LONDON Shares in Anglo-Dutch consumer goods group Unilever (ULVR.L) (UNc.AS) dropped 8 percent on Monday after U.S. rival Kraft Heinz Co (KHC.O) abruptly ditched its surprise $143 billion merger proposal. Backed by Warren Buffett and the private equity firm 3G, Kraft had wanted to buy Unilever to build a global consumer goods giant but its offer was flatly rejected on Friday by the maker of Lipton tea […]
Two Filipino films are screening at this week’s Glasgow Film Festival, which opened in the Scottish city yesterday (February 15) and will run until February 26. Lav Diaz’s acclaimed film, Ang Babaeng Humayo (The Woman Who Left) will screen as part of the festival’s CineMasters section, which features works by renowned veteran directors from across the globe. Shot in black-and-white, The Woman Who Left won the Golden […]
Lenín Boltaire Moreno is in the lead after Sunday’s nail-biting presidential election in Ecuador. The anointed candidate of leftwing President Rafael Correa was close to the margin needed to avoid a second round against Guillermo Lasso, a conservative former banker, in a test for Latin America’s battered left. After a campaign that underlined the divisive legacy of Mr Correa, the US-trained economist who has been in power […]
Photo Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, left, with Col. Terry L. Anderson, the military attaché, in Munich on Thursday. Credit Sven Hoppe/DPA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images BAGHDAD — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arrived in Baghdad on Monday, promising that, despite what President Trump said last month, the administration would not try to seize Iraq’s oil. Nor, he said, would the administration repay Iraqis who have worked […]
Chinese technology giant Huawei has opened a narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) lab in Australia to provide research and development opportunities around applications, smart devices, and sensor networks. The lab is situated within James Cook University in Cairns, Queensland, with Huawei kitting it out with IoT technology and giving the university funding for research. Its positioning within northern Australia will see it focus on smart applications for […]
By Rozanna Latiff | KUALA LUMPUR KUALA LUMPUR Footage from airport cameras purportedly showing the assault on the half-brother of the North Korean leader emerged on Monday as a row between Malaysia and North Korea escalated over the handling of the investigation into the killing of Kim Jong Nam. Malaysia recalled its envoy from Pyongyang and summoned North Korea’s ambassador in Kuala Lumpur, who again cast doubt […]
OTTAWA One in four Canadians say Ottawa should have adopted a temporary halt on Syrian refugees in response to the United States’ controversial travel ban, though the majority supported the government’s current immigration plan, an Angus Reid Institute poll showed on Monday. Sixty percent of those surveyed in an online poll said the Canadian government had done a good job of resettling Syrian refugees since the Liberals […]
By Lesley Wroughton and Yeganeh Torbati | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON One of Rex Tillerson’s first directives as U.S. secretary of state was an order to senior staff that his briefing materials not exceed two pages. It was a reflection of Tillerson’s management style honed at the helm of Exxon Mobil, an oil company known for its relentless focus on efficiency, and one reason his closest aides at the […]
Newly appointed New South Wales Minister for Finance, Services and Property Victor Dominello has said he plans to bring his data-driven expertise to his new portfolio, rewarding government agencies with an “innovation bonus” if they move away from a silo-ridden approach to IT and service delivery. Speaking at the Gartner 2017 APAC Data & Analytics Summit in Sydney on Monday, Dominello said he had his eye on […]
ITP Media Group is hosting the UAE’s first Influencer Marketing Summit this morning at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Dubai Marina, chaired by the BBC broadcaster Andrew Neil. The event will see high profile social media stars such as Joelle Mardinian giving the first keynote speech, while also examining how influencers and brands can work together, and issues of transparency and legislation. (Refresh the page for updates) […]
By Alexandra Ulmer and Alexandra Valencia | QUITO QUITO Leftist government candidate Lenin Moreno was within striking distance of winning the first round of Ecuador’s presidential election on Monday, as the Andean country’s electoral body counted ballots late into the night. In a nail-biter vote with eight candidates, Moreno was close to the threshold needed to avoid an April runoff and continue a decade-long period of leftist […]
SYDNEY Asian share markets were mixed on Monday as political uncertainty globally kept the mood cautious, while the U.S. dollar dithered in a tight range ahead of a busy week for Federal Reserve events. Turnover was light with U.S. markets closed for the Presidents Day holiday. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS edged up 0.1 percent and back toward a 19-month peak reached last […]
A former Uber engineer has published a lengthy blog post Sunday, alleging sexist workplace practices inside the company during her one-year stint, detailing, in almost 3,000 words, instances of sexism that she experienced firsthand. Sexism At Uber Sexism is one of the tentpole issues in the Silicon Valley workplace, and her accounts of it provide evidence of that, with stories often, if not always, worryingly pernicious, if also slightly […]
New Zealand’s High Court has ruled that Kim Dotcom, the internet entrepreneur accused of masterminding one of the largest copyright infringements in history, and three accomplices can be extradited to face trial in the US. The judgment is a victory for the US department of Justice, which has fought a near five-year legal battle to have the 43-year-old German stand trial on copyright infringement and money laundering charges […]
MANILA Police carried out killings in the Philippine city of Davao under the instruction of then mayor Rodrigo Duterte, the current president, according to a former policeman who said he was part of a “Davao death squad” tasked with eliminating criminals. Arturo Lascanas, a retired Davao policeman, said on Monday he had previously killed a radio host critical of Duterte at the behest of a driver and […]
BEIRUT Syrian government forces fired rockets at a rebel-held area on Damascus’s outskirts on Sunday, pressing an attack that began the day before and has killed up to 16 people, a medical worker and war monitors said. The medical worker and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was the biggest attack on the Qaboun area, to the city’s northeast, in at least two years. At […]
In a country where the use of magic is a crime punishable by beheading, it’s not every day that young Saudis wander down the street dressed as the Hulk or Doctor Doom. But for three days over the weekend, some 20,000 Saudis decked out in costumes and face paint queued to get into Saudi Arabia’s first-ever Comic Con, where robots, video games and giant anime figures filled […]
SINGAPORE The U.S. economy is on “sound footing,” a hawkish Federal Reserve official said on Monday in a speech that cautioned against asking the central bank to solve problems beyond its control such as low productivity growth. Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester, at a forum in Singapore, did not comment specifically on interest rates. However she has dissented in the past in favor of quicker rate hikes […]
President Donald Trump is again breaking the internet not because of another dramatic press conference, outrageous Twitter statement or a “photo” showing him with Vladimir Putin. It began with a Reddit page that surfaced recently, titled Tiny Trumps, which is devoted to photoshopped images of the president, depicting him in various states of, well, smallness. Shrinking Trump Barely a day since the Reddit community was started, it has already […]
ABU DHABI // The British royal navy is strengthening its presence in the Arabian Gulf after it took command of US Task Force 50 – the first time it has led a US force in the Middle East. The force, which has assisted in battling ISIL in Iraq and Syria, plays an important role in the region because it allows free passage of trade throughout the Gulf […]
DUBAI // A Russian model who performed a daredevil photo shoot by precariously hanging from one of the emirate’s most eye-catching skyscrapers has responded to news she is facing a lawsuit from the building’s developer. On Friday the Cayan Group said it would file “immediate legal action” against Viktoria Odintcova and the production team who helped her orchestrate a dangerous stunt from the roof of Cayan Tower, […]
President Donald Trump sought to refocus on governing on Sunday by interviewing a shortlist of candidates to be his national security adviser having continued to blame media bias for portrayals of chaos in his administration. Following last week’s firing of Michael Flynn amid controversy over his Russia ties, Mr Trump was due to speak to four candidates to replace him in the post — the most crucial […]
The fate of Munich’s Linux project is only part of the story of open source software. Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto After a nearly decade-long project to move away from Windows onto Linux, Munich has all but decided on a dramatic u-turn. It’s likely that, by 2021, the city council will start to replace PCs running LiMux (its custom version of Ubuntu) with Windows 10. Going back maybe 15 […]
Stock markets in the Middle East were mixed in modest trading volumes on Sunday with Saudi Arabia and Qatar outperforming because of support from the banking sector, while Egypt fell as the currency hit a three-month high. Two-thirds of the 12 listed banks on Saudi Arabia’s bourse gained, lifting the index 0.1 percent. Alawwal Bank added 2.7 percent, with most activity occurring in the last hour of […]
