By Alastair Sharp | TORONTO TORONTO Three families who helped shelter former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden in Hong Kong in 2013 after his mass leak of information about surveillance programs have asked Canada for asylum, their lawyer said on Friday. The families – three Sri Lankan adults, a Filipina, and three stateless children – have had long-pending asylum claims in Hong Kong that they […]
By Shadia Nasralla | VIENNA VIENNA Four planned Turkish political meetings in Austria were cancelled on Friday in the latest signs of unease across Europe over a series of campaign events to rally support among expatriate Turks for President Tayyip Erdogan. A spokesman for police in the city of Linz said the private owner of a venue there had cancelled an event featuring a party colleague of […]
Your daily guide to community and cultural activities across the Emirates for March 11, 2017, including performances, festivals, art exhibitions, film creenings, health and fitness events, talks, classes, workshops and family fun. Aarti Jhurani rounds up 10 things to do today in the UAE. Want to see your event listed here? Email us with the details and contact information at [email protected] newslide Abu Dhabi Sporting event Attend […]
By Toni Clarke | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump has chosen Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a conservative health policy expert with deep ties to the pharmaceutical industry, to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a White House official said on Friday. If confirmed by the Senate, Gottlieb would be in charge of implementing Trump’s plan to dramatically cut regulations governing food, drugs, cosmetics, dietary supplements and […]
Houses and building sites border the excavation zone, and sometimes during the dig, workers have had to clear trash and animal carcasses, according to Salima Ikram, an Egyptian member of the team. Once new buildings go up, further excavation will become impossible. “It’s a race against time,” she said. Continue reading the main story Establishing the identity of the colossus is complicated, because it has been broken […]
“It sucks,” says Mike Mayo. One of the more visible Wall Street analysts, Mr Mayo lost his job last week when CLSA, the Chinese-owned broker which had employed him, abruptly shuttered its US research operations. At 4.15pm last Monday, as Mr Mayo tells it, he was summoned to an all-hands meeting. At 4.20pm he and 89 others were let go. He went to FedEx to buy nine […]
A joint venture led by Qualcomm and the Brazilian government will see the launch of a semiconductors factory producing high-complexity equipment. The consortium, which also includes semiconductor manufacturing firm ASE Group, is predicted to make a total investment of $200m in the initiative. The memorandum of understanding on the project was signed by the companies and the Brazilian Social Economic Development Bank (BNDES) on Wednesday (8). Exact […]
By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The U.S. military said on Friday it plans to forge ahead with building the THAAD missile defence system in South Korea, separating the issue from a political crisis in Seoul that saw President Park Geun-hye’s removal from office on Friday. The United States started deploying the first elements of its advanced anti-missile defence system in South Korea on […]
ISLAMABAD – The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) led Federal and Punjab governments organised the International Women’s Day to distract attention from the Panama Papers investigation and the ongoing case in the Supreme Court, alleges senior columnist and analyst Haroon-ur-Rasheed. Rasheed, who has given conclusive evidence of Valentine’s Day being a PML-N ploy to distract the masses away from the massive corruption scandals, maintains that the ruling party […]
WASHINGTON A series of tweets by White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Friday commenting on strong February job creation figures may have run afoul of federal guidance barring most officials from commenting on key economic data within an hour of its release. The rule, Statistical Policy Directive Number 3, is meant to “preserve the distinction between the policy-neutral release of data by statistical agencies and their interpretation […]
By Jon Herskovitz | AUSTIN, Texas AUSTIN, Texas A man detained after federal prosecutors said he was involved in a fire in January that destroyed a Texas mosque has been ordered held on a charge unrelated to the arson, court records showed. A federal judge ordered Marq Perez, 25, to be detained after he appeared in U.S. district court on Thursday in Corpus Christi but Perez’s lawyer […]
ABU DHABI // The UAE topped the GCC in a Gender Progress Index released by business school Insead this week. The index takes a holistic view towards gender issues and includes education, health, labour, politics, power and society. It considers the relative performance of men versus women with no distinction between the two. The findings were discussed at a seminar marking International Women’s Day at the Insead […]
In his 30-plus year career as a professor at New York University, Jay Rosen says he can’t remember a time when the relationship between journalists and the White House was more poisonous or fundamentally undemocratic than it is under President Trump. “I don’t think there are many parallels to what we’re seeing now,” Rosen said. “There’s so much about this situation that is completely strange and busts […]
Like millions of young readers around the world, Chinese children have grown up with popular titles such as Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox and the Harry Potter series. But Beijing is now introducing new measures to restrict access to foreign books and publications as it opens a new front in its battle to limit outside influence on Chinese society. Regulators have given verbal instructions to publishers to […]
By YARA BISHARA | Mar. 10, 2017 | 1:50 Bilal Abdul Kareem is a Muslim-convert and former comedian from New York. In the last few years, he’s made hundreds of news reports from Syria. Related: article: Reporting From Syria, an American With a Point of View and a Message NYtimes
By Tuvan Gumrukcu | ISTANBUL ISTANBUL A helicopter carrying an executive of the Turkish Eczabicasi group and four Russians, including the firm’s Russian operations chief, crashed in Istanbul on Friday, killing all seven people on board, the city’s mayor was quoted as saying. The helicopter crashed onto a highway shortly after take-off from Istanbul’s main Ataturk airport. Early media reports suggested it had hit a television tower […]
OTTAWA U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Friday met Canadian officials to discuss an influx of asylum-seekers crossing into Canada from the United States that is putting pressure on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Emergency responders and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are struggling to respond to people defying wintry conditions to cross the undefended border near Emerson, Manitoba. So far several hundred asylum seekers, mainly from […]
SENATOR Grace Poe has warned that more Filipinos may be working their way into an early grave, saying “too much work can kill them” as she cited the latest report that more than eight-million Filipinos are overworked. In filing Senate Resolution 316, Poe sought a legislative inquiry into the dramatic rise in the number of overworked Filipinos—employed persons who work for more than 48 hours a week—in […]
BOGOTA Pope Francis will visit Colombia in September, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Friday, stopping in Bogota, Medellin, Villavicencio and Cartagena during a four-day trip. The pope has been a key supporter of Colombia’s peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, rebels, even brokering discussions between Santos and his top opposition rival, former president Alvaro Uribe. “His holiness gave us courage, he […]
Dubai, 10 March 2017 Dubai Investment Development Agency (Dubai FDI), an agency of the Department of Economic Development (DED) in Dubai, along with Dubai Exports, the export promotion agency of DED, will go on a two-week tour of the US on the 11th of March 2017 as part of strengthening the emirate’s engagement with major economies to reinvigorate global trade flows and foreign investment. The mission, which […]
By Tom Perry and John Davison | BEIRUT/MOSUL, Iraq BEIRUT/MOSUL, Iraq U.S.-backed Syrian militias said on Friday they were strong enough to seize Raqqa from Islamic State with support from the U.S.-led coalition, underlining their opposition to any Turkish role in the planned attack. The campaign against the city, Islamic State’s Syrian base of operations, is gathering pace as Iraqi forces press ahead with their efforts to […]
DETROIT Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) pleaded guilty on Friday to three felony counts as part of a $4.3 billion plea agreement reached with the Justice Department in January over the automaker’s massive diesel emissions scandal. VW general counsel Manfred Doess made the plea on the company’s behalf after he said at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Detroit that he was authorized by the board of directors […]
It’s a tale as old as time, and now the story of Belle and the Beast can be explored in some of Disney’s popular mobile games. In celebration of the upcoming theatrical release of the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, Disney announced that it is adding brand-new content related to the classic film across its library of apps. The new Beauty and the Beast-themed content […]
A couple travelling the world on a Vespa scooter have been taking in the sights of the UAE on the latest leg of their trip. Italian Paolo Zambon and Canadian Lindsay Doig have clocked up more than 60,000km on the two-wheeler on their on-off journey, which has taken them to 12 countries as far afield as Italy and Australia. The couple, who live in Vancouver, have been […]
