WASHINGTON — The White House argued on Tuesday that the “unique circumstances” presented by the opportunity to return Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl gave President Obama the authority to lawfully bypass a federal statute requiring the Pentagon to notify Congress a month before he transferred the five Taliban detainees necessary to complete the deal. But the White House was forced by turns to defend its decision not to notify Congress […]
Air India Ltd. said it’s demanding compensation from Boeing Co for delivering 787 Dreamliner aircraft that don’t meet promised fuel-efficiency targets because the planes are heavier than planned. Design changes made after targets were set meant some 787s are overweight, Air India Chairman Rohit Nandan said in an interview in Doha, Qatar. The Mumbai-based airline and the planemaker are negotiating a formula for compensation, which may be […]
Abu Dhabi’s economy expanded an inflation-adjusted 5.2 percent in 2013, its official statistics centre said on Tuesday, a much slower rate than the government had previously estimated but still higher than 4.8 percent in 2012. The figure from the Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi (SCAD) was much lower than an estimate in February by the emirate’s Department of Economic Development (DED), which said real GDP grew 7.4 percent […]
Voters at a polling station in the Maidan district of Damascus were regaled by Damascene sword dancers and Assad chants. Syria went to the polls Tuesday, despite a civil war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. Pro-government voters stuffed ballot boxes and held rallies outside polling stations as Syrians in regime-held areas of the country cast ballots in an election widely seen as a bid […]
Global airline executives might have gathered in Qatar for their annual general meeting this week to bemoan their lack of profitability, but the event itself was certainly not short of a dime or two. The title sponsor and host of the IATA AGM was Qatar Airways – and the Gulf state’s flag carrier wasted no time in using the annual mix of conference, talking shop and lavish […]
CAIRO, EGYPT — Syria is holding presidential elections Tuesday, despite a deadly civil war that has left millions of Syrians unable or unwilling to vote. Voters in areas controlled by Syria’s government went to the polls Tuesday, in an election set to give President Bashar al-Assad his third seven-year term. Syria’s Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi urged people to vote, calling Tuesday a “historic day” for Syria that […]
Apple Inc on Monday took the wraps off mobile applications that pool and analyze health and home data, kicking off an annual developers’ conference lacking in big surprises, despite hopes the iPhone maker would offer a glimpse into its secretive pipeline of products. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and software-engineering boss Craig Federighi told several thousand developers about new features that come with the latest “Yosemite” Mac […]
PARIS — The three young Frenchmen were arrested as they tried to make their way to Syria to wage jihad. They had not harmed anyone in France or made plans to do so, according to the evidence at their trial in January, but in France these days, seeking to fight in Syria is enough to bring a charge of plotting terrorism — and in this case sentences […]
Inside a nondescript office building in central London, a roomful of men and women sit at computer screens and talk over Skype with people in faraway places. Sharp-edged Cantonese fills the air, and a flat-screen TV emits a continuous din. It’s the chanting, singing Midlands crowd at Birmingham, England’s Villa Park Stadium: Liverpool at Aston Villa. The match has just kicked off. The name of the company, […]
CAIRO — Mohamed Morsi did not enjoy being ridiculed on television as president. With the election of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the laughter has stopped. Bassem Youssef, a comedian whose satire of the politically powerful became emblematic of freedom in post-revolutionary Egypt, said Monday that he was ending his popular weekly television show, citing unspecified political pressure and threats. “We consider the shutting down of the show a […]
A heavy dust storm roared into Iran’s capital on Monday, blacking out the sun in a swirling cloud and tearing down trees in a squall that reportedly killed at least four people and injured 30. The storm struck Tehran with winds of up to 68 miles per hour, state television reported. The television report said the storm killed five people. Iran’s official IRNA news agency said it […]
Photo: AFP/GETTY As the Newark by-election approaches, the Prime Minister is reported to have said in a private – inevitably leaked – conversation that if the wrong candidate becomes president of the European commission it will trigger an early referendum and a likely Brexit. That’s some tough talk from a Tory leader who has previously insisted that he wants to stay in the EU. Labour says he’s […]
JERUSALEM — President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority swore in a transitional government on Monday intended to unify the West Bank and Gaza after seven years of division, though the run-up was marred by last-minute disputes over its composition. The move is likely to complicate further the Palestinians’ already fraught relations with Israel and put them under international scrutiny because the new government is supported by […]
A new Palestinian government is scheduled to be sworn in on Monday in an effort to unite warring Palestinian factions for the first time in seven years. The move would bring together the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is dominated by the mainstream Fatah faction, and its rival Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, under the terms of a unity pact reached last month. The development […]
The new Palestinian government, scheduled to be sworn in on Monday at 1 p.m. (6 a.m. Eastern time) in the West Bank city of Ramallah, will be led by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and is to consist of 16 other ministers, some handling more than one portfolio. Three ministers are to be from the Gaza Strip following a reconciliation pact signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization, dominated […]
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A Syrian activist group said government air raids have killed nearly 2,000 civilians this year in and around Aleppo, the country’s largest city. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday 567 children and 283 women were among those killed in the northern city, which is a stronghold for opposition fighters. The figure, which relies on the Britain-based group’s contacts with activists and others on the ground, amounts to […]
The Bahrain-based Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) said on Thursday secretary general Khaled Al Fakih had left the organisation to pursue other opportunities. Al Fakih, a Lebanese-born commercial banker, had been secretary general since February 2012, overseeing one of the main standard-setting bodies for Islamic finance. Deputy secretary general Khairul Nizam will take over his duties while AAOIFI looks for a new secretary […]
Asian shares edged higher on Friday, catching a lift from another record close on Wall Street, while the dollar groaned under the pressure of slumping U.S. yields. The S&P 500 index .SPX posted its third record closing high in four sessions, as investors shrugged off the first quarterly contraction of the U.S. economy in three years and focused on signs of a strengthening labor market. MSCI’s broadest […]
Sassan Soleimani, the director of “Happy in Tehran,” a viral YouTube tribute to Pharrell Williams that offended Iran’s conservative judiciary, was released on bail Thursday, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group. Evidence of the director’s freedom, after nine days in custody, came in the form of a self-portrait he sent to Kambiz Hosseini, a popular expatriate satirist whose […]
A senior Saudi Arabian cleric has issued an edict against online chatting between the sexes, equating such activity to the prohibitions on the physical mingling of unrelated men and women, the news agency Al Arabiya reported Thursday. It said the cleric, Sheikh Abdullah al-Mutlaq, a member of the Saudi Committee of Senior Scholars, had warned that such conversations were religiously forbidden and might lead to sin. Al […]
WASHINGTON — During the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States military often carried out dozens of daily operations against Al Qaeda and other extremist targets with heavily armed commandos and helicopter gunships. But even before President Obama’s speech on Wednesday sought to underscore a shift in counterterrorism strategy — away from the Qaeda strongholds in and near those countries — American forces […]
The property game: Help to Buy is also helping Londoners Photo: Justin Sutcliffe The Government is persistently defensive about its Help to Buy scheme, partly because the criticism has been so consistent. Two parts of the scheme have been rolled out by David Cameron in an attempt to improve the route to property ownership, or in his emotive words: “As prime minister I am not going to stand […]
The idea for Sudamed came to doctor-turned-entrepreneur Mazin Khalil two years ago while standing in a hospital reception in Khartoum. He watched a father walk up to the reception with a newborn baby and ask for a particular doctor, only to be told that the doctor was not working until six hours later. Sudamed website Mr. Khalil, 25, saw a simple solution. He set out to create […]
