It was a clear and chilly afternoon in Moscow – March 18, 2014 – when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the documents to formally annex the Crimean Peninsula away from Ukraine. Frustrated Western governments soon began rolling out the only response they could agree on to Mr. Putin’s brazen redrawing of Europe’s borders: economic sanctions. Over the next two days, the United States would designate 27 individuals […]
When word came that a shaky evacuation deal had been reached, the remaining residents in the last patch of rebel-held Aleppo got moving. Doctors readied their patients, mothers packed their children’s bags and young men burnt their motorbikes to spite regime forces who might have wanted to take them. Relief mixed with heartbreak for residents who have lived in a world more nightmare than reality. Over a […]
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. Bob Dylan just won the Nobel Prize for Literature, enough said. “Poet laureate of the rock era.” But media critic, too? Patti Smith gained deserved attention for a notable performance of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” at the Nobel ceremony […]
A new deal has been reached to complete the evacuation of rebel-held areas of Syria’s east Aleppo which ground to a halt on Friday over demands from pro-government forces that people also be moved out of two villages besieged by rebels. Syrian rebel official al-Farouk Abu Bakr, speaking from Aleppo to news channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath on Saturday, said the deal comprised an evacuation from the two Shi’ite […]
DUBAI Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned Britain on Saturday as a “source of evil and misery” for the Middle East after British Prime Minister Theresa May called Iran a regional threat. “Shamelessly, the British have recently called … Iran a threat to the region, but everyone knows that … it is the British who have always been the source of threats, corruption and misery,” the […]
The number of passenger cars in use in the GCC region is expected to grow at 5 percent annually from an estimated 10.3 million in 2015 to 13.2 million in 2020, according to Alpen Capital. Its report said new passenger car sales are projected at 1.4 million in 2020, compared to 1.2 million in 2015. Although new sales declined in 2016 and will be under pressure in […]
California has long been a breeding ground for innovation and has fostered pioneering tech companies ranging from Disney to Apple. But in terms of self-driving cars—and based on several recent developments—a much more conservative Michigan is taking the pole position in nurturing the technology. Michigan and particularly the Detroit area is an ideal incubator for autonomous technology since it’s the center of the automotive universe […]
Nearly 300 mid-to-large private jets were delivered to the Middle East between 2006 and 2015, with an estimated value of over $14.6 billion, according to new research. Global Jet Capital, a provider of financing solutions for large-cabin, long-range private jets, revealed that 293 jets were delivered, costing between $25 million and $75 million each. It said that the largest number of deliveries were to Turkey (77), followed […]
By Aaron Ross | KINSHASA KINSHASA Talks in Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday between the ruling coalition and the opposition failed to reach a compromise on the political future of President Joseph Kabila, who is set to stay in power when his mandate ends on Monday. Delegates said the talks will resume on Wednesday once the Catholic bishops mediating the negotiations have returned from a trip […]
Newspapers reach nearly seven in 10 Americans in any given month, according to a new report from the ratings agency Nielsen. The report, drawn from a Nielsen Scarborough study, found that “more than 169 million adults in the U.S. read a newspaper in a month — whether it be in print, on a website or via mobile app.” Notably, more than half of monthly newspaper readers are reading […]
Memories of Home Two weeks later, Mrs. Mohammad and her two daughters were propelled into a local Walmart by Bayan’s sheer force of will. She longed for a pair of sparkly purple sneakers, and begged, nagged and nearly cried until her mother agreed. As they navigated the aisles, mother and daughters looked like members of two different families. Mrs. Mohammad wore her head scarf, neck-to-toe gown and […]
In this photo taken Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016, an Uber driverless car heads out for a test drive in San Francisco. Uber is bringing a small number of self-driving cars to its ride-hailing service in San Francisco – a move likely to both excite the city’s tech-savvy population and spark a conflict with California regulators. The Wednesday, Dec. 14, launch in Uber’s hometown expands a public pilot […]
By Jonathan Barrett and Harry Pearl | SYDNEY SYDNEY People living along Papua New Guinea’s coastline fled to higher ground on Saturday after a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck east of the Pacific nation, triggering a tsunami warning for parts of its archipelago. A couple of hours after the quake, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) said the threat had largely passed, although it said government agencies should […]
Following yesterday’s biggest, market-moving geopolitical event, in which a US oceanographic vessel had its underwater drone “stolen” by a Chinese warship “literally right in front of the eyes of the American crew”, we predicted that everyone would be eagerly waiting for Trump to chime in on the topic, and further escalating the diplomatic spat between the two nations which now involves China confiscating US marine drones, the […]
MOSCOW Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held phone calls with the foreign ministers of Turkey and Iran on Saturday to discuss the Syria crisis, the Russian foreign ministry said. The ministers stressed the importance of joint efforts by the international community to provide humanitarian aid in Syria and facilitate a political resolution of the conflict, the ministry said in a statement, adding that the calls were made […]
By Lucia Mutikani | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. homebuilding fell more than expected in November, tumbling from a nine-year high as construction activity declined broadly, the latest sign of slower economic growth in the fourth quarter. But the housing market remains on solid ground, with Friday’s report from the Commerce Department showing permits for the future construction of single-family homes, the biggest segment of the market, rising to […]
By Laila Bassam and Lisa Barrington | ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT A new deal has been reached to complete the evacuation of rebel-held areas of Syria’s east Aleppo which ground to a halt on Friday over demands from pro-government forces that people also be moved out of two villages besieged by rebels. Syrian rebel official al-Farouk Abu Bakr, speaking from Aleppo to news channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath on […]
The New York Times will vacate eight floors of its midtown headquarters in a bid to make some money and improve its efficiency. “The current way we have configured our office makes us slower and less collaborative,” New York Times CEO Mark Thompson and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in a memo to staff Friday. “It is also, frankly, too expensive to occupy this many floors when […]
BEIRUT A new deal has been reached to complete the evacuation of rebel-held areas of eastern Aleppo which stalled over demands from pro-government forces that two villages besieged by rebels must also be evacuated, a Syrian rebel told news channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath on Saturday. Rebel official Al-Farouk Abu Bakr, speaking from Aleppo, said the deal comprised an evacuation from the two Shi’ite villages besieged by insurgents, the […]
Ghost sharks, officially called chimaeras, have been living in the deep sea swimming at great depths of about a mile and half below the ocean long before the time of the dinosaurs. These prehistoric marine creatures, however, are rarely seen and scientists know little about them. Now, the world has a chance to see this rare deep-sea shark as a video of this creature has finally been […]
When it emerged from stealth in 2011, MapR was an outlier in the Hadoop community. At the time, Hadoop was defined largely by two projects adapted from Google research: MapReduce, which introduced highly linear, massively parallel processing to big data, and the HDFS file system, which could accommodate data by the petabyte. And at the time, Hadoop was defined as an Apache open source platform. MapR’s message, […]
Capitalism as we know it is irrevocably in its death throes, argues German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, which on its own is not a novel thesis. In our age of regular financial crashes and bursting bubbles, illiberal movements and borderless wars, even Nobel Prize winners and mainstream thinkers – I think of Joseph Stiglitz, among others – say that the post-war free market regime is broken, and that […]
WASHINGTON — American-led airstrikes have destroyed 14 Syrian Army tanks at a military base in central Syria that, just days earlier, had been captured by Islamic State fighters, the United States military said Friday. The strikes against the group of Russian-made T-72 battle tanks on Thursday near Palmyra came one day after senior American officers in the region warned their Syrian and Russian counterparts that United States […]
Where there was discord, Donald Trump has remarkably brought harmony. He has brought peace between the markets and Janet Yellen, as traders at last appear to believe her forecast for interest rates over the next year. The Federal Reserve says it intends to raise rates three times next year, and the market implicitly, through Fed Funds futures, puts the chance of this happening at almost exactly 50 […]
