By Se Young Lee and Ju-min Park | SEOUL SEOUL A South Korean special prosecutor’s office will question Samsung Group [SAGR.UL] leader Jay Y. Lee as a suspect in a widening influence-peddling scandal that may force President Park Geun-hye from office. Prosecutors have been looking into whether Samsung payments of about 30 billion won ($25 million) for a business and foundations backed by Park’s friend, Choi Soon-sil, […]
Alibaba wants to transform the retail sector with a US$2.6 billion buyout that it says will break down the barriers between offline and online. The Chinese e-commerce giant said its investment unit was working with Intime Retail’s founder, Shen Guo Jun, to take the department store chain private with a projected HK$19.8 billion (US$2.6 billion). The funds would be raised through internal cash and external debt financing. […]
By Linda Sieg | TOKYO TOKYO A South Korean political vacuum and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s concerns about his conservative political base have rekindled a feud over wartime history, just as tension over North Korea makes cooperation between the U.S. allies as vital as ever. The row over “comfort women”, as those forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels are known, coincides with uncertainty over […]
Bjarni Benediktsson, leader of the conservative Independence Party, is Iceland’s new prime minister. (Halldor Kolbeins/Agence France-Presse) The Panama Papers — a huge leak of documents detailing the alleged secret offshore holdings of a global elite — were released in April 2016. The leak made headlines all over the world, but its impact was probably most keenly felt in Iceland. Just two days after the leak appeared, Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson […]
Since the start of the 21st century the South American nation of Suriname, population 540,000, has been riding a commodity boom that yielded major benefits for a country rich in bauxite, gold, oil and bananas. From 2000 to 2014, annual per capita income more than quintupled to almost $10,000. Child mortality fell by a third. A child born there today can expect to live to 70, up […]
By Shadia Nasralla | VIENNA VIENNA Iran decided not to escalate a stand-off over the extension of U.S. sanctions at a meeting of diplomats overseeing the nuclear deal it reached with world powers in 2015, senior Russian and Iranian diplomats said after the session on Tuesday. Tehran threatened last month to retaliate against a U.S. Senate vote to extend the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA), saying it violated […]
Morrison & Foerster LLP is the latest winner in the government-departure sweepstakes, hiring John Carlin, the top national security lawyer at the Justice Department, to be a partner at the firm. Hires from federal government have been picking up as the White House administration turns over. For 43-year-old Mr. Carlin, a government lifer, the move comes […] (via WSJ)
Prince Alwaleed: “This transaction marks yet another success for Kingdom’s value realization strategy” 10 January 2017 Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) chaired by HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, announces that it has successfully sold its 100% interest in the Mövenpick Hotel Ambassador Accra to QG Africa Hotel LP, a Mauritius-based fund managed by Quantum Global Investments Africa Management Ltd. for a consideration of $100M. The […]
Submitted by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute, Sharia courts administering Islamic justice in Britain are run by clerics who believe some offenders should have their hands chopped off, according to Muslim scholar Elham Manea. She described the prevailing attitude as “totalitarian” and as more backward than some parts of Pakistan. Teaching children fundamental British values is an act of “cultural supremacism,” according to the National Union […]
PARIS Far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said on Tuesday she would seek to repatriate production of French motor vehicles and other industrial goods – just as President-elect Donald Trump hopes to do in the United States. Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on cars made abroad, saying the practice costs American jobs. He has praised Ford Motor Co’s decision last week to scrap a plan […]
After years of neglect, Google is finally updating Google Voice with a new version, it touted in a banner on Monday. “The new Google Voice is here,” a banner read on the Google Voice website, with a “try now” button that didn’t work. Google confirmed to 9to5Google that the banner was released early in a mistake, but said a new version is indeed coming soon. Google said […]
Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) said Monday that it would rename itself Altaba Inc and Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer would step down from the board after the closing of its deal with Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N). Yahoo has a deal to sell its core internet business, which includes its digital advertising, email and media assets, to Verizon for $4.83 billion. The terms of that deal could be amended […]
Jared Kushner has been named senior adviser to Donald Trump, formalising the role of the president-elect’s son-in-law as one of the most powerful people in the incoming White House. The 35-year-old property developer, who is married to Mr Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka, will be taking the role without salary. Ms Trump will not be taking an immediate role in the administration. Transition officials said Mr Kushner would […]
Mistakes can lurk in your writing, whether it’s a story, article, blurb, e-book, caption, tweet, menu, flier, Facebook status, blog post, script, advertisement, graphic novel, comic, brochure, editorial, email, manifesto, letter, birthday card, bumper sticker, wedding invitation, classified ad or graffiti. One cause of errors: You tend to read (or edit) with your memory rather than to actively read what’s on the screen. Your brain fills in […]
Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, THE ADDICTION Those who’ve had any brush with addiction know an addict will go to any length to support the habit, including stealing, lies and deception. The addict is aided and abetted by co-dependent friends and family members who cover up for the addict’s bizarre behavior and pretend nothing’s wrong. Breaking the addiction starts with the co-dependents recognizing their role and […]
Most Popular 1 Donald Trump Is Not Too Big to Fail 2 Courageous House Progressives Raise ‘Justice and Fairness’ Objections to Certifying Trump 3 Sherrod Brown Is the First Senator to Say ‘No’ to Jeff Sessions 4 This Monday, Join Protests Across the Country to Block Trump’s Climate-Denying Cabinet Picks 5 Why Workers Everywhere Should Be Scared by Kentucky’s Assault on Unions A Fascist Original Having said […]
Green Bay’s Randall Cobb caught the football in the back of the end zone, where he was standing behind every Giants defender. Later, Landon Collins, the Giants’ All-Pro safety, said that he did not think there was enough room for Cobb to make a catch in the back of the end zone. He was wrong. One sure way to know if there was room would have been […]
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” So Henry Temple, the third Viscount Palmerston, described British foreign policy in 1848, at the height of its imperial pomp. “England is a power sufficiently strong, sufficiently powerful to steer her own course.” It is more than fanciful to imagine US […]
By Tulay Karadeniz (Corrects to U.S. support in fourth paragraph) By Tulay Karadeniz ANKARA President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday he believes Turkey’s dialogue with the United States will gain pace after President-elect Donald Trump takes office and that they will reach a consensus on regional issues. Relations between Washington and Turkey – a NATO ally key to the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State in Syria and […]
South Korea is creating a hit squad with a mission to eliminate Kim Jong Un and his top command in the event of war, as it vows to ramp up its response to the growing threat from the North. The formation of the military unit, originally set for 2019, has been brought forward to this year amid increasing bellicosity from the North, the defence ministry in Seoul […]
Yet many Western analysts believed that he sought a less confrontational relationship with the United States than other powerful figures in the Iranian hierarchy, for whom hostility toward Washington was a touchstone of ideological purity. Continue reading the main story Mr. Rafsanjani, for instance, was credited with suggesting that “Death to America” be dropped from the litany of slogans at Tehran’s Friday prayers, a weekly moment of […]
A year ago Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince and the power behind the throne, electrified the global energy industry by revealing plans to float the world’s largest oil producer. The ambitious proposal for an initial public offering in state-owned Saudi Aramco is the centrepiece of the hard-charging 31-year-old’s vision to overhaul an economy seen as too heavily dependent on natural resources. One year on […]
In October 1938, the one-hour adaptation of H G Wells’s The War of the Worlds, directed by Orson Welles, was broadcast on CBS Radio in the United States. A story of aliens invading rural New Jersey rendered as news broadcasts and authentic-sounding updates, it was a little too convincing. There are legends of panic in the streets, mass hysteria and heart attacks. That may have been the […]
The reputation of the main hospital in Iten was so bad that the only people who went there were those who wanted to “die quickly”, says Alex Tolgos, the county governor. But four years since Kenya started what the World Bank calls “one of the most rapid and ambitious devolution processes” on the planet, the hospital in the western Kenyan town has been transformed. More than half the […]
