The saga of Housing.com, once a red-hot tech startup in India, has reached a conclusion of sorts after the company was sold to rival PropTiger in a deal announced this week. Housing.com was once heralded as a trailblazer for its efforts to digitize the sale and rental of property in India. But a fall from grace, which included the ejection of its outspoken CEO and the removal of […]
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter, a technophile and former Harvard professor, created the Strategic Capabilities Office when he was deputy defense secretary in 2012 The Pentagon may soon be unleashing a 21st-century version of locusts on its adversaries after officials on Monday said it had successfully tested a swarm of 103 micro-drones. The important step in the development of new autonomous weapon systems was made possible by improvements in […]
By Linda Sieg | TOKYO TOKYO A South Korean political vacuum and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s concerns about his conservative political base have rekindled a feud over wartime history, just as tension over North Korea makes cooperation between the U.S. allies as vital as ever. The row over “comfort women”, as those forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels are known, coincides with uncertainty over […]
Bjarni Benediktsson, leader of the conservative Independence Party, is Iceland’s new prime minister. (Halldor Kolbeins/Agence France-Presse) The Panama Papers — a huge leak of documents detailing the alleged secret offshore holdings of a global elite — were released in April 2016. The leak made headlines all over the world, but its impact was probably most keenly felt in Iceland. Just two days after the leak appeared, Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson […]
DUBAI Five Emirati humanitarian workers were killed in a bomb attack in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) official news agency reported on Wednesday. The five were killed on Tuesday while engaged in humanitarian, educational and development work, state news agency WAM reported, adding President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan had ordered flags flown at half mast for three days in mourning. […]
LOS ANGELES A prankster who altered the iconic “Hollywood” sign in Los Angeles to make it read “Hollyweed” has surrendered to police and been charged with trespassing, a city official said. Zachary Cole Fernandez, 30, who earlier this month told Vice Media about scaling the sign to alter it, turned himself in on Monday with his attorney at his side, Los Angeles City Councilman David Ryu’s office […]
By Christine Kim and Se Young Lee | SEOUL SEOUL A U.S. bribery case against two relatives has cast a pall over former United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon’s planned return this week to South Korea, where he is expected to launch a bid to run for president. Ban, 72, has not declared his candidacy but has had a team of people laying groundwork in Seoul ahead of […]
Singaporean telecommunications carrier Singtel has launched 450Mbps speeds across its entire 4G network for customers with compatible smartphones, and has also announced attaining speeds of up to 1Gbps in a trial of its 4G network with Ericsson. The network upgrade was achieved by making use of 256 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) technology, which increases efficient use of spectrum by increasing the number of unique radio waveform shapes […]
By Engen Tham and Samuel Shen | SHANGHAI SHANGHAI China’s forex regulator is telling banks to keep its instructions about curbing capital outflows secret and to ensure that research analysts keep any negative views about the yuan’s prospects to themselves, several bankers said. Both demands are seen as an attempt by the authorities to prevent alarm that could trigger further declines in the yuan, the bankers from […]
“I think that, somehow, we overprotect children,” says A Monster Calls director J A Bayona. “This is a story that was written for kids and helps them deal with complicated emotions.” Adapted from a book by Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls tells the story of a boy (Lewis MacDougall) trying to cope with the news his mother (Felicity Jones) has cancer. To make matters worse, he has to […]
Jan 11, 2017 10:15 am IST A senior Indian government minister predicted upcoming state elections would be a “complete sweep” for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, which is hoping that a strong mandate will help it push through more policy changes in the second half of Mr. Modi’s term. Piyush Goyal, the power minister and a influential leader in the Bharatiya Janata Party, said he was comfortable using the […]
TOKYO Japan’s government is planning legal steps that would allow Emperor Akihito to abdicate and his son to ascend the throne in two years, media reported on Wednesday, potentially setting the stage for the first abdication in two centuries. Japanese Emperor Akihito, 83, hinted in August that he wanted to abdicate, saying he worried that age might make it difficult for him to carry out his duties […]
Norway will today become the first country in the world to begin switching off FM radio and moving fully to digital in a move that has stoked controversy nationally and widespread interest abroad. The switch-off will start in the town of Bodo, northern Norway, at 11.11am and will be rolled out across the country throughout this year. Countries such as the UK, Switzerland and Denmark will be monitoring […]
Saudi Arabia plans to follow its record breaking debut on global debt markets with an Islamic bond issue in a sale that could come as early as February. The sharia-compliant sukuk will form part of a pipeline of bond sales to finance the kingdom’s budget deficit and invest in economic diversification away from oil and is likely to appeal to regional investors in the Gulf. Last year, […]
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, The true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the nation all the time, loyalty to the government when it deserves it. – Mark Twain, The Czar’s Soliloquy” At this point, pretty much everyone in America has seen the results of Hillary Clinton media pet, John Harwood’s recent Twitter poll. Who do you believe America? — John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) January 6, […]
By Harriet McLeod | CHARLESTON, S.C. CHARLESTON, S.C. White supremacist Dylann Roof deserves to die for the hate-fuelled killings of nine black churchgoers at a Bible study meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, a U.S. jury said on Tuesday after deliberating for less than three hours. The same jury last month found Roof, 22, guilty of 33 federal charges, including hate crimes resulting in death, for the shocking […]
Eneco and NS said on a joint website that some 600,000 passengers daily are “the first in the world” to travel thanks to wind energy All Dutch trains are now 100 percent powered by electricity generated by wind energy, the national railway company NS said Tuesday, calling it a world first. “Since the first of January, 100 percent of our trains are running on wind energy,” NS […]
MEXICO CITY Pranksters changed the name of Mexico’s lower house of Congress to the “Chamber of Rats” on Google Maps on Tuesday in the latest dig at the political class during a testing start to the year for the country’s government. The lower house, also known as the Chamber of Deputies, became the “Chamber of Rats”, using the Spanish word “rata,” which is also slang for thief […]
By Jonathan Landay and John Walcott | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Classified documents that the heads of four U.S. intelligence agencies presented last week to President-elect Donald Trump included claims that Russian intelligence operatives have compromising information about him, two U.S. officials said Tuesday evening. They told Reuters the claims, which one called “still unsubstantiated,” were contained in a two-page memo appended to a report on Russian interference in […]
BuzzFeed on Tuesday published a 35-page dossier that summarized damaging allegations about President-elect Donald Trump’s personal and financial dealings. By publishing the entire dossier, which has not been disclosed publicly by U.S. intelligence agencies, BuzzFeed has taken an unusual step. It’s uncommon for public-spirited news organizations to publish explosive, unverified information about public officials without first confirming the details independently. Complicating the situation is the origin of […]
SEOUL Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is unaware of the circumstances surrounding bribery charges laid by U.S. prosecutors against two of his relatives, Ban’s spokesman Lee Do-woon told reporters on Wednesday. Ban’s brother and nephew have been indicted on U.S. charges that they engaged in a scheme to bribe a Middle Eastern official in connection with the attempted $800 million sale of a building complex in Vietnam. […]
SEATTLE Boeing Co (BA.N) warned on Tuesday that it will conduct involuntary layoffs of engineers, part of a cost-cutting drive as the aerospace and defense company responds to increasing competition amid slowing aircraft sales. The reductions, disclosed in an internal memo seen by Reuters, also include dozens of job categories eligible for voluntary layoffs in Washington state, southern California and South Carolina. Boeing did not indicate the […]
An Apple virtual reality gear seems far from Apple’s focus at this point especially when rumors are mostly pointing to the way the Cupertino company is more interested in augmented reality technology. Apple And Carl Zeiss AG Partnership This last has been underscored when a Carl Zeiss AG employee disclosed that Apple is purportedly partnering with his company to develop AR optics. The source’s claim was first […]
The Middle East has given McLaren Automotive, the British manufacturer of luxury sports and supercars, good reason to get revved up with sales soaring last year. Its Middle East, Africa and central and South America region grew by an impressive 69 per cent last year, as the company posted another record year of sales growth. From offices in Dubai, McLaren has expanded into Abu Dhabi. “We continue […]
