By Angus McDowall , John Davison and Stephanie Nebehay | BEIRUT/GENEVA BEIRUT/GENEVA Syria’s army and allies closed in on areas near Aleppo’s Old City on Tuesday, looking closer than ever to achieving their most important victory of the five year civil war by driving rebels out of their last urban stronghold. Rebels said on Tuesday they would never abandon Aleppo, after reports that U.S. and Russian diplomats […]
Solar panels, which convert sunlight into electricity, are a key player in the fast-growing renewable energy sector, which also includes water- and wind-generated electricity The climate-friendly electricity generated by solar panels in the past 40 years has all but cancelled out the polluting energy used to produce them, a study said Tuesday. Indeed, by some calculations, the so-called “break-even point” between dirty energy input and clean output […]
Several European companies in China have been unable to remit dividends abroad following new exchange controls, in the first confirmation that a complicated approval process for making payments out of China is having a wider impact than first indicated. The EU Chamber of Commerce in Beijing said the payment difficulties experienced by EU companies were “disruptive to business operations”. The measures, introduced on November 28, appear designed […]
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 […]
By Jonathan Cable | LONDON LONDON Britain will most likely leave the European Union having signed a bilateral trade agreement, according to a Reuters poll of economists on Tuesday that also suggested there remains little chance of the country slipping into recession. Since the June 23 decision to leave the EU, Britain’s economy has performed much better than had been previously feared. The Bank of England is […]
A four-rotor “bunnycopter” developed at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory features propellers at different heights. Credit: Jason Dorfman/MIT CSAIL This fall’s new Federal Aviation Administration regulations have made drone flight easier than ever for both companies and consumers. But what if the drones out on the market aren’t exactly what you want? A new system from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is […]
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. […]
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. […]
The World Economic Forum is preparing to welcome Xi Jinping to its annual meeting in January, in what would be the first such appearance by a Chinese president. Mr Xi’s stop-off at the mountain resort will coincide with a state visit to Switzerland and planning is well under way, according to two people who have been involved in the arrangements. The annual meeting is a favourite watering […]
By Swati Pandey | WELLINGTON WELLINGTON In what can only be described as a space oddity, former astronaut Buzz Aldrin is being cared for in a New Zealand hospital by Dr David Bowie after being evacuated from the South Pole. In a truly remarkable coincidence, Aldrin’s doctor shares the name of the late British singer whose greatest hits included songs such as “Starman” and others about space […]
Tuesday 02.00 GMT Overview Stocks across Asia were higher, taking their lead from US and European bourses that shrugged off the result of a No vote in Sunday’s Italian referendum on constitutional reform. Hot topic China’s renminbi has become a talking point after a handful of web sites, including Google, generated apparently erroneous quotes for the currency around Rmb7.48 per US dollar — a rate that would […]
Starboy The Weeknd (XO) Four stars Only a mighty cynic would suggest celebrity couples time big announcements about their lives for promotional purposes. Brangelina’s messy divorce was probably not an elaborate publicity exercise for Brad Pitt’s new film, Allied, for example. Well, not intentionally. But the recent break-up of The Weeknd’s Abél Tesfaye and his girlfriend, model Bella Hadid, does provide an apt backdrop for his third […]
|By Arabian Post Staff|The Abu Dhabi real estate market has experienced further softening in both the residential and office markets, according to findings in the Cluttons Abu Dhabi Property Market Snapshot for Winter 16/17. Faisal Durrani, Head of research for Cluttons said there has been a notable acceleration in the residential market correction as a result of increasing global economic uncertainty and the protracted oil and gas […]
A parliament packed with lawmakers who oppose wage cuts and taxes, and who want to keep Kuwait’s sumptuous welfare state intact, is threatening the government’s attempts to close a gaping budget deficit. Opposition candidates won about 24 out of 50 seats last month in a parliamentary election seen by Kuwaitis as a referendum on austerity measures aimed at dealing with the 2016/17 shortfall, forecast at 9.5 billion […]
By Roberta Rampton and Ben Blanchard | WASHINGTON/BEIJING WASHINGTON/BEIJING The White House said on Monday it had sought to reassure China after President-elect Donald Trump’s phone call with Taiwan’s leader last week, which the Obama administration warned could undermine progress in relations with Beijing. The statement from a spokesman for U.S. President Barack Obama highlighted concerns about the potential fallout from Trump’s unusual call with Taiwan President […]
ABU DHABI // The memorial site dedicated to honouring UAE’s heroes will be open to the public for the first time on Tuesday. Visitors will now be able to explore Wahat Al Karama’s more than 46,000 square metres from 9am to 7pm every day – excluding national occasions, special events and visits from official delegations. Twice a day the memorial will feature guide-accompanied tours, one at 10am […]
MANILA – Reuters submitted five questions to the Presidential Communications Office of Rodrigo Duterte for the news agency’s investigation into police killings of drug suspects. The questions and replies are reproduced here in full, edited only for spelling and punctuation: 1. In anti-drug operations in which police say they kill suspects in self-defense (2,004 deaths), almost none of the suspects survive. Why is that? Answer: THE DRUG […]
Photo Destroyed buildings dominate an eastern Aleppo neighborhood as pro-government troops advanced toward the area on Monday. Credit George Ourfalian/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images BEIRUT, Lebanon — With the Syrian rebel enclave of eastern Aleppo shriveling, Russia said on Monday that it would start talks with the United States this week on a deal for holdout insurgents to leave, and that any who refused would be regarded […]
Good morning. Here’s our daily summary of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. Fake news is not the sole province of slimeball digital practitioners in faraway lands enabled by the righteous souls at Facebook and Google. There’s also — as has ever been so — the government. “Police investigating a notorious gang in […]
By Jonathan Spicer | NEW YORK NEW YORK The U.S. election of Donald Trump has created “considerable” uncertainty over the policies he will pursue so it is too soon for the Federal Reserve to judge whether its plan for gradual interest rate hikes needs adjusting, one of the most influential Fed policymakers said on Monday. In a speech that stepped well into fiscal policy, including a nod […]
By Michael Holden | LONDON LONDON The British government’s appeal against a legal ruling that it needs parliamentary approval to trigger the formal process of leaving the European Union is being heard in the country’s top court this week. Prime Minister Theresa May has announced that she will invoke “Article 50” of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty by the end of March and begin the formal Brexit negotiations […]
In the United States, too, I found resistance to the idea that Brexit was a harbinger of a Trump victory. I was assured over and over by liberal friends that Trump would never be president. American voters were too sensible to fall for his hateful demagogy. Trump, I was told, was a product of peculiarly American strains of populism that flare up periodically, like the anti-immigrant nativism […]
By Se Young Lee and Hyunjoo Jin | SEOUL SEOUL The heads of nine of South Korea’s top conglomerates controlling revenue equivalent to half the country’s economy face an unprecedented televised grilling by lawmakers on Tuesday, as the glare from a widening political scandal falls on Korea Inc. A parliamentary panel is investigating whether the so-called chaebol, which include the heavyweight Samsung and Hyundai Motor Groups, were […]
A new battle is breaking out among the titans of cloud computing, as competition in the fast-growing sector shifts to a fresh arena: artificial intelligence. Amazon is the latest tech company to join the fray, boosting its focus on artificial intelligence at a time when Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing division, is locked in competition with Microsoft and Google. AWS, which sells computing and data storage […]
