Courtney Radsch was just sitting down to watch the Golden Globes when Meryl Streep came on. Radsch, a fan of Streep’s, sat down to watch the awards show with her husband and heard the Academy Award-winning actress make an unexpected plug for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “That was pretty exciting,” said Radsch, advocacy director at CPJ. “I don’t think any of us were expecting such a […]
By Ellen Wulfhorst UNITED NATIONS (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Sweden’s top diplomat has a question: “Where are the women?” Taking a seat on the United Nations’ influential Security Council, Sweden will use its clout to press its feminist foreign policy, Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said on Monday. That policy, coined when Wallstrom took office two years ago, seeks equal rights, decision-making roles and fair allocation of resources […]
Pakistan’s recently retired army chief Raheel Sharif has been appointed to lead a new Saudi-military alliance to fight terrorism, Pakistani media have reported. Government officials in Saudi Arabia could not be reached on Sunday to confirm the appointment to head the coalition, the founding of which Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced at a sudden midnight press conference in December 2015. Pakistani Defence Minister […]
The Federal Reserve should be ready to consider reducing the size of its balance sheet as part of its efforts to prevent overheating in the US, a senior policymaker said as he noted the pick-up in wage inflation and predicted a return of inflation to target by the end of the year. Eric Rosengren, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said that if the […]
Photo The United States guided missile destroyer Mahan in the Mediterranean in 2013. Credit Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jacob D. Moore/U.S. Navy, via Reuters WASHINGTON — In a vivid illustration of the tensions between the United States and Iran, an American Navy warship fired warning shots at Iranian boats that were racing toward it near the Strait of Hormuz, Defense Department officials said on Monday. The […]
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute, “This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the same man it makes two different phantoms, and the one attacks and punishes the other, the darkness of the despot struggles with […]
By David Morgan | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan and top members of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team on Monday discussed a controversial plan to tax imports during an evening meeting on Capitol Hill, a Trump adviser said. Trump’s incoming chief strategist Stephen Bannon said the meeting examined two provisions of Ryan’s “Better Way” tax reform blueprint, including a border-adjustability measure intended to […]
What could be learned about the world if you could read the news from over 100 local newspapers for a period of 150 years? This is what a team of Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers have done, together with a social scientist and a historian, who had access to 150 years of British regional newspapers. (via WSJ)
SEOUL South Korea’s special prosecution office said on Tuesday it had not yet decided whether to seek arrest warrants for two Samsung Group executives as part of a widening investigation into the political scandal threatening President Park Geun-hye. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported earlier on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources, that the prosecution would seek to arrest two Samsung executives. However, the prosecutors’ office later told Reuters […]
By Tom Miles | GENEVA GENEVA Smoking costs the global economy more than $1 trillion a year, and will kill one third more people by 2030 than it does now, according to a study by the World Health Organization and the U.S. National Cancer Institute published on Tuesday. That cost far outweighs global revenues from tobacco taxes, which the WHO estimated at about $269 billion in 2013-2014. […]
She didn’t just talk about Trump.Image: grant pollard/ invision via AP By Marissa Wenzke2017-01-10 01:31:59 UTC “You and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now,” Meryl Streep told the audience during her acceptance speech at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday night. “Think about it — Hollywood, foreigners, and the press.” Well, that last group has […]
John Krafcik, CEO of Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company created by Google’s parent company, Alphabet introduces a Chrysler Pacifica hybrid outfitted with Waymo’s own suite of sensors and radar at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya) Waymo, Google’s self-driving car division, will start testing its new fleet of minivans on public roads in California and Arizona later this […]
Last year was a relatively tough year for real estate players across the UAE, as the market adjusted to lower levels of economic growth. This ‘new normal’ is a reflection of oil prices well below their peaks of 2014 and 2015. While the average oil price declined dramatically during 2015, the decline was much more modest in 2016 and it is important to recognise that oil prices […]
09 January 2017 Technology today has progressed to the point where innovation is no longer about creating a better life, instead it is the desire to create a better lifestyle for consumers that underpins the most exciting new products. While some of these innovations will quickly find their way into our lives and change how we do things, others are concepts that may or may not be […]
Upon the closing of the $4.8 billion sale of Yahoo to Verizon, Yahoo will see itself renamed to Altaba Inc as it begins its new direction as an investment company. Complementing the name change will be a new board of directors, with only five individuals claiming a position at the table. Tor Braham, Eric Brandt, Catherine Friedman, Thomas McInerney, and Jeffrey Smith will continue to serve as […]
DAKAR Gambia’s communication minister, Sheriff Bojang, said on Monday he had left his post in the first high-profile Cabinet defection since President Yahya Jammeh refused to accept losing a December election. Opposition leader Adama Barrow won the polls by a thin margin, sparking nationwide celebrations in the riverine nation wedged within its larger and freer neighbour, Senegal. But after initially conceding defeat, Jammeh changed his mind a […]
As the country’s devout come together in mosques to pray for rain on Tuesday morning, farmers across the UAE have said they have been forced to stop planting crops and in some case abandon their plots of land altogether due to a lack of water. Mohammad Al Darmaki, a farmer from Kalba, said the problem has gotten so bad he has stopped working on his land. He […]
Terrifying, crazy and breathtaking could all be used to described the Dinner in the Sky experience. Taking flight in Dubai from January 10, a maximum of 22 diners at a time will be hoisted 50 metres in the air over Dubai Marina to enjoy one of the most unique dining initiatives in the world. The big dining table in the sky is not for the fainthearted, foodie […]
The military, security experts and soldiers at the scene quickly rejected that notion. “Those who ran from the scene were not concerned about Azaria, but about their own well-being,” said Yehuda Ben Meir, an expert in national security and public opinion at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. Continue reading the main story Still, the argument — unfolding in full volume on Israeli […]
By Phil Stewart | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump is finding himself caught between his desire to improve relations with Russia and fellow Republicans who are pushing for a harsher response to what American spy agencies say was the Kremlin’s meddling in the U.S. presidential election. The tacit acknowledgement on Sunday by his incoming chief of staff, Reince Priebus, that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic […]
By Steve Holland | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will become a senior White House adviser and work on trade deals and the Middle East, transition officials said on Monday, in a rare case of a close presidential family member taking on a major job. Kushner, 35, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, is taking the job after receiving legal counsel he would […]
Steve Jobs introduced the world to its revolutionary iPhone device ten years ago today. At Macworld 2007 in San Francisco, he described the handset as three products in one – “a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone and a breakthrough internet communications device.” In the ten years since it was launched, Apple has sold over one billion units worldwide, quickly growing into a revolutionary […]
ABIDJAN Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara dismissed the heads of the army, police and gendarmes on Monday after a two-day army mutiny that spread unrest across the West African nation, according to a statement from the presidency. Disgruntled soldiers demanding the payment of bonuses and wage increases began their revolt on Friday, seizing control of Bouake, the second largest city, before troops in military camps in cities […]
ROME Italy is sending its ambassador back to Libya, its foreign ministry said on Monday, making it the first Western diplomatic mission to reopen in the divided country. Italy closed its embassy in Libya in 2015 as rival factions descended into a conflict which has let people smugglers operate with impunity and Islamic State establish a firm foothold. The foreign ministry said in a statement the ambassador […]
