By Ahmed Aboulenein | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq Ahmed Abdelsattar was 14 when Islamic State swept into Mosul and declared a caliphate in 2014. Fearing he would be indoctrinated and sent to fight by the militants, his parents took him out of school. Three years later, he sells ice cream at a refugee camp for internally displaced Iraqis. His family have lost their home and his father […]
Humanz Gorillaz (Parlophone) Four stars When Blur frontman Damon Albarn and his comic-book artist friend, Jamie Hewlett, created Gorillaz in 1998, they could scarcely have imagined how much mileage there was in cartoon creations Murdoc, Noodle, Russel and 2-D. Unlike the members of conventional groups, they do not age, burn out or fall out. Albarn turns 50 next year, but Gorillaz helps to keep him relevant. The […]
By Andrew Cawthorne and Alexandra Ulmer | CARACAS CARACAS Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro announced on Monday the creation of a new popular assembly with the ability to re-write the constitution, which foes decried as a power-grab to stifle weeks of anti-government unrest. “I don’t want a civil war,” Maduro told a May Day rally of supporters in downtown Caracas while elsewhere across the city security forces […]
Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge slid to its lowest level since before the credit crisis on Monday as the broad US stock market inched closer to a new all-time high and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite closed at a record. The Chicago Board Options Exchange’s implied volatility index, also known as the Vix, slipped as much as 9 per cent on Monday afternoon to touch 9.90, its lowest […]
“Aaaaaaayyyyooooo!!!” yells Will Buikema, moments before he reaches to shake hands with a man who crushes 300-pound NFL players for a living. Buikema, a video producer with SB Nation, is visiting Eagles linebacker Jordan Hicks in Philadelphia as part of an ill-fated attempt to make friends with the NFL star. It goes south quickly, to hilarious effect: Buikema is comically overexcited to meet Hicks, he botches an […]
By Ayesha Rascoe and Soyoung Kim | WASHINGTON/SEOUL WASHINGTON/SEOUL U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday opened the door to meeting North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, saying he would be honoured to meet the young leader under the right circumstances, even as Pyongyang suggested it would continue its nuclear weapons tests. “If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be […]
By Michel Rose and Sudip Kar-Gupta | PARIS PARIS Centrist presidential frontrunner Emmanuel Macron and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen attacked each other’s visions of France and the role it should play in Europe on Monday against a background of May Day rallies and protests. Macron sought for a third successive day to paint National Front (FN) candidate Le Pen as an extremist, while she portrayed […]
Vienna is different. That is what Austrians say about their own capital, but it is hard to understand what makes the city so special, until experiencing the wonder of it for yourself. Though Vienna is renowned as a city of tradition with a glorious past, being home to some of the most influential musicians, philosophers and scientists of all time, Vienna today is a must-visit destination in […]
The Panama Papers investigation into the offshore secrets of the rich and famous has been awarded a prestigious Pulitzer prize. The prize was given to the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), together with two US titles, McClatchy and the Miami Herald. The judges cited a series of stories from the Panama Papers and the “collaboration of more than 300 reporters on six continents to expose […]
Between Thumbtack, Yelp Angie’s List, and Amazon, it wouldn’t appear that the world needs a new platform that matches customers with service professionals. That’s not the way that Julio Vasconcellos sees it, clearly. Vasconcellos has spent the last year-plus working on a services platform called Prefer that relies exclusively on trusted referrals, replacing the wisdom of crowds with the wisdom of one’s friends when it comes to hiring a babysitter or accountant or housekeeper. In […]
Dubai, United Arab Emirates – 1 May 2017 It might take the Arab World 15 years to rebuild from the destruction caused by the Arab Spring, experts said at the Arab Media Forum on Monday. “It might take the countries at least 15 years to rebuild their economies and societies affected by the so-called Arab Spring – or what I call the Arab Destruction – that caused […]
In other words, the FEC can’t really do much to shut down these groups, even if they do have the mailing address of a state prison, as is the case with Pesce’s PAC. (Update: 10:51 a.m., April 7, 2017: The FEC on April 6 sent Pesce a letter asking him to verify the accuracy of his “Impeach the Assole” PAC filing. The letter reminds Pesce that it’s […]
T-Mobile is apparently planning to launch a high-end smartphone exclusively and offer it at a much more affordable price than a regular flagship. The self-proclaimed Uncarrier has been trying to revolutionize the mobile scene for a good while now and has constantly come up with aggressive offers to blow the competition out of the water. T-Mobile CEO John Legere has made it his mission to revolutionize the […]
Mr. Abbas was scheduled to meet with Mr. Trump in Washington on Wednesday as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. He has sought in recent weeks to rein in Hamas, cutting salaries and refusing to pay for electricity, in a bid to undermine the group’s authority. Gazans now have only a few hours of power a day. Continue reading the main story “Whether it’s a coincidence […]
Since the iPad arrived in 2010, the role of the PC has been greatly scrutinized. Is it a dying form factor? Is it something consumers no longer need? Is the smartphone the only device people will use someday? Will the tablet kill the PC? The debate is relevant because it helps businesses decide where to focus their resources. Clearly, the smartphone is many people’s primary […]
A club of top bankers, investors and Treasury officials will this week meet at the venerable Hay-Adams hotel in downtown Washington to discuss the US government’s borrowing plans. It could be a blockbuster meeting. The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee meets quarterly to discuss with senior government officials the best way for the US to finance its budget deficit. It is made up of senior executives from hedge […]
By Martin Petty and Manuel Mogato | MANILA MANILA Across Asia, more and more countries are being pulled into Beijing’s orbit, with the timid stance adopted by Southeast Asian nations on the South China Sea at a weekend summit a clear sign this fundamental geostrategic shift is gathering momentum. U.S. President Donald Trump’s flurry of calls at the weekend to the leaders of the Philippines, Thailand and […]
22 February 2016 – Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia posted the first major hint that the biggest scandal in Maltese history was about to break. “It’s traditional to eat lamb on Easter Sunday, so Konrad Mizzi and his estranged wife Sai Mizzi Liang will be getting theirs from New Zealand, courtesy of their fixer Brian Tonna, who has a desk at the Auberge de Castille”. […]
Hanging over discussion of Federal Reserve tightening has been a potentially market-shaking question: how to safely unwind the crisis-era asset purchases that bloated the central bank’s balance sheet. Policymakers led by Janet Yellen, the Fed chair, have approached the topic gingerly, acutely aware of the potential to repeat the so-called taper tantrum of 2013, where ill-timed talk of slowing bond purchases roiled global markets. Yet for all the […]
ROME Matteo Renzi, staging a political comeback less than five months after resigning as Italy’s prime minister, easily regained the leadership of the ruling Democratic Party (PD) on Sunday with an overwhelming victory in a primary election among party supporters. According to partial results, Renzi had about 72 percent of the vote, held in makeshift polling booths around the country. About 2 million party members voted in […]
When North Korea deployed hundreds of artillery units, submarines and soldiers to take part in its largest live-fire drill, it was intended as a chilling display of the reclusive regime’s military might. The country boasts the world’s fourth-largest standing army, with more than 1m troops as well as 7m reserves, and last week’s military exercise came as US President Donald Trump ramped up the pressure on Pyongyang […]
President Donald Trump was a distracting entertainment from the moment he launched his campaign in June of 2015 — until he wasn’t. His opening speech, in which he called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and told the world he would be the best jobs president “God ever created,” was looked at as the ravings of a man whose outsized ego was too big to be anything but hilarious. News […]
Before comedian Hasan Minhaj got up to poke fun at the assembled White House press corps last night, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein got up to celebrate it. The legendary Watergate duo gave a speech evoking their investigative reporting of the Nixon administration and calling on the current generation of journalists to practice careful, thorough and relentless reporting on the current White House. Below are their remarks, […]
By Shinichi Saoshiro | TOKYO TOKYO Asian stocks struggled for traction on Monday after weaker-than-expected U.S. economic growth data, while the dollar dropped against the yen amid tensions over North Korea and slipped versus the euro on evidence of strong euro zone inflation. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS inched up 0.1 percent and Japan’s Nikkei .N225 added 0.1 percent. Many markets in Asia […]
