Iraqi fighter jets struck Isis positions in neighbouring Syria on Friday, in what officials said was retaliation for a spate of car bomb attacks in the capital Baghdad. The air strikes coincided with Iraq’s ground forces pushing deeper into the western half of Mosul and reaching the first residential districts. Iraq’s second city, a critical Isis stronghold split by the Tigris river, is divided between government forces […]
Photo Christian families who had left El Arish, in northern Sinai, arriving at a church in Ismailia, Egypt. Credit Ahmed Aboulenein/Reuters CAIRO — Dozens of Egyptian Christian families fled their homes in the northern Sinai Peninsula on Friday, driven by a targeted campaign of Islamist violence that has killed at least seven people in recent weeks. People flooded into a church compound in the city of Ismailia, […]
By Ahmed Aboulenein | ISMAILIA, Egypt ISMAILIA, Egypt Christian families and students fled Egypt’s North Sinai province in droves on Friday after Islamic State killed the seventh member of their community in just three weeks. A Reuters reporter saw 25 families gathered with their belongings in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia’s Evangelical Church and church officials said 100 families, out of around 160 in North Sinai, […]
By Mica Rosenberg | NEW YORK NEW YORK A U.S. Department of Homeland Security plan to add more than 5,000 border enforcement agents will present logistical challenges and might be unnecessary, according to former government officials familiar with earlier pushes to accelerate border hiring. Three former top officials at U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) told Reuters in interviews that ramping up hiring at the agency, as […]
The revelation that Kim Jong Nam was killed with the deadly nerve agent, VX, transforms a brutal piece of internecine political bloodletting into something with far broader implications. Although it denies responsibility, few doubt the North Korean regime is responsible — and is flashing signals to its enemies. “It is more than just killing someone,” said Patricia Lewis, research director at policy institute Chatham House. “This was […]
OSLO Aid agencies must get food to close to 3 million people by July to avert a famine in Africa’s Lake Chad region caused by drought, chronic poverty and Islamist insurgents Boko Haram, the United Nations said on Friday as it launched a funding appeal. International donors at a conference in Oslo pledged $672 million for the next three years in new money, $457 million of which […]
By Mubasher Bukhari | LAHORE, Pakistan LAHORE, Pakistan Pakistani officials on Friday said a blast that killed 10 people at a shopping centre in the eastern city of Lahore was most probably an accident caused by a gas leak, not a bomb, as initially described. Panic gripped the city on Thursday after the blast at an upscale market, which also wounded 32 people. Soon after, a burst […]
So much for sticking “nuclear weapons” in carriers’ dumb pipes. Shine, last year’s enfant terrible of mobile ad blocking is pivoting (again!) — in both tone of voice and business model. It’s also rebranding to, er, Rainbow. So, to keep tabs, since 2011 this Disrupt startup battlefield alum has moved from trying to sell mobile antivirus (Shine Security), to threatening network-level mobile ad blocking (Shine Technologies), to — its latest pivot — […]
ADEN A suicide bomber killed at least eight soldiers in an attack on a military camp in Yemen’s southern city of Zinjibar at dawn on Friday, a local official and residents said. The bomber, wearing a military uniform, drove a car that exploded at the entrance of the camp. Ten others were wounded. Yemen has been embroiled in civil war since March 2015 between the internationally recognized […]
By A. Ananthalakshmi and Liz Lee | KUALA LUMPUR KUALA LUMPUR VX, the chemical used in the airport murder Kim Jong Nam, is one of the deadliest chemical weapons created by man. Just 10 milligrams of the nerve agent or a single drop enough to kill in minutes, experts say. With the texture and feel of engine oil, VX was first produced in the United Kingdom in […]
A body set up by the Saudi-led coalition to investigate civilian casualties in Yemen said on Thursday a technical fault was responsible for the death of seven people in a 2015 air strike but cleared the alliance of other attacks. Saudi Arabia and its allies in a mostly Gulf Arab military coalition have been bombing the Iran-aligned Houthi movement since they seized much of northern Yemen in […]
BEIRUT: Turkish-backed Syrian opposition announced on Thursday they had taken full control of Al-Bab from the Daesh group, marking a key defeat for the jihadists after weeks of heavy fighting.The town of Al-Bab, just 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of the Turkish border, was the last Daesh stronghold in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo.“We are announcing Al-Bab completely liberated, and we are now clearing mines from […]
Many fear electronic voting machines can be hacked and tampered with. Image: iStock The hacking campaign around the US presidential election, cyberattacks against Ukrain’s power grid, and even the internet crippling Mirai botnet DDoS attack all demonstrate how cyberattacks have grown to threaten the very fabric of society itself, NATO has warned. Citing the impact of high profile incidents like these, Jamie Shea, deputy assistant secretary general […]
By Mubashir Bukhari | LAHORE, Pakistan LAHORE, Pakistan A blast at a market in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore killed at least five people on Thursday and wounded 21, a rescue official told Reuters. The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear. Security forces cordoned off the area and people were not being allowed to leave or enter. “Forensic teams have arrived on the scene and […]
By Sarah Marsh and Nelson Acosta | HAVANA HAVANA Communist-ruled Cuba on Wednesday said it had foiled a serious plot aiming to destabilize the country by preventing the chief of the Organization of American States traveling to the island to attend an award ceremony organized by dissidents. The opposition group, which the government called “anti-Cuban and illegal,” had invited OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro to Havana to […]
By Amina Ismail and Arwa Gaballa | Al-GAMALIYA, Egypt Al-GAMALIYA, Egypt Thousands of mourners gathered in a small Egyptian town on Wednesday for the funeral of the Muslim cleric known as “the blind sheikh” who was convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York. Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was also convicted of planning a broader “war of urban terrorism” in the United States, […]
But one option being considered is for American troops to step up their support of the fighters by firing artillery, shooting mortars, helping with logistics and significantly expanding efforts to advise them, much as the United States is doing for Iraqi forces in the battle for Mosul. Continue reading the main story In late January, President Trump gave the defense secretary, Jim Mattis, 30 days to develop […]
BEIJING Authorities in a violence prone area of China’s western Xinjiang region are offering 100 million yuan ($14.5 million) in rewards for anti-terror tips, state media said, a policy that coincides with a dramatic rise in regional security spending. Hundreds of people have been killed in Xinjiang in the past few years, most in unrest between members of the Muslim Uighur minority, who call the region home, […]
Last fall, we saw the biggest distibuted denial of service (DDoS) attack ever. This year we’ll see even bigger ones. According to Akamai‘s latest State of the Internet Security report, here’s what’s behind them. Behind today’s DDoS attacks you’ll find botnets and they’re using the same old techniques hackers have always used to bring down your servers. Akamai First, you should know that while the total DDoS […]
By Nathalie Kantaris Diaz | PARIS PARIS Amnesty International said on Wednesday U.S. President Donald Trump’s “poisonous” rhetoric on his way to winning the White House led a global trend towards increasingly divisive politics in 2016 that had made the world a “darker” place. In its annual report covering 159 countries, the human rights group said principles of human dignity and equality had come under assault from […]
“If someone is arrested for throwing a rock, they get a two-year sentence,” the father, Yusri al-Sharif, said, according to the news site Ynet. “In this case, a soldier murdered and got a year and a half.” Continue reading the main story “My son is not an animal,” he said. But Israeli leaders, still shocked that an Israeli soldier was convicted in January in a killing in […]
Verizon has announced that it will buy Yahoo’s core business after all, but at a $350 million discount since the internet company had two massive cyberattacks. The Verizon-Yahoo deal has been in the cards for a good while now and the companies have been negotiating the terms of the agreement. After two massive Yahoo data breaches came to light last year, however, the deal was not that […]
Photo Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi on trial in Zintan, Libya, in 2014. Credit Reuters GENEVA — Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, the son of Libya’s ousted dictator, should be turned over to the International Criminal Court to be tried on war crimes charges, the United Nations said on Tuesday, adding that he did not get a fair trial in Libya. But the question is, who will hand him over? A […]
By Lawrence Hurley | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Conservative Supreme Court justices on Tuesday voiced scepticism about extending constitutional rights to non-citizens in a case involving a 15-year-old Mexican shot dead by a U.S. agent from across the border in Texas that could have broad implications. The court’s ruling in the case argued before the eight justices could affect legal claims filed by non-U.S. citizens arising from executive actions […]
