By Tom Miles and Yara Abi Nader | GENEVA GENEVA Syria’s opposition is impatient for face-to-face peace talks in Geneva, but things could fall apart if Russia does not pressure President Bashar al-Assad on holding talks and push it to abide by a ceasefire, an opposition member said on Saturday. The United Nations opened the peace talks with a symbolic ceremony on Thursday, attended by representatives of […]
TEHRAN: Iran’s nuclear chief said Saturday that the country had requested to buy 950 tons of uranium concentrate from Kazakhstan over the next three years to help develop its civil reactor program.The request has been made to the body that oversees the nuclear deal signed between Iran and world powers in 2015.Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told the ISNA news agency that the […]
HANOI The Vietnamese woman arrested as a suspect in killing the half-brother of North Korea’s leader thought she was taking part in a prank video, Vietnam’s foreign ministry said on Saturday. Hanoi had not previously confirmed that Doan Thi Huong was Vietnamese, saying only that it was in touch with authorities in Malaysia, where Kim Jong Nam was murdered on Feb. 13. Vietnamese embassy officials met her […]
Neanderthals, often identified as unsightly grunting cavemen with massive foreheads and nearly nonexistent necks, are believed to have died out 40,000 years ago. Yet through their genome, they still have a say in the status of modern humans. U.S. researchers shed new light on how these ancient ones still influence genes in modern humans, likely contributing to traits including height and the likelihood of having diseases such […]
By Emily Chow and Christophe Van Der Perre | KUALA LUMPUR KUALA LUMPUR Malaysia will sweep one of the terminals at Kuala Lumpur international airport for toxic chemicals after Kim Jong Nam was murdered there with a nerve agent last week, as authorities said they would issue an arrest warrant if a North Korean diplomat wanted over the death did not come forward. Kim Jong Nam was […]
KUALA LUMPUR Malaysia plans to sweep one of the terminals at Kuala Lumpur international airport for toxic chemicals after Kim Jong Nam was murdered there with a nerve agent last week. The teams involved include the police forensic team, the fire department and the Atomic Energy Licensing Board, the Malaysian police said in a statement on Saturday. The sweep will be conducted from 1 a.m. (1700 GMT) […]
Political opponents of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday turned a traditional celebration of a “People Power” uprising against dictatorship three decades ago into a protest march condemning his war on drugs. The small political opposition and left-wing activists held separate commemorative events at the historic highway where more than a million Filipinos gathered in 1986, forcing Ferdinand Marcos and his family to flee to Hawaii after […]
By Isabel Coles | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq U.S.-backed Iraqi forces pushed deeper into western Mosul on Saturday after retaking the city’s airport from Islamic State and punching into built-up areas of the jihadists’ last major stronghold in the country. Troops advanced in several more populated, built-up southern districts and about 1,000 civilians walked across the frontlines, the largest displacement since fighting began a week ago in […]
Concourse D at Dubai International Airport has served more than 16.6 million passengers during its first year of operations. Concourse D, which represents the final major piece of infrastructure to be built at the airport as part of the $7.8 billion 2020 programme, marks its first anniversary on February 24. The $1.2 billion facility became the home of 60 international airlines that operate into Terminal 1 and […]
Photo Credit Rukmini Callimachi/The New York Times I’m in northern Iraq and spent the day traveling to the front lines of western Mosul, where Iraqi government forces are battling the Islamic State for complete control of this city. Along the way, my colleagues and I met a villager who had just escaped. The villager, Lahib Muhammed Ali, lived on a dairy farm. He said that because the […]
Donald Trump delivered a vehement and sometimes contradictory screed against the press during his appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday, calling media reports “fake news” while expressing his support for the First Amendment. During the speech, which came on the penultimate day of the CPAC conference, Trump was especially critical of news organizations that use anonymous sources, saying that reporters “shouldn’t be allowed to use […]
SHANGHAI A fierce blaze at a hotel in southeastern China killed 10 people, the official Xinhua news agency said in a post on its official microblog on Saturday. The fire broke out on Saturday morning at the hotel in the inland city of Nanchang, the capital of China’s Jiangxi province, trapping people inside, including workers who were carrying out renovations on the building. Videos and photos on […]
BEIRUT Militants attacked two Syrian security offices in the western city of Homs on Saturday with guns and suicide bombers, killing at least 42 people including a senior officer, a war monitor said. The attackers killed the head of military security and 29 others at one of its headquarters in the city and 12 more people at a branch of state security in attacks that began early […]
Thinking about switching to AT&T or upgrading your current phone? Right now may be a good time. Starting Friday, AT&T is offering the iPhone 7, Galaxy S7, and LG G5 on a buy one, get one free promotion. According to the press release, new and existing customers who sign up for an AT&T Next or AT&T Next Every Year plan are eligible for a free smartphone through […]
North Korea is evading international sanctions with a sophisticated network of overseas companies, enabled partly by its continued access to the international banking system, says a forthcoming United Nations report seen by Reuters. North Korea is under heavy U.N. sanctions and a strict arms embargo designed to impede the development of its banned nuclear and missile programmes. The U.N. panel of experts, which produced the 100-page draft […]
Hyderabad: The Panama Papers are back here to haunt city industrialists. Following directions issued by the Centre, the Enforcement Directorate has begun a probe into 11 companies named in the Panama Papers, the global media investigation into alleged tax evasions which has brought 415 Indians under the scanner of investigating agencies. Sources said that the probe was initiated under the Foreign Exchange Management Act. A top ED […]
By Venus Wu and Greg Torode | HONG KONG HONG KONG Developments in Hong Kong have affected confidence in a system of government intended to ensure the Chinese-ruled city’s autonomy, though its rule of law remained robust “despite challenges”, former colonial power Britain said on Friday. Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997 with guarantees it would retain extensive autonomy, an independent legal system and […]
The latest update for Final Fantasy XV, Patch 1.05, introduced several additions such as the Booster Pack and DLC for Season Pass holders, which includes the single-handed sword Ragnarok for more powerful Warp Strikes by Noctis, and compatibility for the PlayStation 4 Pro. It has been previously revealed that there are many more things coming for the latest installment in the long-running RPG franchise, and recent reports have […]
DUBAI // “It’s New Year’s Eve all over again … but the real way we should have celebrated,” declared Mariah Carey, launching into Emotions at Dubai Jazz Festival — and tackling the elephant in the room head-on. Thursday’s concert was Carey’s first public gig since that over-reported, televised “meltdown” on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, in which she embarrassingly struggled through the same song, and was […]
In a war in which the United States has sought to minimize its own military footprint, this militia has become the American military’s ally of choice in northern Syria and its best hope of taking Raqqa in the coming months. Continue reading the main story But the budding alliance has drawn the United States deeper into the complex politics of northern Syria and prompted furious objections from […]
SEOUL Plans for the first contact between North Korea and the United States after President Donald Trump took office were cancelled after the U.S. State Department denied a visa for the top envoy from Pyongyang, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. The talks, between senior North Korean foreign ministry envoy Choe Son Hui and former U.S. officials, were scheduled to take place on March 1 and […]
LG Gram laptop LG has largely scaled back its global PC ambitions — its U.S. website shows a single Chromebase desktop for sale — except for its Gram family of ultra-light laptops. It rolled them out late in 2015 — 13-inch and 14-inch notebooks that each weighed a little over 2 pounds, then added a 15-inch version a couple of months later. The lineup has thrived enough […]
By Ayesha Rascoe | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The White House excluded several major U.S. news organizations, including some it has criticized, from an off-camera briefing held by the White House press secretary on Friday. Reporters for CNN, The New York Times, Politico, The Los Angeles Times and BuzzFeed were not allowed into the session in the office of press secretary Sean Spicer. Spicer’s off-camera briefing, or “gaggle,” replaced […]
Emirates has accused the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of acting unprofessionally over claims it breached laws by not paying compensation to passengers who experience a delay. The Dubai-based airline denied breaking any law with regard to payment of passenger compensation for delayed flights, after the CAA launched enforcement action against it and four other international carriers. The CAA said the airlines – Emirates, Etihad Airways, American […]
