By Alex Lawler and Rania El Gamal | LONDON/DUBAI LONDON/DUBAI Only five of 14 non-OPEC oil producers have agreed so far to meet the group on Saturday for talks aimed at widening a deal to reduce output, casting doubt on whether OPEC will secure the full cuts it is seeking, two OPEC sources said. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which finalised its first oil output […]
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: The Daesh group is calling for its followers to launch attacks in Bahrain, including those targeting American military personnel stationed on the tiny island.The call came in a video that also urges militants to attack the island’s Shiite population.Bahrain is home to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, as well as an under-construction British naval base. Officials with 5th Fleet and the Bahraini government […]
BAGHDAD Iraq’s parliament speaker called on Thursday for a government inquiry into air strikes on a western border town which killed around 60 people, mostly civilians. Hospital sources and local parliamentarians said three air strikes killed dozens of civilians, including 12 women and 19 children on Wednesday in a market district of the Islamic State-held town of Qaim, close to the border with Syria. A spokesman for […]
The release in cinemas last week of Ali Khaled’s Lights of Rome about the UAE football team at the World Cup in 1990 was the latest development in what has been a strong couple of years for documentaries in UAE cinema, as well as the wider Arab world which has a long history of documentary filmmaking. A high point for the industry here was undoubtedly 2015’s He […]
A Turkish cyberattack group is luring individuals to join a DDoS platform to compete for points through games which can be redeemed for hacking tools. The platform, dubbed Surface Defense, asks hackers to attack political websites using a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) tool called Balyoz, translated as Sledgehammer. In order to participate, users recruited from hacking forums must download the Surface Defense collaboration software and register. The platform […]
News stories are released on weekdays. 2 hours ago Vatican confirms ban on homosexual candidates for priesthood The Vatican has confirmed that homosexual men should not be ordained to the priesthood. In a new instruction for the training of seminarians, entitled The Gift of the Priestly Vocation, the Congregation for the Clergy says that the Church “cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those […]
Alcohol intake is associated with higher rates of developing cancer, among white men and women. As part of the association, white wine was the most obvious correlation. The study, published in the journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, suggested that nearly 3.6 percent of cancer cases around the globe can be associated with alcohol, especially the ones of the aerodigestive tract, […]
Microsoft has unveiled a new chatbot named Zo, but this time, she’s available on Kik, instead of Twitter, where earlier this year, her predecessor—known as Tay—went on a rather racist tirade before being shut down. I’ve never heard a clear explanation as to why Microsoft is making chatbots, and I have to assume the worst: They are on track to deliver ads. If you ever […]
Video Iran’s President on Trump and Nuclear Deal President Hassan Rouhani of Iran said on Tuesday that he would not let the United States back out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal, warning of unspecified repercussions if Washington reneges. By IRINN, VIA REUTERS. Photo by Iranian Presidency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. Watch in Times Video » TEHRAN — Iran’s president said on […]
By Hani Amara | SIRTE, Libya SIRTE, Libya Libyan forces backed by U.S. air strikes finished clearing the last Islamic State holdout in Sirte on Tuesday after a near seven-month battle for the militant group’s former North African stronghold. The forces gained full control over a final patch of ground in Sirte’s Ghiza Bahriya district after hours of clashes. Several dozen women and children who had been […]
By Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The U.S. failure to retaliate strongly for the 2014 cyber attack against Sony Pictures may have helped inspire Russian hackers who sought to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election, a senior congressional Democrat said on Tuesday. “Russia may have concluded that they could hack American institutions and there’d be no price to pay,” Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the […]
DUBAI An investigative body set up by the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said on Tuesday it should apologise for a deadly attack on a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital in August that the group said killed 11 people. But the Joint Group to Assess Incidents found the coalition was not responsible for or had legitimately targeted fighters in four other incidents that rights groups blamed on […]
By Ahmed Rasheed and Patrick Markey | BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq Iraqi army units surged towards the centre of Mosul on Tuesday in an attack from the city’s southeastern edges that could give fresh impetus to the seven-week-old battle for Islamic State’s Iraqi stronghold. Campaign commander Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah was quoted by Iraqi television as saying troops had entered Salam Hospital, less than a […]
In interviews with The New York Times, a former Taliban finance minister described how he traveled to Saudi Arabia for years raising money while ostensibly on pilgrimage. The Taliban have also been allowed to raise additional millions by extorting “taxes” by pressing hundreds of thousands of Pashtun guest workers in the kingdom and menacing their families back home, according to Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser. […]
Jason Dorfman, MIT CSAIL MIT researchers have unveiled a new way for consumers and businesses to take to the skies — by designing and developing their own drones. The program, created by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), is a prototype computer system (.PDF) which allows users to create a variety of drones. According to the lab, […]
BAGHDAD Iraqi army units launched a fresh assault in southeast Mosul on Tuesday and a senior commander was quoted as saying an armoured division had advanced to within less than a mile (1.5 km) of the Tigris River running through the city centre. Iraqi television quoted operations commander Lieutenant-General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah as saying troops had entered the Salam Hospital in the southeastern neighbourhood of Wahda, […]
newslide Jimmy Kimmel to host Oscars Late night television presenter Jimmy Kimmel has been give Oscar hosting honours for the next instalment of the Academy Awards in February. It will be a first for the comedian, who has hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC since 2003. Kimmel was praised for his work as host of this year’s Emmy awards. Kimmel tweeted, “Yes, I am hosting the Oscars. […]
By Hamid Shalizi | WAMA, Afghanistan WAMA, Afghanistan Afghan authorities are appealing to local elders in the remote eastern province of Nuristan to help prevent militants loyal to Islamic State from expanding into new territory. The initiative comes as fighters and their families, scattered in recent months by U.S. and Afghan air strikes and special forces ground operations, seek new safe havens. The mountainous and thickly forested […]
By Dominic Evans and Ahmed Rasheed | BAGHDAD BAGHDAD Western-backed Iraqi forces have begun shelling parts of west Mosul, residents said, in preparation for a new front against Islamic State seven weeks into a difficult campaign to drive the militants from the city. Federal police forces, stationed a few miles (km) south of Mosul, on the west bank of the Tigris river that divides the city, have […]
MOSCOW: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday he was confident Moscow and Washington can reach a deal in talks this week on the withdrawal of all rebels from the eastern part of the Syrian city of Aleppo.He told a news conference once the deal was reached, rebels who stay in the besieged eastern part of the city will be treated as terrorists and Russia will […]
By Kiyoshi Takenaka | TOKYO TOKYO Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will visit Pearl Harbor this month with U.S. President Barack Obama, becoming his country’s first leader to travel to the site of the Japanese attack 75 years ago that drew the United States into World War Two. “This will be a visit to console the souls of the victims,” Abe told reporters on Monday. “I would […]
By Idrees Ali | ABOARD A US MILITARY AIRCRAFT ABOARD A US MILITARY AIRCRAFT While the fight to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State is going to be difficult, it is “possible” it could be complete before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Monday. Some 100,000 Iraqi government troops, Kurdish security forces and mainly Shi’ite militiamen are participating […]
Two new characters have been added to Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. These are Captain America and Morrigan, revealed via an extended gameplay trailer shown during ESPN2’s rebroadcast of the Capcom Cup. The two join Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Ryu and Megaman X in the roster. The extended gameplay trailer reveals a number of things too such as Captain America’s Charging Star move and Morrigan’s winged acrobatics, which […]
In late July, Moussa Aksar, the director of Niger’s L’Évènement newspaper, answered his phone and heard a familiar voice warning him that he was, once again, in danger. “Be careful,” a friendly source told Aksar. “Look out for yourself and be careful what you say on the phone.” Aksar had just published Niger’s first exposé from the Panama Papers, the investigation based on a leak of documents […]
