February, 2016

• 24 February

  Austria warns EU survival at stake in migrant crisis

  

  Vienna / AFP Austria warned on Wednesday that the EU’s future was at stake as it pressed Balkan states, in the absence of an effective common response by the bloc, to reduce the influx of migrants despite fears of a humanitarian crisis. Further undermining the European Union’s hopes to get a grip on the situation, Hungary meanwhile announced a referendum ...

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• 24 February

  Israeli NGOs allege routine abuse of Palestinian detainees

  

  Jerusalem / AFP Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency abuses Palestinians under interrogation in a manner so systematic it points to official endorsement, two Israeli NGOs said in a report published on Wednesday. The 70-page joint study by rights groups B’Tselem and Hamoked is based on accounts by 116 suspects interrogated at Shikma prison in the southern Israeli city of ...

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• 24 February

  Syria, Russia pound IS-held posts

  

  Bloomberg Russian and Syrian warplanes pounded IS positions near Aleppo on Wednesday, a group monitoring the conflict said, trying to regain access to a strategic road whose fall to the militant group set back the allies’ advances before a scheduled truce. IS has tightened its grip on the Syrian military’s only access route to Aleppo, the country’s largest city, according ...

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• 24 February

  Syria ceasefire must exclude Kurdish militia’: Erdogan

  Ankara / AP Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday said Syrian Kurdish militia forces must remain outside the scope of a ceasefire agreed between Syria’s warring parties, in a blow to the deal days before it is due to be enforced. Lashing out at Western policy in Syria, he said the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its ...

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• 24 February

  In Sudan’s Darfur, displaced children battle to learn

  

  Darfur / AFP Abuobeida Ali was a toddler when militiamen stormed his village in Sudan’s Darfur in 2003, murdering his father and driving his family out, ending his hopes for a normal childhood and education. Now aged 17 and out of school for nine years, he is one of the more than 870,000 Darfuri children living in camps for the ...

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• 24 February

  A next-generation battlefield

  

  Little noticed amid the daily news bulletins about the IS and Syria, the Pentagon has begun a push for exotic new weapons that can deter Russia and China. Pentagon officials have started talking openly about using the latest tools of artificial intelligence and machine learning to create robot weapons, “human-machine teams” and enhanced, super-powered soldiers. It may sound like science ...

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• 24 February

  Decision in Apple-FBI case to set precedent

  The dispute between Apple and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has rattled everyone, and spawned a raging National Security vs Consumer Privacy debate. Though the row is in the US, it has captured global attention, as the world is caught up in a suspension, waiting which party will win. The standoff has a bearing on the public. According to ...

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• 24 February

  China’s trade slows

  China’s foreign trade shrank by 8 percent in 2015, far off the target of 6 percent growth set at the beginning of the year, China’s commerce minister revealed on Tuesday. Gao Hucheng made the announcement in a press conference on China’s trade development last year. According to Gao’s figures, most of the decline came from rapidly slowing imports. China’s exports ...

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• 24 February

  Airbus might be brought down to earth

  

  Is the civil aircraft market becoming over-inflated? Airbus’s annual report card captures a company in rude health: full-year net profit jumped 15 percent, cash flow was strong and its backlog of orders for commercial aircraft stands at a record high. Even the long-suffering Airbus A380 is at break-even. But investors holding Airbus on the seeming strength of its order book ...

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• 24 February

  Lubna meets Lagarde at ZU

  

  DUBAI / EMIRATES BUSINESS Her Excellency Sheikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi, Minister of State for Tolerance, President of Zayed University, received Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and her distinguished accompanying delegation at Zayed University in Dubai campus on Wednesday. The event saw the presence of Professor Reyadh AlMehaideb, Vice President of Zayed University, Dr Marilyn ...

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