By Claudia Farhart | SYDNEY SYDNEY An Australian zookeeper on Tuesday urged people to catch and donate deadly funnel-web spiders, to help replenish stocks of antidote running low after a spate of spider bites. The Australian Reptile Park, the country’s sole supplier of funnel-web venom to antidote producers since 1981, relies on the public to hand in spiders that are milked for the venom used to produce […]
Donald Trump is now president. This challenges many of us, not least members of the press. Countless reporters are still shaken and stunned by how he singled out a CNN reporter, one of the most respected news outlets in the world, to attack and humiliate him during his first press conference since winning the elections. Worryingly, none of his fellow journalists in the room stood up for […]
ASTANA, KAZAKHSTAN: Syrian opposition vowed Monday to keep fighting if the peace talks fail with the war-torn country’s government in Kazakhstan, as the two sides opened indirect negotiations.The talks had been billed as the first time armed opposition groups would negotiate directly with President Bashar Assad’s regime since the conflict erupted in 2011.“If the negotiations succeed, then we are with the negotiations,” opposition spokesman Osama Abu Zeid […]
(Image: Project Zero) Cisco has closed a remote code execution vulnerability in its WebEx extension for Chrome, after Project Zero’s Tavis Ormandy alerted the networking giant to the issue on Saturday. According to Ormandy, the extension worked on any URL that matched against a magic pattern, and since it could be used in a non-visible iframe, the user need not be aware the extension was engaged. “The […]
The lead government negotiator, Bashar al-Jaafari, speaking to reporters after the opening session, responded by calling the opposition delegation “armed terrorist groups,” and accused them of “impertinent” and “provocative” behavior. Continue reading the main story The tension demonstrated the challenges that remain for Russia, the Syrian government’s most powerful backer, as the Russian government tries to show its approach can accomplish more than the largely fruitless efforts […]
By Michael Georgy | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq Mohamed Mahmoud is relieved he no longer has to watch Islamic State militants hang corpses from electricity poles, now that Iraqi forces have cleared the group from his east Mosul district. But he still fears for his safety. Like other Iraqis, he worries that destructive forces like sectarianism, which already provoked one civil war since the fall of Saddam […]
By Svetlana Reiter and Christian Lowe | MOSCOW MOSCOW President Vladimir Putin’s allies have passed a preliminary draft bill in Russia’s parliament that would ease some penalties for domestic violence, which supporters say would keep the state from meddling in the home but critics say would encourage abuse. Asked about the domestic violence law at a news conference last month, Putin said that while he was not […]
Credit: Lancaster University The popular Pattern Lock system used to secure millions of Android phones can be cracked within just five attempts – and more complicated patterns are the easiest to crack, security experts reveal. Pattern Lock is a security measure that protects devices, such as mobile phones or tablets, and which is preferred by many to PIN codes or text passwords. It is used by around […]
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi | ASTANA ASTANA A Syrian opposition delegation to peace talks set to open in the Kazakh capital on Monday said it would only discuss ways to salvage a fragile Russian-Turkish ceasefire it sees as having been violated chiefly by Iranian-backed militias in Syria. The Syrian government considers most of the rebel groups attending the conference to be foreign-backed “terrorists”, but says it is ready […]
January 23, 2017 by: Michael Peel in Manila Business from the US has driven a long boom in the Philippines’ flagship outsourcing industry, but potential political threats to ambitious growth plans now loom in both countries. Global companies are scrambling to work out whether tough talk from Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump, the Philippine and US presidents, will mean trouble if they run operations in the Philippines. […]
WASHINGTON The White House vowed on Sunday to fight the news media “tooth and nail” over what officials see as unfair attacks on President Donald Trump, setting a tone that could ratchet up a traditionally adversarial relationship to a new level of rancor. A day after the Republican president used his first visit to CIA headquarters on Saturday to accuse the media of underestimating the crowds at […]
In one of the first international phone conversations by the new US president since his inauguration, Israel PM Netanyahu is set to call Trump on Sunday afternoon: the civil war in Syria, the Palestinians and the nuclear agreement with Iran will be on the agenda Netanyahu told his weekly Cabinet meeting. PM Netanyahu: This evening there will be a telephone conversation between President Trump and myself. — […]
Mozilla argues that the internet’s decentralized design is under threat by a few key players, including Google, Facebook, Apple, Tencent, Alibaba and Amazon, monopolizing messaging, commerce, and search. Image: Google Much of the internet is in a perilous state, and we, its citizens, all need to help save it, says Mark Surman, executive director of Firefox maker the Mozilla Foundation. We may be in awe of the […]
A new study presents an unorthodox approach to protect the privacy of genomic data, showing how optimal trade-offs between privacy risk and scientific utility can be struck as genomic data are released for research. The framework can be used to suppress just enough genomic data to persuade would-be snoops that their best privacy attacks will be unprofitable. (via WSJ)
By Tom Perry and Laila Bassam | BEIRUT BEIRUT Islamic State is fighting hard to reinforce its presence in Syria as it loses ground in Iraq, deploying fighters to seize full control of a government-held city in the east while at the same time battling enemies on three other fronts. It underlines the residual strength of Islamic State even after its loss of a cluster of cities […]
Screw you. That was the direct message to the media from President Trump and his spokesman Saturday, using both CIA headquarters and the White House briefing room to underscore that there’s a new and combative sheriff in town. They accused the press of “deliberately false” reporting and intentionally trying to undermine him by lowballing the crowd at his inauguration. Even to some politically conservative observers, it appeared […]
By Michael Georgy | MOSUL MOSUL Residents of east Mosul held up their children and took selfies with Iraqi counter-terrorism commander Lieutenant General Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi after his men cleared Islamic State fighters from their neighbourhoods. But his tour on Saturday of homes once occupied by the militants was a reminder of the dangers ahead as security forces prepare to expand their offensive against the Sunni militants into […]
TRIPOLI A car bomb exploded late on Saturday close to the recently re-opened Italian embassy in the Libyan capital, a security official said. It was not clear who was responsible for the blast. Two charred bodies were recovered from the car, according to a statement on a social media page run by a local branch of the Red Crescent, but the identity of the occupants was unknown. […]
By Ola Lanre | RANN, Nigeria RANN, Nigeria Around 15 Boko Haram fighters were killed when the jihadists attacked a town in northeastern Nigeria, two days after the air force accidentally killed dozens of people there, local and military officials said. On Tuesday, the air force said it had bombed Rann in Borno state, epicentre of Boko Haram’s seven-year-long attempt to create an Islamic caliphate in the […]
Europe’s most prominent rightwing politicians came together in a rare show of unity in the German city of Koblenz, predicting that the same forces unleashed by US President Donald Trump would sweep them to power throughout western Europe in an insurrectionary “patriotic spring”. Speaking just hours after Mr Trump was inaugurated in Washington, party leaders said Europe was about to experience the same kind of political earthquake […]
A powerful bomb blast on Saturday in a busy market of a remote Pakistani region near the Afghan border killed at least 21 people and injuring more than 40 others. The bomb was placed in a box of vegetables in a market at Parachinar city and exploded during the early morning rush hour. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Pakistan Talibaan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi [LeJ], a […]
By Noel Randewich | SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is only hours old, but already a small parade of S&P 500 companies’ chiefs have voiced optimism that his promised tax cuts, stimulus spending and deregulation will boost corporate profits. In the days ahead of Friday’s inauguration, senior executives from Morgan Stanley (MS.N), Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) and other major U.S. corporations said the […]
Apple has filed a $1bn lawsuit against Qualcomm accusing the chipmaker of abusing a monopoly position, after the US and South Korean regulators argued it exploited its market dominance at the expense of handset makers. Shares in Qualcomm fell 2.4 per cent to $62.88 just before the markets closed on Friday when the lawsuit was published. This is the first direct challenge by one of Qualcomm’s major […]
By Gulsen Solaker and Tuvan Gumrukcu | ANKARA ANKARA The Turkish parliament has backed a plan to strengthen the powers of the presidency, paving the way for a referendum on the issue in spring which, if passed, could allow President Tayyip Erdogan to stay in office until 2029. Erdogan says the reform will provide stability in the European Union candidate country at a time of turmoil and […]
