By Phil Stewart and Robin Emmott | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS U.S. President Donald Trump’s defence secretary warned NATO allies on Wednesday that they must honour military spending pledges to ensure the United States does not “moderate” support for the alliance. Jim Mattis, on his debut trip to Brussels as Pentagon chief, also accused some NATO members of ignoring threats, including from Russia. “America cannot care more for your […]
This Jan. 14, 2015 file photo shows Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. Yahoo is warning users of potentially malicious activity on their accounts between 2015 and 2016, the latest development in the internet company’s investigation of a mega-breach that exposed 1 billion users’ data several years ago. Yahoo confirmed Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017, that it was notifying users that their accounts had potentially been compromised but declined […]
For the tattered Rashidiya neighborhood here, the recent battle never ended. It just shifted course along the river. Rashidiya was the last district in eastern Mosul declared liberated in late January, but army officers say Islamic State sleeper cells remain entrenched. Continue reading the main story And those are not the only troubles here. Even as American-backed Iraqi forces prepare an offensive against the Islamic State stronghold […]
By Roberta Rampton and Noah Barkin | WASHINGTON/BERLIN WASHINGTON/BERLIN U.S. Vice President Mike Pence heads to Europe this week to meet with allies seeking clarity on the Trump administration’s foreign policy strategy and its stance towards Russia after the resignation of the top White House national security aide. Pence, who has hewn more closely to Republican orthodoxy than his boss President Donald Trump, will attend the Munich […]
President-elect Donald Trump has a new ally in the legal defense of his executive order restricting travel from seven countries: the state of Texas. Texas’ Republican attorney general on Wednesday filed court papers endorsing Mr. Trump’s travel ban as a “lawful exercise” of executive authority and attacking legal challengers for trying to “interfere with the president’s national-security […] (via WSJ)
By Steve Holland and Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Senior Republicans issued their boldest challenge yet to U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday, promising to get to the bottom of the relationship between his aides and Russia, and calling for ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn to testify before Congress. Trump, facing a deepening crisis less than a month into his presidency, sought to focus the attention […]
WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday assailed what he said were illegal and “criminal” leaks from U.S. intelligence agencies in the controversy over contacts with Russian officials that forced his national security adviser Michael Flynn to resign. Speaking at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump called Flynn a “wonderful man” and added: “I think it’s very, very unfair what’s happened to […]
Fox News host Tucker Carlson had Erik Wemple on his show Tuesday night and attempted to paint The Washington Post media columnist as a hypocrite for covering the media’s white-gloved treatment of Russia while neglecting to examine “Russia Behind the Headlines,” a pro-Russia advertising insert syndicated by The Post. During the exchange, which lasted for 10 minutes, Carlson also accused Wemple of going easy on The Washington […]
Donald Trump responded to a growing crisis surrounding his White House on Wednesday by rekindling a public war with the US intelligence community, accusing it of mounting a dirty tricks campaign to undermine his presidency by leaking information about his administration’s ties to Russia. In an early-morning Twitter barrage the US president blamed the escalating crisis that forced this week’s departure of Michael Flynn, his national security […]
PARIS France said on Wednesday it would not accept interference by Russia or any other state in its presidential election, and would retaliate if necessary. The pledge by Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault followed complaints by the party of election frontrunner Emmanuel Macron that his campaign was the target of ‘fake news’ put out by Russian media, as well as internet attacks on its databases. “We will not […]
Munich mayor Dieter Reiter: “Employees are not satisfied with our IT. More than half are not happy.” Image: ZDNet/Munich City Council Munich’s city council has resolved to draw up a plan for abandoning LiMux, a Linux distribution created especially for its use, which the mayor wants ditched in favor of Microsoft’s Windows 10 by the end of 2020. Despite heavy criticism from opposition parties, the city’s governing […]
ROME The agenda of Syrian peace talks due to begin in Geneva next week will be line with a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at ending the conflict and will not be changed, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Wednesday. De Mistura, speaking in Rome, said the U.N. resolution 2254 was based on three main points: establishing governance, coming up with a new constitution, and […]
KOTA KINABALU: Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd said today it would extend the fullest cooperation to the police in their investigation into the death of a North Korean man at the KL International Airport 2 on Monday. MAHB chairman Tan Sri Wan Abdul Aziz Wan Abdullah said it included providing the footage of the CCTV cameras at the airport to assist the probe. “They (police) are still investigating […]
Why am I telling you this story? Because Israel is getting closer every day to wiping out any possibility of a two-state solution. Just last week, Netanyahu’s government pushed through the Knesset a shameful new law declaring that wildcat Jewish settlers who had illegally set up caravans on private West Bank Palestinian land, and erected their own settlement there, will have their settlements legalized, although the Palestinian […]
BEIRUT Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country sought good relations with its Gulf Arab neighbours as he began a one-day trip to Oman and Kuwait on Wednesday, his first since taking power in 2013. Relations between predominantly Shi’ite Iran and the mainly Sunni Arab countries of the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia, remain strained over their support for opposing sides in the conflicts in Syria and Yemen. […]
Submitted by Don Quijones via WolfStreet.com, Spain’s three biggest banks, Banco Santander, BBVA and Caixa Bank, have got off to a flying start this year having issued €8.6 billion in new debt, seven times the amount they sold during the same period of last year. The last time they rolled out so much debt so quickly was in 2007, the year that Spain’s spectacular real estate bubble […]
By Luke Baker | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON President Donald Trump will host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Wednesday, their first meeting since the inauguration and one that promises to shape the contours of Middle East policy for the years ahead. On the agenda are some of the region’s most volatile issues: the war in Syria, the Iran nuclear file and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, […]
BEIJING A court in southeastern China on Wednesday sentenced the former Communist Party boss of the northern province of Hebei to 15 years in jail after finding him guilty of corruption, the latest senior official jailed in a sweeping crackdown on graft. Zhou Benshun was the top official of Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing and is China’s most important steel producer. He had earlier worked with one-time […]
Since then the barriers to peace have grown even more formidable, and attitudes like Mr. Gatshan’s more entrenched. Continue reading the main story When President Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, meet in Washington on Wednesday they are likely to discuss a change of tactics, relying on Arab states like Qatar to help secure a two-state solution, under which Israel and an independent Palestinian state would […]
By Rozanna Latiff and Ebrahim Harris | KUALA LUMPUR KUALA LUMPUR The slight girl in a turquoise headscarf held back tears as she recalled what happened when she fled to Malaysia from Myanmar’s violence-hit Rakhine state. Just 12-years-old at the time, she was forced to wed a man she did not know, and who was more than a decade older than her. The teenager, who is not […]
WASHINGTON President Donald Trump’s handling of U.S. security information at his Florida resort came under congressional scrutiny on Tuesday as a watchdog panel asked the White House to explain reports that Trump dealt with a sensitive foreign policy issue in view of club guests. Representative Jason Chaffetz, head of the House of Representatives oversight committee, sent a letter asking the White House for details on how Trump […]
By Steve Holland and Richard Cowan | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump knew for weeks that national security adviser Michael Flynn had misled the White House about his contacts with Russia but did not immediately force him out, an administration spokesman said on Tuesday. Trump was informed in late January that Flynn had not told Vice President Mike Pence the whole truth about conversations he had […]
Texas Republican Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Tuesday that “creating backdoors into secure platforms would be a huge mistake.” “Instead, we need to find a way to keep our countries safe while also keeping our data safe and secure,” McCaul said at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. The remarks, geared for the presumably pro-encryption audience of cybersecurity professionals, indicate that the […]
BRUSSELS A Belgian minister arrived by bike to a news conference to promote cycling on Tuesday, only to find it had been stolen when he left half an hour later. Ben Weyts, minister of mobility for the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders, unveiled a plan to invest 300 million euros ($320 million) in cycle lanes until 2019, as part of a wider program to promote alternative modes of […]
