Latest Breaking News
RSS-
Search for survivors nearly over in Oklahoma as damage estimate is $2bn
MOORE, Oklahoma - Rescue workers were combing through the battered remains of buildings left behind in the path of the gigantic tornado that killed two dozen people, including nine children, in Oklahoma on Monday. Officials say the search for survivors is nearly over as efforts turn towards recovery. Gary Bird, fire chief of the badly hit Moore suburb, said he was "98% sure" there were no ...
-
Florida man known to Boston bombing suspects shot dead by FBI
MIAMI - A man known to the Boston Marathon bombers was shot and killed Wednesday by an Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent after he turned violent during questioning, the investigating agency said. The Orlando Sentinel newspaper identified the man as Ibragim Todashev, 27. He was killed in the early morning incident in Orlando, Florida. The FBI said the shooting occurred in Orlando, ...
-
Senate panel approves plan to ease hiring of foreign techies
WASHINGTON - A US Senate panel has cleared a proposed legislation that relaxes restrictions on IT companies to hire foreign techies, thus clearing one of the major hurdles to ushering changes in American immigration law in a generation. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bill after its authors won a bipartisan support with three Republicans joining 10 Democrats in the 18-member ...
More Breaking News
RSS-
Eight candidates for Iranian presidential race
TEHRAN - Iran has approved eight candidates for the presidential election due next month, rejecting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's top aide in a major setback to the hawkish leader of the Islamic republic. Ahmadinejad criticised the decision to remove Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei from the final candidate list and said it was an act of "oppression". He announced plans to take up the case with ...
-
Top North Korean official visits China
PYONGYANG, North Korea - In an indication that North Korea may give diplomacy a chance to end regional tension, its leader Kim Jong Un Wednesday sent a special envoy to China to win the confidence of its most important ally. The trip by Vice Marshal Choe Ryong Hae, a senior Workers' Party official and the military's top political officer, comes after months of ignoring Chinese warnings to ...
-
Bernanke says more positive signs needed before scaling back stimulus
WASHINGTON - Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke Wednesday said it was too soon to scale back the monetary stimulus and the central bank needs to see further signs of traction before taking a decision. A decision to scale back the $85 billion in bonds the Fed is buying each month could come at one of the central bank's "next few meetings" if the economy looked set to maintain ...
-
Higher exports fail to plug widening Japan trade deficit
TOKYO - Japan's trade deficit rose substantially more than expected in the month April to 879.9 billion yen ($8.6 billion), which is a 70% jump over the trade deficit during the corresponding month a year earlier, the Finance Ministry said Wednesday.. The deficit, for the tenth consecutive month, was wider than what many economists had forecast. A survey from the Nikkei business daily ...
-
Vitamin C offers hope of tackling drug resistant TB
WASHINGTON - Adding vitamin C to existing tuberculosis drugs regime could shorten the therapy for drug resistant TB, claims new research findings published in the online scientific journal Nature Communications. The striking discovery, by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, has determined that vitamin C kills drug-resistant TB bacteria in laboratory ...
-
IMF warns UK against continuing austerity programme
LONDON - In a critique of the United Kingdom's austerity programme, the International Monetary Fund Wednesday urged the Europe's third largest economy to rebalance the policy to make the transition to a high-investment and more export-oriented economy. "The UK could boost growth by bringing forward measures already included in its fiscal plan, such as spending on infrastructure and job ...
-
Labour reforms to top US team agenda on Bangladesh visit
DHAKA - A high level US delegation led by the State Department's Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman will visit Bangladesh this weekend to press for a major overhaul of labour safety regulations following the nation's deadliest industrial accident, an official said Wednesday. The collapse of a nine-storey factory complex housing several garment units outside the capital last ...
-
Barroro voices concern over estimated one trillion euro tax evasion
BRUSSELS - Voicing concern about tax evasion that is estimated at one trillion euros, European Commission President Jose-Manuel Barroso said Tuesday that EU leaders will meet at a one-day summit on Wednesday to negotiate solution. The European Union can't afford to let tax evasion go on the way it is. Such large amounts of money, currently sitting in tax havens, would be greatly beneficial ...
-
German central bank sees signals of economic pick up in Q2
FRANKFURT - Germany's central bank Deutsche Bundesbank expects the country's economy to improve "markedly" in the second quarter relying on signals of pick up in industrial orders and likelihood of weather related downturn in construction sector no longer impacting investment sentiments a development that could boost the wider eurozone as it struggles to get out of recession. "Overall ...
-
Mortgage lending in UK rises highest in four years
LONDON - The UK housing market seems to be picking up with gross mortgage lending up 4.3 per cent in April over previous month to 12.1 billion pounds, the highest in over four years, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). The mortgage lending was 21% higher than April 2012, but this data is skewed by the end of the stamp duty concession on 24 March, 2012. Under the stamp duty ...
-
Jordanian FM hopeful Kerry will relaunch talks
Nasser Judeh in Amman says US Secretary of State's round-the-clock-efforts may create "inducing environment" to relaunch Israeli-Palestinian negotiations; Kerry scheduled to meet Netanyahu, Peres, Livni in ...
-
Shapira to investigate Netanyahu over foreign trips
investigate the financial controversies surrounding Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as well as other public officials relating to their foreign trips.It was unclear what the scope of the investigation would be and what aspects it would add to ongoing investigations, but it was expected to include all of the latest developments in everything from the "Bibi Tours" affair to the ...
-
Govt bulldozers demolish 2 east Jerusalem homes
Government bulldozers demolished two residential buildings in east Jerusalem on Tuesday morning for being illegally constructed on a national park, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.However, Meretz city councilman Dr. Meir Margalit, who holds the east Jerusalem portfolio, dismissed the ministry's claim as a "dirty trick" that the government was using to confiscate land ...
-
High Court summons A-G over east Jlem property
In an unheard-of development, a seven-judge panel of the High Court of Justice ordered Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein to appear personally to explain the state's position on using a 1950 property law to confiscate east Jerusalem properties from Arabs for the benefit of Jews and the state, the courts announced on Wednesday.Weinstein essentially never attends hearings; he sends ...
-
Prosor angered by UNRWA’s map of Arab Palestine
NEW YORK - Early this month, Ann Dismorr, director of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Lebanon, stood in front of cameras holding a map of Israel labeled "Arab Palestine." Framed in green and black and shoddily printed, the projected Palestinian state is shown surrounded by countries with modern borders: Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.Israeli officials are well used to seeing maps ...
-
Israeli embassy slams Germany party over labeling
BERLIN - The Israeli embassy slammed the German Green Party on Wednesday for its Bundestag efforts to label products from the West Bank, calling those efforts "another try to negatively single out Israel while promoting an economic boycott of it."In a statement ...
-
Neighbours View Sharif as Yoked to Personal National History
- Following on Nawaz Sharif's victory in the May 11 national elections in Pakistan, many analysts are indicating cautious optimism on the prospect that the new prime minister can strengthen bilateral relations with the country's neighbours, particularly ...
-
Insects from Delicacy to Tool against Hunger
MEXICO CITY, May 22 2013 (IPS) - The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s recommendation to consider using edible insects as a food source to combat hunger may have particular repercussions in Colombia and Mexico, two Latin American countries that have a tradition of eating insects and a high degree of ...
-
New Effort Targets the Leading Killers of Children
- PATH, a Seattle-based global health development organisation, is aiming to save two million lives by 2015 by jointly tackling diarrhea and pneumonia, the leading killers of children ...
-
Cuban Agriculture Needs Young People
She is not sure where her vocation came from, but she does know that this is what she wants to do. In Cuba, which is seeking to boost agricultural yields, there is a scarcity of young people working in the sector. Blanco, a petite 20-year-old, dropped her math studies after two years to try her hand at ...
-
Fresh Water “More Precious Than Gold” in Bangladesh
- Fahima Begum rises each morning at dawn and walks two kilometres to a small pond, the nearest source of fresh water.On her way she passes the rusty old hand-pumped tube well that used to supply water to her village in Bangladesh's arid Barind region until the water table here dropped out of ...
-
Sweden riots Stockholm burns as rioters battle police after three days of violence in immigrant ghetto
It is Sweden's worst disorder in years and has shocked the country and provoked a debate on how Sweden is coping with youth unemployment and an influx of ...
Kazakhstan Focus
-
Kazakhstan capital's next challenge
Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, has experienced rapid growth in recent years and has seen the completion of some impressive architectural feats, now there are plans by the government to build a huge indoor city within the capital, providing the country with a modern feat of engineering and a tourist attraction of which to be proud.
Astana and Dubai, despite vast differences, have a few things in common as cities. Dubai is not the capital of the United Arab Emirates, while Astana is the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana is one of the coldest capitals in the world while Dubai is in one of the hottest regions on the planet. But Astana, like Dubai, has experienced rapid development in recent years, due in large part to the relocation of the capital to the city, and like Dubai, it has had to make sometimes impressive adaptations to architecture and development in order to compensate for the climate. Read more
News from around our Network
