The proposal — opposed by businesses that make and use the solvent — comes eight years after the European Union approved a ban on sales of methylene chloride paint strippers to consumers and companies, with the exception of businesses using it in industrial sites with protective equipment and other cautionary measures. The chemical is also known as dichloromethane. The would-be rule is the third the EPA has […]
Video is now deemed essential for any media organization. But do consumers really like it as much as, say, advertisers? A new report suggests not. For sure, journalism had a huge moment in 2016. In a few short months, Facebook launched a live video offering (and began paying publishers to use it), Snapchat expanded its advertising options, and several news organizations undertook ambitious forays into virtual reality. […]
SACRAMENTO, Calif. Several months of wet weather have dramatically eased California’s years-long drought, replenishing reservoirs and parched aquifers and forcing state water officials to switch – at least temporarily – from managing shortages to avoiding floods. With rain continuing to fall following a deluge that brought 20 inches (50 cm) of precipitation to some areas this week, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains – crucial for […]
By Yun Hwan Chae | SEOUL SEOUL Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon polled second in a survey of South Korean presidential favourites released on Friday, 11 percentage points behind former opposition leader Moon Jae-in, who led the Gallup Korea poll at 31 percent. South Korea has been gripped by a political crisis since lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in December to impeach President Park Geun-hye over an influence-peddling scandal. […]
By Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The Obama administration on Thursday announced the repeal of a measure granting automatic residency to virtually every Cuban who arrived in the United States, whether or not they had visas, ending a longstanding exception to U.S. immigration policy. The end of the “wet foot, dry foot” policy, which allowed any Cuban who reached U.S. soil to stay but returned any picked […]
By David Shepardson | NEW YORK NEW YORK Japan’s Takata Corp is expected to plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing as early as Friday as part of a $1 billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over its handling of air bag ruptures linked to 16 deaths worldwide, sources said. The settlement includes a $25 million criminal fine, $125 million in victim compensation and $850 million to compensate […]
The seven candidates for France’s centre-left presidential nomination showed their profound differences on the economy and the EU on Thursday night even as they scramble to pull together a fractured Socialist party ahead of a widely expected crushing defeat in the spring. A little more than a week before the first round of primary elections, the presidential hopefuls quarrelled on primetime television over the legacy of the […]
Donald Trump’s upcoming presidency has led many investors to size up oil, coal and gold trades that could benefit from the sweeping changes he has promised. But a growing band of specialist commodity traders think investors may be overlooking the one raw material in line for bigger price gains than others when the US president-elect takes office: uranium. While interest in the key fuel for nuclear power […]
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi | AMMAN AMMAN Syrian army command said on Friday that Israel fired rockets at a major military airport west of Damascus, the capital, and warned Tel Aviv of repercussions of what it called a “flagrant” attack. Syrian state television quoted the army as saying several rockets were fired from an area near Lake Tiberias in northern Israel just after midnight which landed in the […]
The Pew Research Center survey found 77 percent of American adults owning a smartphone in late 2016, more than double the level of 2011, when 35 percent said they used such devices More than three-fourths of American adults now use a smartphone, helping to boost internet adoption to a record level, a survey showed Thursday. The Pew Research Center survey found 77 percent owning a smartphone in […]
By Anna Koper and Andrew Osborn | WARSAW/MOSCOW WARSAW/MOSCOW Poland on Thursday welcomed several thousand U.S. troops along with tanks and heavy equipment under a planned NATO operation to beef up its Eastern European allies, vexing the Kremlin, which said the troops’ presence is a threat to Russia. The largest U.S.military reinforcement of Europe in decades of around 2,700 troops, out of 3,500 planned, arrived as part […]
President-elect Donald Trump may be at war with the intelligence community, but on Thursday his pick to head the CIA tried to bridge the rift between the incoming president and his spies, saying he accepts the assessment that Russia meddled in the election to boost the Republican’s candidacy. “It’s pretty clear about what took place here, about Russian involvement in efforts to hack information and to have […]
The UAE Ambassador to Afghanistan Juma Al Kaabi arrived in Abu Dhabi aboard a military plane on Thursday to receive further treatment from injuries suffered in a bombing in Kandahar. Mr Al Kaabi was accompanied by another UAE Embassy official and an Afghan translator who were also injured in Tuesday’s attack, which Afghan officials now say was carried out with help from outside the country. The injured […]
The US Department of Justice inspector general said on Thursday that he is investigating actions taken by DoJ and FBI officials, including FBI director James Comey, during the 2016 presidential election. The surprise probe was launched in response to calls from Congress and members of the public, who have questioned whether Mr Comey’s statements in the final weeks of the campaign were politically motivated, according to a […]
Josh Benson and Tom McGeveran, who founded the politics, culture and media site Capital New York in 2010 before selling it to Politico in 2013, are leaving the company. The departures were announced in a memo to staff from Politico Editor-in-Chief John Harris, who also said Politico’s statewide operations would be consolidated in Rosslyn. Launched in 2015, Politico States has established a presence in states across America, […]
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Wearable sensors that monitor heart rate, activity, skin temperature and other variables can reveal a lot about what is going on inside a person, including the onset of infection, inflammation and even insulin resistance, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. An important component of the ongoing study is to establish a range of normal, or baseline, […]
Astronomers are conducting a search for planets in the nearby star system Alpha Centauri. Such planets could be the targets for an eventual launch of miniature space probes by the Breakthrough Starshot initiative. (via WSJ)
Samsung fans who have been hankering for the Android 7.0 Nougat software update to hits their Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge smartphones will be pleased to learn that the company is now rolling out the update. That’s right! Even though a leaked release schedule from Samsung hinted that the latest update for its 2016 flagship Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge smartphones would be released on […]
By Mehreen Zahra-Malik | ISLAMABAD ISLAMABAD A Pakistani Senate committee is set to debate how to prevent the country’s blasphemy laws being applied unfairly, despite opposition from religious conservatives who support legislation that carries a mandatory death penalty for insulting Islam. Senator Farhatullah Babar told Reuters that the Senate Committee on Human Rights, of which he is a member, will start discussions on blasphemy laws as early […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. Donald Trump is nothing if not transparent, especially when it comes to views of the press and outright evasions about his business holdings. That was self-evident at his Wednesday spectacle (labeled “press conference”) in which he bashed media and also […]
SEOUL Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said upon returning to his native South Korea on Thursday that he would make a “selfless decision” soon with regard to his political career. Ban is expected to run for president but has yet to declare his candidacy. Ban told reporters and well-wishes at Incheon airport near Seoul that he would use his experience at the United Nations to solidify South […]
While the 2011 revolution cannot be solely credited for creating an alternative music scene in Egypt, the ensuing political turmoil did trigger an outpouring of creativity. Music festivals from SOS to the Cairo Jazz Festival, and smaller independent music labels such as 100Copies, had been sowing the seeds of an alternative home-grown alt-music scene since the late 1990s, but the protests that began on the streets on […]
KUCHING: Sarawak has never before seen a leader who made such a great impact on the state and its people like Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem who died yesterday just two weeks shy of his 73rd birthday. He had succumbed to a heart ailment that left him with having to use a pace-maker to stabilise his heartbeat after hardly three years in office and six months […]
Having publicly trashed the US economy’s performance during the presidential campaign, Donald Trump has become its most prominent cheerleader. The president-elect has in recent weeks claimed credit for surging consumer confidence, stellar equity prices and stronger end-of-year household spending, arguing there was “no hope” before he arrived on the scene. To Barack Obama’s supporters, claims from Mr Trump that the US was cloaked in economic gloom before […]
