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22 December 2016 Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Montenegro Airlines, the flag carrier of the Republic of Montenegro, have signed a codeshare agreement that provides travellers with enhanced connectivity when flying between Southeast Europe and the Middle East.* The agreement will see Etihad Airways placing its “EY” code on Montenegro Airlines’ flights between Belgrade and two destinations in Montenegro – […]

2016 was fact-checking’s finest year [1]. No it wasn’t, it was the year of “post-truth” [2] — some preferred “post-fact” [3] — and fact-checking is a fool’s errand. The discussion about facts in journalism worldwide has rarely been as fractured and animated as it has been in 2016, so we collected 366 links, one for each day of the year, to try and make sense of what […]

World’s leading hotel operator AccorHotels announces first Mercure brand in the country Muscat, Oman, 20 December 2016 AccorHotels, one of the world’s leading hotel operators announces the opening of Mercure Sohar in Oman.  Blending the best of business and leisure, this new hotel pays tribute to its environment with an authentic offering reflective of genuine Omani warmth and hospitality. Nestled between Al Hajjar Mountains and the Sea […]

Queensland-based image-recognition startup TrademarkVision has landed the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) as the first customer of its new deep learning algorithm. Following a successful beta trial, the EUIPO will now be integrating TrademarkVision’s new deep learning algorithm into its eSearch platform to cut down the time it takes to search EU image trademarks. Previously, trademark searches and monitoring required the use of descriptive — and […]

A lawsuit has been filed against Google by one of its employees, alleging the company’s policies improperly muzzle workers. The suit, posted on the website of the plaintiff’s lawyer, challenges the legality of Google’s policies and seeks damages for 12 alleged violations of California labor code under the state’s Private Attorneys General Act. The case was filed by Google product manager identified only as “John Doe,” who […]

Short takes and quick hits for the week of December 19-25, 2016. EFF launches “In defense of users” initiative with strong anti-Trump message Posted Dec 20, 2016, 12:30 PST The EFF isn’t pulling any punches in its new campaign The Electronic Frontier Foundation isn’t waiting for the Presidential inauguration on January 20, 2017, to express their opposition to incomping President Donald J. Trump. In a full-page ad […]

HTC HTC just sent out this very cryptic image to members of the press. The text of the email doesn’t offer any further clues, simply stating the company “wanted to share the date of our next big announcement.” Even more puzzling is that HTC’s announcement comes after the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show, a stage where companies typically make product and partnership announcements. However, HTC has made its […]

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BlackBerry’s big bet on software and services is making progress — albeit slowly. The Canadian former phone maker turned software developer posted Tuesday a fiscal third-quarter profit of just one cent for the quarter, beating Wall Street expectations, which predicted a two cent loss (statement). No longer a smartphone company, BlackBerry is investing in software and services. Read more. However, the company did miss on revenue, bringing […]

Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. It could be called the “NBC Very, Very Late Nightly News With Brian Williams.” Instead, it’s “The 11th Hour With Brian Williams” on MSNBC — a new show starring an old face who’s honorably doing what he does well in […]

It started off as one of those typical conversations you have when you’re in a foreign country and the taxi driver recognizes you to be a foreigner. “Where are you from?,” he asks, soon after I get into the bright yellow taxi cab, to which I reply “Sri Lanka.”“Beautiful country,” he responds.“Have you been there?” I ask him politely.“No, but my friend went there for a holiday. He […]

Otsimo provides free games for autistic children to help improve attention spans using machine learning and gamification. Image: Otsimo Autistic spectrum disorders, or ASDs, impose huge costs, both human and economic, on sufferers, their families, and the community. The human toll, in terms of care and impaired relationships, is almost impossible to quantify. Looking at the US alone, the economic expenditure last year was estimated at about […]

Screenshot: ZDNet Telstra customers looking to download content from certain torrent sites will be denied access after the telecommunications provider has started blocking domain names in response to a Federal Court directive. The blocked access comes after the Federal Court of Australia last week determined that piracy sites The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, and isoHunt, and their related domains, will need to be blocked by internet service […]

TEHRAN: Iran’s president lashed out at the country’s hard-liners on Monday, accusing them of ignoring human rights, which he said are enshrined in the constitution.Hassan Rouhani’s remarks were apparently an attempt to appeal to the liberal-minded among the country’s middle class ahead of Iran’s May presidential elections. Without naming names, Rouhani said in a televised speech that “some individuals do not like to hear about some of […]

Simply getting onto the NBN, let alone making use of it, is impacting the functioning of 43 percent of businesses according to an Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) survey [PDF] released on Tuesday. Only 22 percent of businesses said the NBN connection process was smooth, while businesses said the most common complaint was “ongoing service issues”, ACMA said. Conducted between April and May 2016, ACMA surveyed […]

Qantas Group has selected SAP executive Susan Doniz to fulfil the role of CIO after undertaking a global search for Luc Hennekens’ replacement. Hennekens revealed his intention to leave the national carrier in July after three years of leading its technology operations. He moved to France to join Airbus Group as CIO after working his last day at Qantas in September. Doniz will relocate from Canada to […]

If not for his colleague’s warning, the consequence could have been dire for Mr Muhamad Rozaidy. She called out: “Careful, there’s an oncoming vehicle!” Mr Rozaidy, 31, reacted quickly and drove his Kia Pregio from the middle to the left lane. Seconds later, a silver Mercedes blitzed past them against the traffic at a speed that he estimated was about 120kmh. He told The New Paper that […]

(Image: file photo) Cloud storage giant Box won’t say how many times it has turned over customer data to the government. The company’s policy stands out from the cloud storage crowd, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Dropbox, which along with other every internet and phone company in the Fortune 500 provide a biannual transparency report detailing the number of government requests and secret orders they receive. A […]

Amazon’s Echo Dot, a hands-free voice-controlled Alexa-enabled device, has enjoyed pretty rave reviews upon its release, simply because the device, a minute puck-shaped plaything, is far more capable than what its size suggests. Yes, the tiny flat cylinder sports Amazon’s proprietary voice-enabled virtual assistant Alexa, which is by and large its headline feature. It hears its owners, even when outputting loud music from its speakers, and it […]

Emirates, the world’s biggest long-haul airline, and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways are reviewing their workforce as overcapacity and a stronger dollar put pressure on earnings. The cutbacks show how the Gulf airlines’ rapid expansion of the past few years is slowing down against a more challenging economic backdrop. Dubai-based Emirates has offered redundancies to staff working in accounting, finance, IT and other departments in its head-office, sources […]

(Image: file photo) People buying new computers and devices in South Carolina would be blocked from accessing porn under a newly proposed law. A bill, pre-filed earlier this month by state lawmaker Bill Chumley, is called the Human Trafficking Prevention Act, and would require computer makers and sellers to install filters that would prevent users from accessing porn and other sexual material. The aim is to prevent […]

Yoga Book (Credit: Lenovo) As Microsoft prepares once again to embrace ARM processors in the name of thinner and lighter computing devices, the Lenovo Yoga Book may be a hint of things to come. In some ways, the device — available in Android and Windows versions and coming soon in a Chromebook variant — represents a hybrid between the original Yoga and the original Surface. True to […]

Almost 600 people died in police custody in India in the five years up to 2015, a new report from Human Rights Watch says. During that period, not a single police official was convicted of a custodial death, the report “Bound by Brotherhood,” from the New York-based organization said. Deaths in custody are attributed to suicide, illness or natural causes, the report said, however “in many such […]

A senior Saudi cleric and a health ministry official said women should be allowed to work as paramedics and opticians, Saudi newspapers reported on Monday, part of a push to relax strict labour codes in the ultra-conservative kingdom. The government announced an economic reform plan in June that aims to increase the number of women as a proportion of the workforce to 28 percent from 23 percent […]

MOSCOW At least twenty-five residents of the Siberian city of Irkutsk have died after drinking bath oil, hoping it would give them the same sensation as alcohol, Russian investigators said on Monday. Use of counterfeit or surrogate alcohol is rife in Russia’s regions, where two years of economic pain have pushed more people below the poverty line, though the death toll from this latest incident is unusually […]

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