Withings’ Kérastase Hair Coach analyses the health of your locks as you brush. Image: Withings/Nokia When Nokia said it had no plans to make mobile handsets again, that wasn’t the end of its hardware ambitions: last year it bought Withings, a health devices company headquartered in France, for €170m as its way into the health and fitness market. The deal concluded in June last year, bringing together […]
BEIJING China is set to consolidate five state media companies to create a “modern financial media group” to increase the state’s voice in economic and financial news coverage, the state-run Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday. Since taking power in 2012, President Xi Jinping, who has called for Beijing to take a bigger role in a global governance system, has stepped up media control and scrutiny to […]
KABUL Afghan security officials began investigating Tuesday’s attacks in the capital Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar as the death toll climbed to at least 50. The Ministry of Public Health raised the death toll from the Kabul attack to 37, with 98 wounded, while 13 people were confirmed dead in Kandahar. One security official said the death toll from the Kabul incident alone could reach […]
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, […]
PARIS France needs immigration quotas, presidential election frontrunner Francois Fillon said on Wednesday ahead of a visit to the south-east border town of Menton. Immigration and security are top issues in the campaign for the presidential elections starting in April, with the leader of the far-right, anti-immigration National Front, Marine Le Pen, saying France must exit the EU’s border-free area. “I want France to be able to […]
Afghan firefighters and municipal workers try to clean debris from the site of suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan. Omar Sobhani / Reuters Afghan security personnel arrive at the site of twin blasts near the Afghan parliament in Kabul on Tuesday. Twin Taliban blasts struck near the Afghan parliament in Kabul, killing at least 30 people and wounding 80 in a rush-hour attack that shattered a relative lull […]
Posada made his first professional stop in Oneonta, N.Y., in the shadow of Cooperstown, in 1991. He had been drafted as a middle infielder the previous summer, in the 24th round, from Calhoun Community College in Alabama. The Oneonta manager, Jack Gillis, thought he profiled better as a catcher. Continue reading the main story “The first practice day, we were working in the bullpen on catching,” said […]
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. […]
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter, a technophile and former Harvard professor, created the Strategic Capabilities Office when he was deputy defense secretary in 2012 The Pentagon may soon be unleashing a 21st-century version of locusts on its adversaries after officials on Monday said it had successfully tested a swarm of 103 micro-drones. The important step in the development of new autonomous weapon systems was made possible by improvements in […]
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 […]
DUBAI Five Emirati humanitarian workers were killed in a bomb attack in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) official news agency reported on Wednesday. The five were killed on Tuesday while engaged in humanitarian, educational and development work, state news agency WAM reported, adding President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan had ordered flags flown at half mast for three days in mourning. […]
By Christine Kim and Se Young Lee | SEOUL SEOUL A U.S. bribery case against two relatives has cast a pall over former United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon’s planned return this week to South Korea, where he is expected to launch a bid to run for president. Ban, 72, has not declared his candidacy but has had a team of people laying groundwork in Seoul ahead of […]
Gamers who are looking forward to the Nintendo Switch will finally know all the details on the upcoming hybrid console on Jan. 12, through a presentation by Nintendo that will be livestreamed for the whole world to watch. In advance of the official presentation, the rumor mill has been busy churning out reports and leaks for the Nintendo Switch, including the lineup of games available upon the hybrid […]
“I think that, somehow, we overprotect children,” says A Monster Calls director J A Bayona. “This is a story that was written for kids and helps them deal with complicated emotions.” Adapted from a book by Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls tells the story of a boy (Lewis MacDougall) trying to cope with the news his mother (Felicity Jones) has cancer. To make matters worse, he has to […]
TOKYO Japan’s government is planning legal steps that would allow Emperor Akihito to abdicate and his son to ascend the throne in two years, media reported on Wednesday, potentially setting the stage for the first abdication in two centuries. Japanese Emperor Akihito, 83, hinted in August that he wanted to abdicate, saying he worried that age might make it difficult for him to carry out his duties […]
Norway will today become the first country in the world to begin switching off FM radio and moving fully to digital in a move that has stoked controversy nationally and widespread interest abroad. The switch-off will start in the town of Bodo, northern Norway, at 11.11am and will be rolled out across the country throughout this year. Countries such as the UK, Switzerland and Denmark will be monitoring […]
Photo James E. Cartwright, a retired Marine general, arriving at Federal District Court in Washington in October. Credit Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press PWASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors asked a judge on Tuesday to sentence James E. Cartwright, a retired Marine Corps general and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to two years in prison for lying to F.B.I. agents about his discussions with reporters about […]
Saudi Arabia plans to follow its record breaking debut on global debt markets with an Islamic bond issue in a sale that could come as early as February. The sharia-compliant sukuk will form part of a pipeline of bond sales to finance the kingdom’s budget deficit and invest in economic diversification away from oil and is likely to appeal to regional investors in the Gulf. Last year, […]
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, The true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the nation all the time, loyalty to the government when it deserves it. – Mark Twain, The Czar’s Soliloquy” At this point, pretty much everyone in America has seen the results of Hillary Clinton media pet, John Harwood’s recent Twitter poll. Who do you believe America? — John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) January 6, […]
By Harriet McLeod | CHARLESTON, S.C. CHARLESTON, S.C. White supremacist Dylann Roof deserves to die for the hate-fuelled killings of nine black churchgoers at a Bible study meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, a U.S. jury said on Tuesday after deliberating for less than three hours. The same jury last month found Roof, 22, guilty of 33 federal charges, including hate crimes resulting in death, for the shocking […]
Eneco and NS said on a joint website that some 600,000 passengers daily are “the first in the world” to travel thanks to wind energy All Dutch trains are now 100 percent powered by electricity generated by wind energy, the national railway company NS said Tuesday, calling it a world first. “Since the first of January, 100 percent of our trains are running on wind energy,” NS […]
Black Nazarene devotees participate in the Traslacion, January 9, 2017. Photo by Bernard Testa, InterAksyon. On Monday, January 9, thousands of devotees thronged the streets of Manila to once again take part in the traslacion procession where the image of the Black Nazarene is brought back to its home in Quiapo Church. The Traslacion, literally “moving something from one place to the other” in Spanish, is the […]
By Jonathan Landay and John Walcott | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Classified documents that the heads of four U.S. intelligence agencies presented last week to President-elect Donald Trump included claims that Russian intelligence operatives have compromising information about him, two U.S. officials said Tuesday evening. They told Reuters the claims, which one called “still unsubstantiated,” were contained in a two-page memo appended to a report on Russian interference in […]
