ABUJA Nigeria’s army has captured a key Boko Haram camp, the Islamist militant group’s last enclave in the vast northeastern Sambisa forest that was its stronghold, President Muhammadu Buhari said on Saturday. Boko Haram has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than two million during its seven-year insurgency to create an Islamic state governed by a strict interpretation of sharia law in the northeast of Africa’s most […]
A round up of some of 2016’s most significant corporate events and news stories. Smartphone sales © EPA A bright start to the year for Samsung Electronicswent up in smoke, after it took the unprecedented decision to axe its Galaxy Note 7 line, following a spate of safety issues that saw the smartphone banned from aircraft, writes Nic Fildes. The 2016 Galaxy Note iteration won substantial praise […]
So it would appear. Bit Player Turns Star Shawn Harrington was one of the bit players in “Hoop Dreams.” A sophomore point guard at Marshall who moved from the junior varsity to the varsity during that glorious 1991 tournament run, he had his own star turn a few years later. After bouncing around several colleges — during which time he both got a degree and became a […]
UNITED NATIONS: In a striking rupture with past practice, the United States allowed the UN Security Council on Friday to condemn Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as a “flagrant violation” of international law. In doing so, the outgoing Obama administration brushed aside Donald Trump’s demands that the US exercise its veto and provided a climax to years of icy relations with Israel’s leadership.The […]
When that ultimately did not stop the Council from acting, Mr. Netanyahu’s team expressed blistering anger at Mr. Obama. An Israeli official, insisting on anonymity to maintain the veneer of diplomatic protocol, gave a statement to multiple reporters on Friday blasting Mr. Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, by name. Continue reading the main story “President Obama and Secretary Kerry are behind this shameful move […]
By Aaron Ross | KINSHASA KINSHASA Political parties in Democratic Republic of Congo paused talks on Saturday, close to a deal under which President Joseph Kabila would leave power in 2017 and elections would be held the same year, participants at the talks said. The talks between the ruling coalition and opposition parties mediated by a conference of Catholic bishops broke up at around 5.30 a.m local […]
Weakening encryption is against US nation interests, says a congressional working group. Image: iStockphoto Any attempt to weaken encryption is against the national interest, a group of US lawmakers has warned. The widespread use of strong encryption has lead to complaints from law enforcement agencies that they are unable to access to communications of criminals – the so-called ‘going dark’ issue. This has lead to calls for […]
A hundred years ago, an arms race between the dominant global superpower the (British Empire) and a rising power (Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany) culminated in the mass slaughter of World War One. The deep mistrust between the United States and the People’s Republic of China has all the potential to spawn a traumatic chapter in international relations. Despite its “pivot” to Asia, the Obama White House was cautious […]
The chief executive of Lockheed Martin Corp told President-elect Donald Trump on Friday that she was committed to driving down the cost of the company’s F-35 fighter jet, a day after Trump took aim at the cost of the F-35 in a Twitter post. CEO Marillyn Hewson said she spoke with Trump on Friday afternoon and assured him that she had heard his message “loud and clear” […]
That longstanding principle has largely collapsed since the victory by Mr. Trump, who campaigned on a strategy of breaking all the rules and has continued to speak in unmodulated tones. Continue reading the main story “In some ways, Trump is neutering the Obama administration,” said Douglas G. Brinkley, a professor of history and a presidential historian at Rice University in Houston. “They’ve avoided personally attacking each other, […]
By Timothy Mclaughlin and Renita D. Young | CHICAGO CHICAGO A Singaporean blogger who has stirred controversy in his home country is being detained by U.S. immigration officials, the Department of Homeland Security said on Friday. Amos Yee, 18, who was jailed earlier this year in the Southeast Asian city-state, was stopped by customs agents at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Dec. 16 as he sought political […]
The suspect in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack was killed in a pre-dawn shoot-out with police in a suburb of the northern Italian city of Milan on Friday, Italy’s interior minister said. “The man killed was without a shadow of doubt Anis Amri,” Marco Minniti said, referring to the 24-year-old Tunisian who is suspected of driving the truck that smashed through a Berlin market on Monday […]
Submitted by Federico Pieraccini via Strategic-Culture.org, Understanding the objectives and logic that accompany the expansion of nations or empires is always of paramount importance in helping one draw lessons for the future In this series of four articles I intend to lay a very detailed but easily understandable foundation for describing the mechanisms that drive great powers. To succeed, one must analyze the geopolitical theories that over […]
By Warren Strobel and Arshad Mohammed | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has asked two Cabinet departments for the names of government officials working on programs to counter violent extremism, according to a document seen by Reuters and U.S. officials. The requests to the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security involve a set of programs that seek to prevent violence by extremists […]
WASHINGTON U.S. federal authorities cautioned local law enforcement on Friday to be aware that supporters of Islamic State have been calling for their sympathizers to attack holiday gatherings in the United States, including churches, CNN reported. The warning, issued in a bulletin to local law enforcement, said there were no known specific, credible threats, CNN said. The notice from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of […]
The Court of Appeal on Friday upheld the more than two-year prison sentence the Phnom Penh Municipal Court gave opposition lawmaker Um Sam An for Facebook posts critical of the government’s demarcation of the country’s frontier with Vietnam. Presiding Judge Seng Sivutha, in upholding the lower court’s October 10 verdict, said the CNRP lawmaker’s actions in posting disinformation via video “impacted the government’s reputation” and caused “chaos […]
IDC predicts that 35 percent of leading organizations in logistics, health, utilities, and resources will explore the use of robots to automate operations by 2019. What does the future hold for robotics? It’s hard to say, given the rapid pace of change in the field as well as in associated areas such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. But one thing seems certain: Robots will play an […]
RAMALLAH, West Bank A U.N. Security Council vote to adopt a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements marks “a day of victory,” a senior Palestinian official said on Friday. “This is a day of victory for international law, a victory for civilized language and negotiation and a total rejection of extremist forces in Israel,” Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters. “The international community has told […]
Yubico announced its plans to support Microsoft’s Windows Hello platform back in September at the Ignite conference, with the goal of bringing strong, hardware-based authentication to Windows 10. Finally, after nearly two months of waiting, the YubiKey for Windows Hello app has landed in the Windows Store. It’s a strong solution for retrofitting the additional protection of Windows Hello on systems that don’t have support for facial […]
The UN Security Council has passed a resolution demanding that Israel stop building settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories, after the US abstained in spite of ferocious criticism from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. The resolution was passed with 14 votes from the 15-member security council, hours after a senior Israeli official accused US President Barack Obama of working “behind Israel’s back” to cook up the resolution, in […]
UNITED NATIONS — Defying extraordinary pressure from President-elect Donald J. Trump and furious lobbying by Israel, the Obama administration on Friday allowed the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution that condemned Israeli settlement construction. The administration’s decision not to veto the measure broke a longstanding American policy of serving as Israel’s sturdiest diplomatic shield at the United Nations. While the measure will have no practical […]
By Michelle Nichols | UNITED NATIONS UNITED NATIONS The Obama administration on Friday allowed the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements, defying pressure from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump as well as Israel and several U.S. senators who urged Washington to use its veto. The resolution was put forward at the 15-member council for a vote on Friday by New Zealand, […]
BRUSSELS Belgian police found and neutralised a potential explosive device in a bag left outside an office used by a Turkish cultural association in Brussels on Friday. Police were called after a plastic bag was left in front of the building at around 1.30 p.m. (1230 GMT). Brussels prosecutors said the suspected device included gas cylinders and experts were still examining it to establish, for example, if […]
By Andrew Osborn and Vladimir Soldatkin | MOSCOW MOSCOW Russia’s Vladimir Putin said on Friday he was unfazed by President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to boost the U.S. nuclear arsenal, praising Trump for being in touch with U.S. public opinion while branding the Democrats sore election losers. Speaking at his annual news conference in Moscow, the Russian president said earlier comments he had made about his country’s own […]
