By Ellen Francis and Stephanie Nebehay | BEIRUT/GENEVA BEIRUT/GENEVA The Syrian army said on Thursday that it had retaken complete control of Aleppo after the last rebel fighters were evacuated from the city, handing President Bashar al-Assad his biggest victory of the war. The army said it had brought “security and safety” to Aleppo, ending four years of rebel resistance in parts of the northern Syrian city. […]
In the summer of 2015, I left Washington, D.C. and moved to Carrboro, population 19,582, in the middle of North Carolina. I had never lived in the South before, or in a small town. Most of my life had been spent along the Acela corridor, in Philadelphia and New York and Boston and Hartford, Connecticut. I thought we would stay a year, maybe two. This summer, we […]
The man being sought in connection with Monday’s attack on a Berlin Christmas market had been under police surveillance for months on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack, but later fell off the authorities’ radar screen. A manhunt was under way across Europe on Thursday after German authorities issued an appeal for information about the suspect, a 24-year-old Tunisian man, Anis Amri. Germany’s federal prosecutor put out a Europe-wide […]
When mandatory telecommunications data retention legislation was first introduced — the so-called “metadata” retention laws — Australia’s favourite Attorney-General Senator George Brandis QC stressed that it wouldn’t be used to chase copyright infringers. “They can’t be and they won’t be,” Brandis said of the laws on ABC TV’s Q&A in November 2014. “The mandatory metadata retention regime applies only to the most serious crime, to terrorism, to […]
Photo The funeral on Monday of a high-ranking security officer killed in an assault in Karak, Jordan. Credit Muhammad Hamed/Reuters AMMAN, Jordan — The Islamic State claimed responsibility on Tuesday for a terrorist attack in the southern Jordanian city of Karak that killed 10 people, including the head of the military’s special forces, according to an organization that monitors militant groups. As the authorities continued their investigation […]
By Angus McDowall and Maria Tsvetkova | BEIRUT/MOSCOW BEIRUT/MOSCOW As President Bashar al-Assad’s army closed in on the last rebel enclave in Aleppo on Tuesday, Russia, Iran and Turkey said they were ready to help broker a Syrian peace deal. The Syrian army used loudspeakers to broadcast warnings to insurgents that it was poised to enter their rapidly diminishing area during the day and told them to […]
Germany was braced for a possible manhunt on Tuesday after doubts emerged as to whether the man arrested after an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin was indeed the perpetrator. Thomas de Maizière, Germany’s interior minister, said he was in “no doubt” that the attack, in which a truck was driven at speed into a crowded market in the heart of the German capital, was an […]
Facebook faces a potential fine after the European Commission accused the social network of being misleading during the approval process of its $19bn takeover of WhatsApp. In a “statement of objections” on Tuesday, the European Commission charged the Silicon Valley giant with inaccurately claiming during the 2014 takeover that it was technically impossible to combine automatically user information from Facebook and WhatsApp. Facebook surprised its users this […]
In a year replete with extraordinary political upheaval and the wrenching loss of artistic icons, the markets have played their part in contributing to the angst. Here is a look at some of 2016’s most notable one-day wobbles. China cracks It started badly. In China, the mainland’s benchmark, the Shanghai Composite index, had closed 2015 near a four-month high after bouncing nearly 21 per cent from its […]
Peek into a tide pool along the shore and you may see a starfish clinging quietly to a rock. But that secure adulthood comes at the expense of a harrowing larval journey. Tiny starfish larvae — each smaller than a grain of rice — spend 60 days and 60 nights paddling the open ocean, feeding to accumulate the energy needed to metamorphose into the familiar star shape. […]
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. Imagine if Snopes, PolitiFact and The Associated Press fact-checked our holiday cards and letters — or many of our daily declarations — for the truth. Facebook, of course, just announced it would team with PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, the Associated Press, ABC […]
Convoys of evacuees travelled from a rebel-held area of Aleppo and from two Shi’ite villages besieged by insurgents on Monday after a days-long stand-off. Dozens of buses carrying thousands of people from Aleppo’s tiny rebel zone reached insurgent areas of countryside to the west of the city, according to a United Nations official and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group. At the same time, […]
Most players will tell you that the back-to-backs add up to more fatigue and more risk for injury. They have also become a marketing problem for the league, because coaches sometimes bench their stars for one of the games. Continue reading the main story Just last week the Cleveland Cavaliers left LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love at home when the team visited the Memphis Grizzlies […]
By Angus McDowall and Ellen Francis | BEIRUT BEIRUT Thousands were evacuated from the last rebel-held enclave of the city of Aleppo on Monday after a deal was reached to allow people to leave two besieged pro-government villages in nearby Idlib province. Convoys of buses from eastern Aleppo reached rebel-held areas of countryside to the west of the city in cold winter weather, according to a U.N. […]
If you are an emerging market investor, things at least look a little rosier than they did 12 months ago. Then sentiment was souring thanks to doubts about China’s economy, a slumping oil price and plenty of political upheaval. There is, of course, much to concern the EM universe going into 2017, notably a rising dollar, the prospect of higher interest rates in the US and president-elect […]
Federer landed on his still-fragile left knee, which in February had required him to have surgery for the first time in his career, keeping him out for more than two months. Though he got up slowly at Wimbledon and finished the match, he did not finish the season. He even missed the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, which had long been one of his major late-career […]
The Federal Reserve will wait six months before raising interest rates again, according to a survey of top economists that suggests policymakers will maintain a cautious approach to tightening policy until they see the economic package US president-elect Donald Trump has promised. Officials will raise the Fed’s key short-term rate just twice in 2017, starting with a move in June, an FT survey of 31 Wall Street […]
Langham Hospitality Group has signed an agreement with Advanced Hotels Company to manage a luxury hotel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, it announced on Sunday. The Langham, Jeddah is located within the downtown district of the city, directly opposite a new shopping complex and with a 360-degree view of the city and the corniche. The hotel will have 239 rooms and 39 suites, as well as an opulent […]
A series of big events shaped financial markets in 2016. Here is a selection of FT analyses and commentary, alongside charts, highlighting a tumultuous year. The new year rout January proved brutal for investors. After just 10 trading days, global equity markets had lost more than $4tn of value, with sentiment hammered by fears about China’s economic slowdown and a depreciating currency. In turn, bond markets were […]
Proponents of the drugs say switching to the new formulations could save taxpayers money if addictions decline, though there is little evidence now that they reduce rates of either addiction or overdoses. The prescription painkiller epidemic costs the U.S. economy $78.5 billion annually, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report this year. “We have an enormous prescription-drug abuse problem in Illinois that’s costing a […]
The Volcani Center, the Ministry of Agriculture’s research organization, is building a national institute for medical marijuana research. The chief scientist’s office of the Ministry of Economy has infused millions of shekels into innovative marijuana companies, much as government investment helped fuel the Israeli tech boom in the 1990s. The government is also setting standards for the cultivation, storage and use of medical marijuana. Continue reading the […]
By all accounts, the June charity gala at Skylight, a Beaux-Arts building in midtown New York, was a very glitzy affair. Whoopi Goldberg served as master of ceremonies, while Naomi Campbell and Leonardo DiCaprio were among the A-list guests. The hosts for the evening were Martin Chavez, named this week as the next chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs, and his husband, Adam Norbury. In many respects […]
By Roberta Rampton and Jeff Mason | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday strongly suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally oversaw the computer hacks of Democratic Party emails that American intelligence officials say were aimed at helping Republican Donald Trump win the Nov. 8 election. At a pre-Christmas press conference, Obama levelled a fierce attack against Russia, calling it a smaller and weaker country […]
Etihad Airways and Lufthansa have signed a codeshare agreement that could herald further partnership growth between the two national carriers. In what is seen as the potential start of a growing relationship between the two airlines, Etihad and Lufthansa have agreed to codeshare on the UAE carrier’s twice-daily flights between its home base of Abu Dhabi and Frankfurt, and its twice daily services between Abu Dhabi and […]
