ATHENS /Â AP Greek police on Thursday recaptured a convicted far-left militant wanted for more than four years after she absconded during her trial on domestic terrorism charges. Pola Roupa, 48, was arrested during an early morning raid in Athens, police said, while a 25-year-old Greek woman suspected of aiding and sheltering Roupa was also taken into custody. Roupa was ...
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Pressure on Obama to grant last-minute pardons, commutations
Washington / AFP Under mounting pressure to free convicts as a last act, President Barack Obama is planning at least one more batch of pardons and commutations before leaving office in two weeks, but don’t expect many famous offenders to make the list. The list of bold names appealing to Obama for compassion in his final weeks includes accused leaker ...
Read More »Philippines’ Duterte open to joint naval drills with Russia
Bloomberg Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will consider joint naval exercises with Russia, his spokesman said on Thursday, months after he decided to reduce military drills with the US. At a briefing in the presidential palace, spokesman Ernesto Abella said Duterte saw this week’s visit by two Russian warships to Manila would enhance friendship between the navies. Duterte, who in ...
Read More »Fire burns on oil platform in Gulf of Mexico
NEW ORLEANS / AFP The Coast Guard says it’s responding to a fire on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. A Coast Guard news release says the fire was reported around 2:30 a.m. Thursday on an oil platform about 80 miles south of Grand Isle, Louisiana. The Coast Guard says four people aboard ...
Read More »Sterling’s post-Brexit depression looks overblown
One of the most tangible consequences of the UK’s June vote to quit the European Union was the immediate collapse in the value of the pound. The combination of a huge political upset — which saw the resignation of a national leader — and the prospect of a wounded economy drove sterling lower on the foreign exchange market in ...
Read More »War of operating systems moves into everything else
The operating system war has started again. The once white-hot fights over the dominant operating software for PCs and smartphones are settled, of course. Microsoft won PCs. In smartphones, Android won on volume and Apple Inc. won on profits. Now that computing is spreading into everything from jet engines to T-shirts, the old and new tech combatants are vying ...
Read More »What the US lost in Syria
The duration of the latest Syrian cease-fire may matter less than its genesis. Russia, Turkey and Iran brokered the agreement without U.S. involvement — a worrying sign of the waning regional influence of the world’s only superpower. Whether this decline is temporary or permanent remains to be seen. What is abundantly clear is that, having decided not to intervene ...
Read More »Cyprus unity deal to bring stability in Eastern Mediterranean
Negotiations between Nicos Anastasiades, the Greek Cypriot leader, and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart, Mustafa Akinci, in November failed to find any solution for decades-old division of Cyprus. The talks, held in Switzerland, were supposed to produce a map of the internal boundaries of a future federation on Cyprus and pave the way for broader talks. But the two-day session ...
Read More »What the strong Obama jobs recovery tells us
On January 6, the Labor Department will release the final monthly employment report of what has been an historic eight-year run of jobs growth during the Barack Obama administration. This period confirmed some of our beliefs about the economy but also exposed the limitations of our understanding of a structurally changing employment situation. Here are three main takeaways from ...
Read More »Where world’s highest-paid expats live
Expats living in the home of UBS Group AG, drug maker Novartis AG and commodity trader Glencore Plc earn an average salary of $188,275 a year. That’s the highest in the world and almost twice the global average, according to data published by HSBC Holdings Plc. Switzerland also tops the bank’s expat career ranking for a second year. “Expats ...
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