy court, […]
Carrie Fisher, the iconic actress who became a household name playing the role of Princess Leia in the Star Wars film franchise, passed away on Tuesday, Dec. 27, after being hospitalized for heart attack last week. She was 60. Fisher was rushed to the hospital on Dec. 23 after suffering cardiac arrest while on a flight from London to Los Angeles. The star had been traveling to […]
Photo Construction this week in the settlement of Har Homa in Jerusalem. Credit Atef Safadi/European Pressphoto Agency JERUSALEM — Israeli leaders postponed plans on Wednesday to move ahead with new housing in East Jerusalem, just hours before Secretary of State John Kerry was scheduled to deliver a much-anticipated speech outlining an American vision for peace with the Palestinians. The Jerusalem city planning committee, reportedly acting at the […]
By Erik Kirschbaum | BERLIN BERLIN Nearly 55,000 migrants who were not eligible for or were likely to be denied asylum left Germany voluntarily in 2016, up by 20,000 from the number who left of their own volition in 2015, the government said on Wednesday. “That’s a considerable increase from last year,” Interior Ministry spokesman Harald Neymanns told a news conference, saying the 2016 figure had climbed […]
The remaining population of the cheetah in the wild hints that the world’s fastest mammal is heading toward extinction. Only 7,100 Cheetahs Left In The Wild A new study that looked into the number of the speedy big cat estimated that there are only 7,100 of these animals left in the wild. The findings prompted calls for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to re-categorize the […]
28 December 2016 The UAE Banks Federation (UBF), the professional body representing 49 banks in the UAE, announced today its whole weight contribution as strategic partner for the 2017 ACFE Fraud Conference Middle East, set to take place in Dubai from 29-31 January 2017 at Atlantis, the Palm. Held under the patronage of His Excellency AbdulAziz Al Ghurair, Chairman of UAE Banks Federation (UBF), the event is […]
BEIRUT An explosion hit a bus in Lebanon’s northern Bekaa Valley region, killing one person and wounding another on Wednesday morning, the National News Agency (NNA) said. The attack took place in the town of al-Ain, some 20 km (13 miles) west of the Lebanese-Syrian border, NNA reported. Lebanese television station al-Manar said a bomb exploded inside the passenger bus, killing the town’s deputy mayor and severely […]
KABUL An explosion went off in a crowded area of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Wednesday, causing some casualties, witnesses said, while a police officer said it appeared to have been a bomb attack aimed at a member of parliament. The police official, who declined to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media, also said there had been some casualties but he […]
Obama says Japanese leader’s Pearl Harbor visit shows power of reconciliation | Reuters ‘+Reuters.inlinevideo.title+’ ‘+Reuters.inlinevideo.length+’ ‘); } PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to the site of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor showed the power of reconciliation. “This historic gesture speaks to the power of reconciliation. … A reminder that even the deepest wounds of […]
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s former president, has been charged over corruption accusations in public works projects, marking the most significant legal setback for the embattled populist leader. Judge Julián Ercolini cleared the way on Tuesday for legal proceedings against Ms Fernández in what is the second of several cases being investigated to go to trial. She was indicted in May over allegations of manipulating the central […]
Dec. 27, 2016 6:57 p.m. ET The conviction rate for blasphemy in Indonesia is 100%, and that’s bad news for Basuki Tjahaja Purnama. The talented Jakarta Governor faces up to five years in prison after a court decided Tuesday that prosecutors have a credible case against him for making lighthearted comments about the Quran. A conviction will deprive Jakarta of an able administrator and reformer, but the […]
By Jeff Mason | PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe joined U.S. President Barack Obama for a symbolic joint visit to Pearl Harbor on Tuesday, commemorating World War Two dead and pledging that Japan would never wage war again. The visit, just weeks before Republican President-elect Donald Trump takes office, was meant to highlight the strength of the U.S.-Japan alliance in the […]
LOS ANGELES // Actor Carrie Fisher, who found enduring fame as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars, has died. She was 60. Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd, said her mother had died on Tuesday just before 9am. Fisher was “loved by the word and she will be missed profoundly”, Ms Lourd said. Fisher had been in hospital since Friday when she suffered a heart attack on board […]
